Drunk drivers steal tomorrow

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

Todd was playing in a yard. Kristen was jogging on a country road. Michael was driving to work. Chris was driving home from work. Lisa was getting in her car. Michelle was crossing the street. All of them children. All of them alive one minute, dead or soon to be dead the next.

Christopher Baldwin, 19, back home in Somerset after his first year of college, was rollerblading last Sunday night when he was killed. Police say a 1985 Camaro struck him from behind, pitched him onto the car's roof and hurled him into a stone wall.

The names change; the places, too. But nothing else ever does. The driver of the car that reportedly struck Baldwin, Timothy Tobin, 28, of Swansea, refused to take a Breathalyzer and failed parts of his field sobriety test, He has been arrested, charged with operating under the influence of liquor and released on $2,000 cash bail.

It's always this way. The "alleged" drunk driver is meeting with his lawyer, trying to figure out how he's going to get away with what he's done, while the victim's family is meeting with the undertaker picking out a coffin.

In a Brockton courtroom, the morning after Baldwin was run down, the names were different, but the story's the same. This time we see the end being played out.

Last year, 22-year-old John DeLoid III was killed. Charged in the death was Scott M. Griffiths, who, after a night of heavy drinking, is reported to have actually driven south in the northbound lane of Route 3. When his car slammed into DeLoid's, Griffiths' blood-alcohol level was .39, nearly four times the legal limit of .10.

Griffiths pleaded guilty to motor vehicle homicide while under the influence of alcohol, operating negligently, operating under the influence of alcohol, driving to endanger and causing serious injury. For the killing of John DeLoid III, he was sentenced to three to five years in prison. He's be eligible for parole in just a year.

DeLoid's father told the court about his son, how he was a student at the University of Massachusetts, how he had worked at Bridgewater State Hospital, how he had befriended many of the patients. DeLoid's sister read a letter written by their mother.

"I cry for what John can no longer experience. I will always feel pain in the knowledge that there is no future for John," she wrote.

"Pain" isn't a sharp enough word for what the families of children killed by drunken drivers have to live with every moment of their lives. The word is too weak. All the words are too weak. They dilute the truth.

Christopher Baldwin, dead at 19, was a straight A student who had just completed his first year at Colorado State University where he had a four-year ROTC scholarship. He had come home for the summer. He was going to take his girl to her senior prom. He had lots of friends.

But this wasn't the sum of his life. His life encompassed years.

There should be pictures instead of words, thousands of them, chronicling every victim's life, starting with when he was born or before he was born. Starting with a photo of his mother newly pregnant with him.

There should be a sound track, too. That's what the courts need to hear: a human voice, a young woman saying, in wonder, that yes, it's true. She is going to have a baby. The court should have to feel a mother's worries - from crib death to kidnapping to childhood leukemia, to whether he'll make friends at school, whether he'll make the basketball team, whether he'll get accepted to the college he loves.

And it should feel her joys - the hugs, the smiles, the "I love you, Mommy" and "I'll take care of you when you're old."

So many moments make up one person's life. There's Christopher learning to crawl, riding a two-wheeler, going off to first grade, in his basketball uniform, getting inducted into the National Honor Society, striding across the stage to accept his high school diploma.

One human being is unlike any other. Christopher Baldwin - like John DeLoid III, like Michael Stokes and Lisa Tammaro and Todd Slokum and Kristen Hatch and thousands of others - was unique and irreplaceable.

And now he's dead. Why? Because we - the public, the courts and the system - put up with drunk drivers. We make excuses for them. When a drunk driver mows someone down, we shake our heads and pity the victim. But we pity the driver, too. We are resigned to the fact that this is the way things are.

This is the way things would have been: Christopher Baldwin would be at the beach this morning. He would have sat in a limo last night with his girl close beside him and held her tight as they danced at the prom. He would have spent yesterday, picking up his tux and his shoes and choosing a bouquet for the girl he loved.

Instead, he was buried yesterday. And buried with him was not just his past, and not just today, but all his tomorrows: College graduation, jobs, vacations, marriage, children, grandchildren, his entire life.