Highway dedicated to memory of boy who died in auto accident

Click to see the Missouri State Highway Patrol's crash statistics from 2006

SCOPUS, Mo. -- Well before 15-year-old Aaron McKinney died in a car crash in 2004, the Woodland High School student knew what he wanted to happen to his body.

Before his unexpected death, McKinney had watched the movie "John Q," about a father willing to die to give his son the heart transplant the boy needed to live. McKinney made up his mind to be an organ donor.

McKinney's mother, Dani Dunn, hopes her son's story will remind others of the importance of organ donation and of safe driving. On Saturday, a stretch of Route B in Bollinger County from Highway 34 to Route UU was officially named the Aaron McKinney Memorial Highway at a ceremony at the Scopus United Methodist Church.

Now large green signs mark the stretch of road on which Aaron McKinney died. And Dani Dunn hopes that seeing those signs will get drivers on the country road to think about their own mortality and slow down -- and to consider what they'll do with their organs if a similar tragedy should strike them.

The dedication ceremony was one of two that took place this weekend. The first was on Friday at Dexter, Mo., where a stretch of U.S. 60 from Route ZZ to Highway 25 was named for deceased Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. Carl Graham Jr. Graham was murdered in front of his home near Van Buren, Mo., in 2005.

Seat belt reminder

More than 20 people attended the ceremony at Scopus, most of them friends and family of McKinney. The 15-year-old died from injuries in a car crash on Route B on Oct. 31, 2004, when a car driven by his mother went off the road and overturned, ejecting him. McKinney wasn't wearing a seat belt.

"I wanted a sign on that stretch of road to remind people" to wear seat belts, said Dunn, who now crusades on the message of driving safety, including seat belt use.

Rural roads like Route B can be extremely dangerous for motorists -- commonly they're hilly, curvy and they have no shoulders.

According to Missouri State Highway Patrol statistics, 71.7 percent of the fatal crashes in Missouri in 2006 (the last year statistics were available) happened on rural roads. Statewide, 13.3 percent of fatal crashes happened on single-lettered state roads like Route B, and 17.5 percent of fatal crashes in rural areas happened on those roads.

Another teenager, from Marble Hill, Mo., was killed on Route B in 1997.

A second chance

Dunn started her campaign to get the highway named for her son last spring, she said, after seeing signs for the Chris Sifford Memorial Highway near Puxico, Mo. She went through a long process to lobby the Missouri Legislature to get the highway dedicated, a move sponsored by Missouri Sen. Jason Crowell of Cape Girardeau.

Those who know Dunn said she was strong and courageous throughout the process. She also displayed strength in the decision to make her son an organ donor while she was recovering from serious injuries in the hospital, said Charity Worley, a nurse who helped care for Dunn at Saint Francis Medical Center after the crash.

"She was just wanting to make sure her son gave someone else a second chance," Worley said.

Dunn said if seeing the signs with her son's name on them reminds drivers to drive safely and buckle up, then her mission is accomplished.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182