DWI offenders get lesson in family pain

None of them thought they would ever have to buy a casket for their children.

On the second Thursday of the month, four parents sit at a table in a room at the Cape Girardeau Public Library and talk to a group of people about the last time they saw their children, the last thing their children said to them, the last thing they did for their children, now dead, killed by drunken drivers.

Charlie and Loretta Wilson of Oak Ridge, Mildred Held of Olive Branch, Ill., and Toni McLain of Cape Girardeau are members of the Victims Impact Panel of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Every month they open their wounds by telling their stories in the hope that those who come to their meetings will think twice about drinking and driving.

Fifty-nine people crowded into that room last week. The people who attend have been convicted or have pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated. They are first-time offenders, and sometimes they have to come back a second time.

The four people in the front of the room, seated at a table with photographs in front of them, had something to say.

All of them remembered what they were thinking when they walked around the funeral home selecting a casket: "This is not happening."

No one expects to bury their children. No one was prepared for the other things they had to do for their children as a result of a drunken driver.

The Wilsons lost their daughter, Cathy, in 1988 when a drunken driver hit her car on Route D on her way to work on a Saturday morning.

"We had to go to the bank and close out her checking account," Charlie Wilson said. "That was one of the hardest things I did. Everything was so final."

McLain recalled getting an envelope in the mail after her son, Russell, was killed. It held his death certificate.

"I could not believe I was sitting with the death certificate in my hand of a 20-year-old boy," she said.

Russell died around Thanksgiving. McLain said he had mentioned wanting a leather jacket for Christmas that year.

"Instead I bought him a tombstone," she said. "That was the last thing I bought him."

Mildred Held's son Randy was just 20 when a drag racing vehicle crashed into his on Highway 3 between Thebes and Olive Branch about five years ago. Held described how the accident did much more than kill the son who loved basketball and baseball, played in a band and nagged her to quit smoking.

Wendy, the girl Randy planned to marry, was critically injured and in a coma for six weeks, Held said. She suffered brain damage and extensive nerve damage to her eyes.

The doctor didn't want Wendy to know that Randy had died for fear that they would lose her too. When she did learn of Randy's death shortly before being released from the hospital, she insisted they were wrong.

"She said Randy went away because she was so ugly," Held said. "The doctors told her mom to lock all the doors and hide the key because she would try to run from the hospital. She was determined to find Randy."

Wendy eventually recovered, but Held said Randy's father is now a different man.

"He is much quieter," she said. "We don't talk about Randy in front of him. He gets up and goes into another room."

Many dimensions

The family learned that hurt comes in many dimensions. The man who hit her son was known to drink and drive. He was sentenced to five years in prison and served two and a half. He has been picked up for DWI several times since, she said, and this year served 90 days in the Jackson County Jail for DWI, no driver's license and no insurance.

"He had no insurance, but when he killed Randy he wanted Randy's insurance to pay his doctor bills," Held said.

McLain passed around a photo of her youngest son, Russell, a handsome young man with a head full of dark curls, sitting at his 20th birthday cake just days before he was thrown from a motorcycle, hit by a drunken driver. But engraved in her memory is how he looked at the hospital -- so bad that she went out of the room and threw up.

"When your children are little," McLain said, "they have accidents, you pick them up take them in and clean them up and they're fine. I realized it's not going to be OK this time."

On that last time, she and her husband gave their permission for him to be an organ donor.

The McLains also learned how deep hurt can go when they had to call their family and friends to tell them Russell had died. Holidays are no longer the same, she said, because "the circle is broken and there is always someone missing."

Unlike the McLains and the Helds, Charlie and Loretta Wilson were not called to the hospital to identify their daughter. They went looking for her when a friend she was supposed to meet called to say Cathy had not shown up. They found the wreckage of her car with her in it. Cathy was badly mangled.

Charles Wilson said seeing the accident scene was one of the hardest things he and Loretta had been through. They had always found a way around their problems, he said.

"That morning I stood down there on Route D and realized I did not know a way out," he said. "All I could think about was if we could just back up about an hour and start over. Things don't happen that way. That clock keeps on ticking."

"The young man who hit her was going over 90 mph," Loretta Wilson said. "He had run a lot of people off the road."

Charles Wilson said he learned later that some of the man's friends had taken him home early that morning from a party because he had been drinking all night. Instead of going to bed, he got into his father's truck and was on his way to buy more liquor when he slammed into Cathy's car.

He served 14 months in jail.

Loretta Wilson said she would feel better if he would tell her he was sorry.

"He said he did not feel like he had done anything wrong," she said.

The parents all say that they have learned to go on with their lives. The Wilsons said that it was a year before they could laugh again. Loretta finds comfort in a red sweater Cathy wore the day before she died.

"It's never been washed, and it probably never will be," she said. "It's something I can hold and feel like I still have a part of her."

'I knew better'

The members find strength in each other through the Victim Impact Panel and from telling the people who come to listen to them every month that they don't care if they drink. That's their business. But they do want them not to drive if they do.

As they filed out of the room, some of the DWI offenders said they were touched by what they heard. Others were in a hurry to go. McLain said that the ones who sit and fidget and look at the clock are the ones she expects to see again. They don't always reach everyone.

Trevor Niswonger of Scott City is a repeater. He looked uncomfortable and shrugged when asked why he was back.

"I don't know," he said. "Something went wrong."

Sometimes they do reach people. McLain said often people who have been to the sessions see her out in public, and stop and tell her how the panel's stories affected them.

Mark Altman of Scott City, a first-time DWI offender, said he found the panel's accounts touching. He predicts this DWI will also be his last.

"It ain't going to happen again," he said. "It was stupid, and I knew better. I made a mistake. Life goes on. Luckily I didn't get in an accident."

Cathy Fowler of Cape Girardeau said listening to the panel had a profound impact on her. She was arrested after drinking too much while celebrating her 49th birthday with some friends. She said she thought she was drinking responsibly, but she blacked out while driving and hit a parked car.

"Nobody was hurt except my pride, my car and my pocketbook," she said. "I have not had a drink since."

lredeffer@semissourian.com

355-6611, extension 133