Homecoming Ghosts: The October 13th Crash Ten Years Later

I see ghosts in the halls of my high school. Most of the time, they are ghosts of the living. I look down the hall and say, “there’s Sarah!” And then I remember that Sarah graduated.  She is at college or medical school or married and living in Los Angeles. That isn’t Sarah at all, but a student who reminds me of her. I turn a corner and remember how Kevin made me laugh as he imitated a teacher’s walk down the hallway. Several times a day, I am reminded of students from two or twelve or twenty-five years ago. They may have graduated, but they are still with me.

Some will never come home. There is an area in the front of the school with plaques dedicated to students who have died. I pass it several times a day and, each time, I mourn them. Sometimes, if it has been a particularly difficult day, I avoid that hall.

Most of my time, of course, is devoted to the students in front of me. My memories are fleeting, but my classes are not. I silently wish for my students what I wish for my own two children. Even after my students have left my classroom, our school, and moved away from our community, I want to remind them that they matter: that I remember them, and I am waiting for them to come home and tell their stories. I don’t tell them that I will probably “see” them in the hall anyway.

Ten years ago, on homecoming weekend, a car carrying several students sped past my home. A roaring engine awakened me briefly. The kids had been to a party, left, and were returning. They were intoxicated and collided with a tree at high speed. The driver and the young man sitting behind him were killed.

I go past the site of this crash daily. There is no plaque or memorial. The sign used to say, “Dead End.” Now it reads, “No Outlet.”

Taking a different route or changing the sign doesn’t change the past. There was a great deal of blaming and finger pointing after the crash. Lawsuits, criminal charges, and media coverage diverted our attention for a while. New parent groups were created. New legislation was passed that held parents more accountable for parties in their homes.

Then everyone moved on. Too many other young people died in the intervening years, some shortly after and some only a few weeks ago. Some due to the awful randomness of medical misfortune, others as a result of drugs and alcohol.

They haunt me.

A recent survey suggests that we are making some progress in the prevention and treatment of teenage substance abuse. I am eager to believe that such surveys give us useful, albeit incomplete, information. We need to act on that information.  

What has changed in the ten years since two boys died at the end of my street?  What must we do differently after students die from overdoses, are killed in parking lots, take their own lives, or die suspiciously?

Almost thirty years ago, it was funny when Julie Brown sang that the homecoming queen’s got a gun. The song is grotesque in a post-Columbine world. It is more that not funny; it feels horribly prophetic and wrong.

Seven years ago, I wrote that I was remembering but not surrendering. Times change, but the legacy of that horrible homecoming continues to haunt me. I remember students who struggled and succeeded. I remember students who graduated hoping for success later. Many found it. Some come home and talk about their journeys. The kids who never got a chance to grow up are still with me in the halls of our high school.

Some I can only hold in my heart and memories. They join my classes. I see them in the halls. They remind me that the important lessons go far beyond reading, writing, and preparing for college. They urge me to reach out to every student and make sure they know how much they mean to all of us: to do whatever I can to make sure that every child comes home.