MOTHERLY TOUCH COMES EARLY; WOMAN WHO RAISED YOUNGER SIBLINGS GETS COLLEGE DEGREE TODAY

ANNA, Ill. -- Tears stream down Denise Bone Goins' face when she reads the letters from her mother so full of love, hope and an abiding faith in God.

She clings to the letters, written on scraps of paper, as she does to family photographs and memories all too fragile. They tear at her heart.

She can't hug her parents. They were killed by a drunken driver on Aug. 7, 1998. But 24-year-old Denise, who will graduate today from Southeast Missouri State University with a teaching degree, has had little time for self pity.

She became a mother to four younger brothers and sisters, all seriously injured in the same accident. She was 21 when the tragedy made her head of the household.

Her 17-year-old sister, Shennia, suffered facial injuries. The left side of Shennia's face was crushed so badly that doctors believed she would lose an eye.

Denise's 15-year-old brother, Matt, crushed his pelvis and severed an artery. He spent the next month and a half in hospitals in Cape Girardeau and St. Louis. Doctors thought he wouldn't survive.

Ryan, who was 9 at the time, suffered two broken arms, a broken leg and facial injuries.

Leanna, who was 11, was thrown through the windshield. She suffered back injuries that required physical therapy.

Miraculously, all four children recovered.

Almost three years later, Goins is still raising the youngest children: Leanna, 13, and Ryan, 12. She calls them her "kids."

She married Mark Goins, her pastor's son, in October 1999. She, Leanna and Ryan moved into his home in Anna.

Denise was working at a McDonald's restaurant in Sikeston, Mo., the night her parents were killed. When she saw three ambulances race by the restaurant, she knew it was a bad accident. Only later did she learn that her parents had been killed and her brothers and sisters injured.

"It never did enter my mind that it would be my family," she recalled.

The accident happened on Interstate 57 in Southeast Missouri as the family was returning to their Bertrand, Mo., home from church services at United Pentecostal Church in Dongola, Ill.

Frank and Sherrie Bone died from injuries suffered in the accident. As she lay dying, Sherrie Bone told a nurse who stopped to help that she wanted her oldest daughter to take care of "her babies."

Earlier that summer, Denise had promised to do just that. "Mom asked me what would happen to the kids if something happened to her." She knew Denise was in college and had her own life.

"No, Mama, if something happens I will take care of your babies," Denise told her mother.

She was granted legal custody of her four younger siblings and moved to Dongola to be closer to her church family. Her brother, Tim, who was 19 at the time of the accident, stayed there too.

The family survived off their father's Social Security benefits, food stamps and the kindness of church members.

"It was pretty rough now that I look back on it," Denise said. "I drove them to school. I took them to the doctor. I cleaned the house. I mowed the yard."

Her pastor, now her father-in-law, counseled her to stay in college and get a degree. She stuck it out.

She made it to class, but her mind wasn't always on her course work. In her notebooks, she wrote grocery lists and jotted down doctors' appointments, the to-do chores of being in charge.

"I did the mother role with all of them," she said as she sat on the couch of their small home in Anna. Painted bright yellow on the outside, the house sits near the high school where she was a student teacher this semester. She plans to be a high school social studies teacher.

She was protective of the kids. She also was strict like her parents. She insisted the children go to church.

Denise's rules didn't sit well with some of her siblings. Tim, Shennia and Matt have all moved out.

Tim moved out within a month of the family's move to Dongola, recalled Matt.

Matt never wanted to move to Dongola. "I would rather have stayed down here in Missouri," said Matt, now 18 and living in a rented room in New Madrid, Mo.

He says Denise kicked him out of the house in early 1999, partly for not going to church. "She put me in a church school," he said.

He dropped out of the Christian high school in Essex, Mo., after his freshman year. His Social Security checks ran out six months after he turned 17. Matt works at a wire factory in Sikeston making $8.50 an hour. He hopes to eventually get his GED.

Shennia has moved out too. She moved out while still in high school at Dongola, Matt said. She recently married.

Matt says he didn't like being mothered by Denise. They aren't on speaking terms and he won't attend commencement.

"She talks about trying to keep all of us together. She is driving us all apart," Matt said.

Denise prefers to dwell on the task of raising Leanna and Ryan. "I am especially careful of who I let drive them," she said.

Seated by Denise, Leanna and Ryan cast knowing grins at each other. They say Denise is "the boss."

"I want them to grow up and be good people," Denise said. She also wants them go to college.

The first in her family to get a college degree, she is proud to be graduating. "I wish they could see me finish," she said of her parents, who never finished high school.

Denise says her parents never had a lot of money.

She particularly misses her mother, who was her best friend. "She was 17 when she had me."

Denise spreads the letters over the living room floor. One by one she picks them up and reads them out loud. A birthday letter in April 1990 talked of Denise becoming a teen-ager.

"Just make something of your life," her mother wrote.

It's a message Denise won't ignore.