<p>What would the memorial say?</p>
<p>I was talking about the article that I read. This guy was going to go to another party at 4 A.M., but he couldn’t find the house and went to a fast food restaurant. The establishment was going to call the cops because they saw that he was drunk. He sped off in his car, hit a drainage pipe, and slammed into a fence that belonged to a school.</p>
<p>First of all, schools don’t undertake these projects lightly. Someone didn’t just say, “Oh, let’s create a memorial,” and that was that. Chances are it have to have some sort of board of education approval. I know ours did. Then the monies collected had to be funneled through our business office, and kept track of, etc. </p>
<p>Since I know longer have kids at our high school, I have no idea what ours says, but I’ll bet it’s pretty simple, such as, “In memory of _____”. Perhaps it has his date of birth and death. It could make reference to his participation in the sport he was involved in, but most people would probably get that because it’s located somewhere on that field. And it might reference how much his teammates/peers/family/friends, etc. will miss him.</p>
<p>You need to clarify what kind of memorial you keep referring to. Is it at the site of the crash? If so, I think that could be appropriate as people would be reminded of it everyday they drive by (a much stronger impact than just photos). Also, I would hope the school would be sensitive to the family’s wishes. They may or may not want something like that. Some families might not want to be constantly reminded of how their loved one died - might be ashamed of them. Others (I’d guess most) try their best to do anything that might prevent this sort of tragedy from happening to anyone else, and that would involve education. I know that whenever I drive by one of those make-shift memorials on the road or highway, I think of the pain that was caused to someone’s family, no matter how or why the accident happened, and that this make-shift (often temporary, but often lasts quite a while) memorial is erected to remind others of what can happen when people are wreckless.</p>
<p>When D1 was a junior in high school, a popular cheerleader was killed in a similar situation. There were four people in the car, they’d just left a party, and all were drunk. Her boyfriend was driving because he was the ‘most sober’ one of the group; he was driving her father’s car. It was a residential area, with all narrow, winding roads, with basically no street lights. He made a curve too fast and the passenger side of the car crushed up against a very large tree, killing her instantly. At the moment, I didn’t know about it, but I do remember coming home that night and hearing ambulances and police cars (the location was not far from where I live), and finding out the next morning what happened. It was the week between Christmas and New Year’s and the girl’s mother had just died two weeks earlier, basically by swallowing (self-induced) Liquid Plummer. The community was devastated and there was a lot of righteous anger. But kids kept returning to the site of the crash daily, attaching notes, flowers, etc. to the tree. The people whose property it was were traumatized, and eventually, months later had to cut down the tree because kids would not stop visiting the site and creating new memorials when the home owners would remove what was there.</p>
<p>I don’t know if anyone ever sponsored any sort of permanent memorial for this young lady at the school to honor her participation as an athlete (yes, cheerleaders are considered athletes) - I wasn’t as into reading BOE minutes as I was later when I learned about the young man’s memorial. But I would have had no problem if they had. For (what I heard) weeks, most of those kids refrained from drinking and driving and were on their best behavior, but by the end of the year, many of them were back at it again.</p>
<p>“For (what I heard) weeks, most of those kids refrained from drinking and driving and were on their best behavior, but by the end of the year, many of them were back at it again.”</p>
<p>That is sad. I guess some kids will never learn.</p>
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<p>That’s another whole issue. I can feel for the homeowners who don’t want to be reminded of a young life lost every time they look out their window. In our town there was a very popular girl who was a hs senior who was killed in a car accident on snowy slippery road (daylight, leaving school in a snowstorm, it was purely an accident, nothing illegal involved. She was the passenger in a car that hit an icy spot, spun sideways, and was hit broadside by an SUV coming the other way). The car wound up on the corner of someone’s lawn, and distraught teens kept leaving flowers, candles, etc there. I heard that the homeowners were upset to keep seeing reminders of the accident in their yard. Now there is a small rose bush planted there. I thought the homeowners planted it but I then heard it was the girl’s friends, who planted it without even asking permission! But apparently the homeowners are tending it, because it’s still alive and still there, and it’s been several years.</p>