On the morning of October 14, 2006, my phone rang at 7 in the morning. It was my wife’s aunt, “Was that car crash on your street? It’s on the news.” I had a vague memory of hearing the Doppler sound of a car speeding past my bedroom window in the middle of the night. Soon our phone was ringing every four or five minutes.
An intoxicated graduate of Deerfield High School had sped down our street and hit a tree. He was killed as was the DHS senior sitting behind him. Three other young people survived.
For some in our community, the world changed that day. Unfortunately, it feels like there was a brief period of shock and sadness that passed all too quickly. There is the old truism that says a stoplight doesn’t get put up at an intersection until someone is killed; it cases like these, it takes much more than that.
I walked to end of my street on that October morning. The news crew was there and so were a few of my neighbors. There were no skid marks; the car never braked. The police had marked the pavement with colored paint. The mark on the tree was the only concrete indication that anything had happened. Unfortunately, this was a sign of things to come.
The next day, my eight-year-old son and twelve year old daughter had questions. They wanted to see what was going on at the end of their street, so the three of us took a short walk. The crash site had become a memorial and there was a small crowd. Signs, notes, pictures and tokens had been placed around the tree. Soon, one of the kids who was in the crash came out of a nearby house smoking a cigarette. My children were shocked to see him smoking. They thought that smoking at the site of a crash caused by substance abuse was disrespectful. I agreed. It was another sign of things to come – or rather, things not to come.
As the community grieved and looked for answers, it became clear that there was plenty of blame to go around. There was the pointing of fingers, filing of lawsuits, and forming of parent groups, but not enough progress. At one community meeting not long after the crash, some parents were far more concerned about their liability when hosting a party than their children’s well being.
Here we are three years later. It would be cliché to ask, “Has anything changed?” Are these deaths the price for teenage irresponsibility and recklessness? Do we have to sacrifice teenagers periodically in order to wake up the community? Is this unavoidable? Are there always going to be parents who enable and kids who misbehave?
Regardless of the answers to these questions, I will not surrender our children because some believe these events are inevitable. I will not give them up without one hell of a fight. When I ask kids, “what will it take to change behavior?” they do not have an answer. They don’t know. There are countless examples of how our attempts to stem the tide of teenage blood is ineffective. Yet, none of this excuses us and permits us to lay down and do nothing. No matter what our odds for success, we must not give up the struggle.
On the Friday before homecoming this year, my students and I talked about having a safe celebration. I woke up late on Homecoming Saturday. My phone didn’t ring. That doesn’t mean it won’t tomorrow or the next day. In fact, I know it eventually will, even while I am hoping it will not.
They are all our children and they are our responsibility. And while we cannot prevent every horror, we can try. We must try, and we must keep trying. Our children’s lives depend on it.
