Drunk Driving Is a Crime Without End
/The Boston Globe
They sit in their homes and tell their stories and show you photographs and sometimes they show you their child's room. Books. Trophies. Posters. Clothes in the closet. Shoes on the floor. Things are all they have left. And their stories run in the papers. And on the news. And into each other, day after day after day.
"Driver in crash is repeat offender.”
"Drunken driver gets 4 years in death of woman.”
"Two friends die as driver slams into stalled car.”
Drunken driving is a crime without end.
Melanie's Bill, named for 13-year-old Melanie Powell of Marshfield, who was killed two years ago on a beautiful July afternoon by a repeat drunk driver, was signed into law on Friday, Oct. 28. Less than 48 hours later, there were two more crashes, two more young people dead and another critically injured because of two more alleged drunk drivers.
Here's what never changes: Nobody means for it to happen. And nobody is prepared for it when it does.
A young woman is standing next to her car and a drunk driver slams into her and drives away. November 1989.
A young man is standing next to his car and a drunk driver slams into him and drives away. October 2005.
"Change the names of the families, change the look of the house, change the color of the bedspreads, and these kids" who were killed last week "could be ours," said Marian Stokes, cofounder of the Greater Boston chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the first person in Massachusetts to publicly fight for the victims of this form of murder.
Stokes became an advocate in 1981 after a repeat drunk driver killed her 16-year-old son, Michael, and his friend John Pappalardo. Four years later, Michael's twin sister was nearly killed by yet another drunk driver.
"When I thought Michelle was dying, I almost gave up. When you lose a child there's an empty spot, an empty place, an empty feeling that never goes away. But you know that nothing can ever hurt you again except losing another child.”
Stokes was the force behind legislation that made drunken driving a felony in Massachusetts. Before she hounded lawmakers and the press, killing someone while intoxicated was only a misdemeanor, no more serious than shoplifting. For 12 years she dedicated her life to changing public policy and the public's attitude about drinking and driving. She lobbied. She lectured. She spoke to first offenders, telling them her story. And she began support groups. "I was so driven.”
And then one day she stopped because it never ended. "The whole idea of getting involved with MADD was so it wouldn't happen to someone else." But it did. And it kept happening. "Families called and it was the same thing over and over.”
Gordon and Donna Packer; Virginia and George Lester; Michelle and Robert Palkowski; Cheryll Slocum; the DelCheccolos; Stan McEwen; the Howards; Andrea and Raquel Hensley; Marion Emslie; Susan Brace; Donna Silva; the Silvas, the Tammaros, The Naughtons, the Hatches; the Dartleys; the Lawlers; Janine Bouchard, Barbara and Joe Roche; Don Smith countless other mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and sons and daughters who lost someone they loved because of alcohol were forerunners to Ron Bersani, grandfather of Melanie Powell, the force behind Melanie's Bill. All these people spoke out, too. They wrote impact statements. They talked to the press. They got involved.
But Bersani was heard. "What's wonderful is that every now and then the voice of a citizen captures the ears of the public, the media, and ultimately the politicians, and Ron's done that," Governor Mitt Romney said after signing Melanie's Bill.
"He met with virtually every legislator on the House and Senate side, and carried with him a folder with lots of facts and figures on repeat drunk drivers. The guy is so professional, and so matter-of-fact, and presents his case so well," Representative Frank Hynes, a Marshfield Democrat, told the Patriot Ledger.
Marian Stokes is a grandmother now, a role she loves. "You have hope. You have a reason to be happy once in a while.” There's a picture in her home taken at a family wedding and everyone is in it. Everyone, except Michael. "I look at it and think, it's not your whole family. Twenty-five years and it could be yesterday.”
You read the papers and think nothing has changed because people still drink and drive.
But you can't know about the people who don't. You can't know about the people who changed the way they live because they listened to Marian Stokes and Carol Lawler. Or because they read about a little girl named Michaela who is being raised by her grandparents, her mother killed by a drunk driver. Or because they read about Melanie Powell, a 13-year-old whose grandfather has made Massachusetts roads safer because of her.
Drunken driving is a crime without end. But maybe, finally, it's a crime we will no longer excuse.
