For `survivors' the pain never ends

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

If they walked into the room on crutches or wheeled themselves in chairs; if they had missing arms and legs or wore bandages, or screamed in pain, then they would be noticed.

But they do not scream, at least not in public, and if their eyes are red no one knows why. They look like everyone else. The men wear jackets and ties. The women wear dresses or suits and make-up. The kids look like kids anywhere.

Nothing appears to be wrong with any of them.

And yet everything is.

Outside the room in which they meet, in the hallway of the Copley Marriott, just a few floors above shoppers and revelers, bejeweled Christmas trees and piped in carols, a wall of posters tells why the people who look like everyone else are different. The posters are covered with pictures, big and small, candid and posed, of babies, toddlers, children, high school kids, college graduates, brides, grooms, young women, pregnant women, old women, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends. Every picture is of a person smiling. Every picture is of a person now dead.

Christopher Naughton's picture is on that wall. A year ago, he was 16, a junior at Medfield High School, a member of the National Honor Society, a student who scored 740 in his math and physics college boards, a musician who played the alto sax, the drums and electric guitar, a Boy Scout who was completing work on his Eagle Scout project, "a true renaissance man," according to his physics teacher, "equally at home discussing mathematics as well as music; physics as well as English literature."

Last Dec. 21, on his way home from Bradlees where he worked part-time during the pre-Christmas season, less than a mile from his house, a drunken driver crossed into his lane and hit him head on.

The driver killed Chris Naughton, the only child of George and Carol Naughton, obliterated in seconds all this boy's potential and changed his family's lives forever. The driver was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for the crime but will serve just 14 months. The sentence isn't even a pretense of fair and just punishment, but that's how the system works. Sympathy goes to the drunken driver. He didn't mean it. He didn't know what he was doing. It was an "accident."

They are all "accidents." That's the problem. Mothers and fathers swallow hard every time someone asks, "How many children do you have?" Sisters weep. Brothers clench their fists and weep, too. Their pain is deepened by the system's callous acceptance of the unacceptable.

At a luncheon last Saturday, the families of victims killed by drunken drivers, members of Mothers Against Drunk Driving representing 50 states, gathered in memory of their dead and in the memory of all those killed by drunken drivers in their state. They sat quietly as Lt. Gov. Paul Celluci talked about plans to toughen Massachusetts laws, as statistics lauding lower breathalyzer limits were shared, as WHDH-TV was given an award for excellence in public communications.

It was later that night, at a candlelight vigil at the Kennedy Library, that each walked on stage, held up a picture of his or her loved one and briefly shared their stories:

"We're here to remember our son Mark who was crossing the street on Dec. 4, 1987, and was hit by a drunken driver on his way home from an office Christmas party."

"We're here to remember my daughter, the Rev. Shelley Abbey Fogleman, her husband Jan, and her three children Sarah, 6; Hannah, 3, and Stephen, 2, who were killed Dec. 22, 1988, by a drunken driver while on their way to visit me for Christmas vacation."

"We're here to remember my mother, brother and aunt who were killed by a drunk driver on Christmas Day, 1988."

On and on and on it went, the stories so much alike, the numbers horrifying.

"We're also here to remember the 738 others killed last year by drunken drivers in the state of Michigan and the 23,000 seriously injured."

"...the 525 killed by drunken drivers in the state of Virginia and the 14,000 seriously injured."

Some 22,000 Americans are killed every year by drunken drivers. This is Mothers Against Drunk Driving's National Drunk and Drugged Driving Awareness week. MADD's goal is to save lives, to make people aware that those few drinks at an office Christmas party don't lead to good cheer. They lead to death, to pain, to disfigurement, and to families and friends who look like everyone else, but who bleed on the inside.