MADD COMMEMORATES WOMAN'S DEATH

Tracy Holder had just delivered a Christmas present to a friend last Dec. 21, and was headed toward Chaffee when her car was struck head-on.

The impact turned her car completely around and it went into a ditch. Police said the driver of the other vehicle, Perry Gregory of Dexter, was legally drunk.

Holder, who worked at St. Francis Medical Center, was transported by helicopter to the hospital. Her face was so swollen because of her injuries that even those who worked with her in the hospital didn't recognize her.

There were holes in her stomach. Her ear had been cut off. Her jaw was broken, as were her legs. She was, doctors told her parents, brain dead.

"I prayed, 'Lord, if she can't get well, don't let her suffer,'" said her mother, Norma Holder of Scott City.

Gregory was killed in the crash and Holder died shortly thereafter.

Nearly a year later, Norma Holder and her husband, Herb, still grieve, sometimes visiting Tracy's grave two or three times a day.

"It's just like a bad dream," Norma Holder said.

The Holders gathered with 35 others at the entrance of the Cape Girardeau Police Department Sunday evening for the third Candlelight Vigil of Remembrance commemorating the victims of drunken drivers.

The vigil, sponsored by Mothers Against Drunk Driving Community Action Team, was meant to not only remember those who have been killed or injured by drunken drivers, but to remind others not to drink and drive.

Family members and officers from the Cape Girardeau police force hung 22 snowflake-shaped ornaments on the Christmas tree in the police station lobby. Each ornament, which will remain on the tree throughout the holidays, bears the name of a drunken-driving victim.

Police Chief Rick Hetzel told those who gathered: "My greatest hope is that next year and in the years to come, we will not have to hang another ornament. My greatest fear is that I know we will."

Hetzel told the crowd that the greatest tool in combating drunken driving is tough enforcement of drunken-driving laws and unyielding penalties being levied on those who break the laws.

Also speaking was Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle, who encouraged the members of MADD to help get drunken drivers off the street by pressing judges for stiff, undiluted sentences.

Nearly 75 percent of all persons convicted of felony drunken driving in Cape Girardeau County were sent to prison, Swingle said. He said he wanted to get that percentage closer to 100.

Missouri law states that driving while intoxicated is a felony when the prosecution can prove that the defendant committed the DWI and two prior DWIs within 10 years.

Swingle said the policy of the prosecuting attorney's office is to refuse to reduce felony DWIs to misdemeanors and to seek prison sentences on all felony DWI cases.

He encouraged MADD to write letters to judges or to show up in court for the sentencing of those convicted of felony DWI to tell judges about the impact of drunken driving on families.

"We need people to know that driving while drunk is driving while deadly. We need to get drunken drivers off the street," Swingle said.

The vigil was part of the Red Ribbon Campaign that MADD members kicked off Dec. 1. The campaign, which will run through New Year's Day, asks motorists to tie red ribbons to their vehicle antennae as reminders not to drink and drive.