How many teenagers have to die before the message is heard?

(Editor’s Note: The column was written on March 6, 2006 — more than 12 years ago. However more than a decade later the point remains the same regarding teenage drivers.  This should be required reading for all students taking driver’s ed. Hope you enjoy!)     JM

By Jim Muir

I don’t know Logan Paris, but in a sense I do know him.

This time last week Logan was an 18-year-old senior at Lawrenceville High School. He was handsome, popular, a gifted athlete with loads of friends and was well-respected and loved by faculty, students and the Lawrenceville community.

Fast forward the calendar one week and those same friends and faculty members will gather tonight at the Lawrenceville High School gymnasium to attend Logan’s funeral. Tragically ironic, Logan’s body will lie in state on the same hardwood court where he spent a great deal of his time exciting Indians’ fans during the past four years.

Logan died last Sunday after a Jeep he was riding in overturned on a rural road. The details of the crash are ones we’ve all heard before in virtually every county throughout the state. Four teenagers, an inexperienced driver, nobody with a seatbelt on, alcohol-related, vehicle leaves roadway, driver overcorrects, vehicle skids and overturns, passengers ejected, dead on arrival.

I first heard about the accident earlier this week on IllinoisHighSchoolSports.com, a popular website and forum for sports junkies. The thread was entitled “Lawrenceville tragedy” and I read through more than 160 posts where individuals, many were teammates and friends, expressed their sorrow about the death. Hollow words we’ve heard and all used before — ‘tragic,’ ‘senseless,’ ‘horrible’ and ‘sad’ — were used to describe the death of 18-year-old youth with a promising future.

Many of the posts had photos attached and one in particular caught my attention. There was Logan, in his bright red Lawrenceville uniform, number 21, soaring high into the air for a lay up and another of him with a towel around his neck and wearing a wide grin in a group shot with players and cheerleaders. I studied the photos and imagined that both will probably end in a prominent place in the high school gym.

I also realized as I studied the photos that Logan Paris, a young man I don’t know but do know, is now frozen in time. Those same teammates and cheerleaders will attend a prom later this spring and then in May they’ll graduate and embark on a college career or a job. Many will move away, some will stay in Lawrenceville and work and raise a family and their children will attend school there. And while these things are happening, Logan Paris, because of one tragic mistake, will always be 18 years old.

As I stated earlier I didn’t know Logan Paris but I do know this story all too well. I’ve written about it and I’ve received one of those middle-of-the-night phone calls that still makes me shudder and say ‘there but for the grace of God goes I.’

These stories always leave me with the same question: how do you convince know-it-all teenagers that in one careless, unthinking moment their life can end? I can’t answer that question; you can’t answer that question and neither can Logan Paris’ parents.

How many more godforsaken white crosses standing alongside a godforsaken country road do teenagers have to see to understand the definition of mortality? And despite what Nike wants to bombard kids with about ‘No Fear’ there has to be some fear in life, some understanding that with every action there will be a consequence. Otherwise we’ll continue to see more grief stricken teenagers pouring out their hearts on a website before filing past a friend’s casket.

A few years ago I wrote about two separate accidents during a one week span that claimed the life of two Southern Illinois teenagers. That column prompted John Hughes, a longtime friend and Southern Illinois police officer, to fire off an e-mail to me.

I saved Hughes comments and they are certainly worth sharing again. From the comments Hughes made, it was plain he was frustrated and just needed to vent a little about the deaths of the two teenage girls.

Hughes wrote:

“I do this (police work) every day and have for 17 years, and I still can’t get used to kids dying in car crashes. After I heard about these accidents I thought about how many times I’ve stopped kids and tried to explain to them about driving safely, only to find out later that they continued doing the same things. On many occasions, after I’ve stopped a teenager the parents will come in and “beef” at me or even complain to my chief for stopping their child. In most instances they say I stopped their kid for no reason and was only picking on them. We worry about sending kids off to war, but accept them being killed on our roads. I just don’t get it! Somehow we have got to educate parents because simple traffic tickets aren’t getting the job done. How many kids have to die behind the wheel of a car before we get the message? Hope you can do something with this. Sign me a tired old cop.”

I understand Hughes’ frustration. As a columnist, there are days when my fingers fly across the keyboard and the words flow freely and easily and I feel strong and confident and I know that what I wrote was good. There are other days — days when I can’t seem to escape from the image of a casket sitting in the middle of a high school basketball floor — when I feel tired and unnecessary and wonder if I’ve ever written anything that mattered.

Thanks for taking the time this morning to listen to a tired old cop and an equally tired old writer.