MOTHERS AGAINST DRUNK DRIVING (MADD) HELPS FAMILIES WITY PAIN

Greg Reece was killed almost four years ago in an automobile crash, caused by a drunken driver.

The rainy weather Thursday prevented the members of the Cape Girardeau MADD community action team from dedicating and planting a tree in his honor at Cherokee Park, but he was remembered during their monthly meeting at the Cape Girardeau police station.

A prayer was read at the start of the meeting for Greg and others who had suffered his fate, and for the people who lived on in their memory.

Those in attendance introduced themselves at the start of the meeting, each telling the others about the tragedy which caused them to be there.

"In August of last year, my son and my granddaughter were killed by a drunken driver," one woman told the group. "This year we planted a tree - named after my granddaughter. We planted this live, growing thing to keep her memory alive in our minds and to watch her grow."

Some people had lost loved ones years before and were still suffering. A newcomer to the group had lost her husband earlier this month and had difficulty telling the others through her tears.

"We somehow manage to go on with our lives," another woman said. "We function occasionally, and we don't function so well occasionally; some days I don't know how we manage at all.

"But none of us will ever be the same again," she added. "Something has been taken from us that can never be replaced; that we will always have to live with - or without, as the case may be."

Women and men in attendance remembered how old their children, husbands or relatives would be, how old their other children were when it happened - as if time stood still at the moment their loved ones were killed and has never properly advanced since.

"I feel like we're doing better," a woman whose son died in October 1989 said. "It is the most horrible thing that could happen to any family, to lose a child like that."

The Cape Girardeau Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) community action team began in January 1992, under the guidance of Sharee Galnore and Bettie Knoll of the Cape Girardeau Police Department. Galnore is the coordinator of community traffic safety programs at the department; Knoll is the crime victims' advocate for the county, working out of Cape Girardeau city's department.

"Having worked in traffic safety, we realized that MADD could fill a gap that the programs at the police department could not," Galnore said. "Also, we knew we could use the group to get the word out about the drunk driving issue."

The group's primary focus is support for its members and to help each person through the processes of grieving and the legal system.

"We see people at different stages of their grief, and we do all we can to help them through it as a group," Galnore said.

One of the things the group is doing to help its members cope with their grief and in an effort to prevent future drunk driving crashes, is hosting a victim impact panel where drunk driving offenders are forced to sit and listen to tales of loss told by victims' family members.

The groups first panel will be held in June at the city library. In the panels, three or four of the "victims" will tell their stories in an non accusing manner. Municipal and associate circuit judges will make attendance at one or more of the sessions mandatory for first or second-time DWI offenders, as part of their sentence.

Galnore and Knoll are preparing a somewhat graphic slide presentation of car crashes and victims, to be shown after the speakers have finished.

The panels are designed as therapy for the families as well as preventive medicine for the offenders.

"We're all here for the same reason, we're sharing our grief and making it easier to continue with our lives," a man at the group said. "Our lives will never again be the same, but tragedy has brought us together to find strength, friendship and love in one another.

"Groups like this make living a lot easier," he said.

The MADD group in Cape Girardeau is the only one of its kind in the region, and draws members from all over Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois. For more information about MADD, call Galnore or Knoll at 335-7908.