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- Where Have You Gone, Gracie Mayes Don’t Go, Big Blue What Happened at Mile Marker 85 All Against, Vote Neigh
- WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, GRACIE MAYES
- DON’T GO, BIG BLUE
NIGHTMARE HIGHWAY CARROLLTON 1989
It is not a pleasant trip, Carrollton residents say. Many people in this close-knit river town are tired of reliving the past when they drive the road. Green signs on both sides of the interstate mark the site of the bus crash of May 14, 1988, which claimed the lives of 27 people, including 24 children. Those signs are widely scorned and resented in Carrollton, where most townspeople desperately want to put the wreck and its disruptive aftermath behind them. With the start of Larry Mahoney's murder trial in Carrollton on Nov. 8, the tragedy has perhaps entered its final chapter. But it will be a long one: Attorneys in the case expect the trial to last about six weeks. Mahoney, 36, of Owen County, is charged with 27 counts of murder in connection with the bus crash. He is charged with 82 crimes in all. Prosecutors say he was drunk and drove his pickup into the church bus, which exploded into flames. The former school bus, from Radcliff First Assembly of God church, was returning from a daylong outing at King's Island amusement park near Cincinnati. Jury selection in the trial began last week and continued yesterday, the third consecutive day that attorneys and Circuit Judge Charles Satterwhite have interviewed potential jurors individually. Many of the jurors interviewed this week have condemned the signs. The state Department of Highways erected the signs earlier this year in response to a demand by Radcliff residents for a commemorative marker. Lead defense attorney Bill Summers of Lexington said his firm had conducted an informal survey that found 85 percent of the residents of Carrollton "incensed" about the signs. One juror said she did not like having to see the signs because "it reminds you of it (the accident). The way I feel, who wants to be reminded of it?" Another woman said of the signs: "It disgusts me, to tell you the truth. I don't think it should be publicized. "It probably will cause more wrecks with people slowing down to look at it." Assistant Attorney General Paul Richwalsky, special prosecutor in the case, routinely has asked potential jurors how they feel about the signs. He would not say why. Summers said he thought the prosecution was trying to gauge whether Carroll Countians' resentment of the signs might have prompted resentment of Radcliff. One juror said of the sign: "I'm not pleased with it. I think it's a little unfair. It was happenstance that that's where that happened, and I've never seen anything like that anywhere else." Many potential jurors said they disliked the signs because they reflected badly on Carrollton. Some blame the signs and the news media for tying the wreck and Carrollton together forever in the nation's psyche. "I think we might be on the map now," one potential juror said. One woman said she thought reporters had erected the signs. "I think it makes Carrollton look bad," one man said. "Just because it happened in Carroll County, I don't believe the county and city should be condemned for it." Said another juror: "I can't see where the signs are helpful to the families or to our town." Only one of 70 jurors interviewed in the last three days has voiced strong support of the signs. "Maybe it'll show what'll happen if you drink and drive," one woman said.
CARROLLTON 1989
But even residents who are used to accommodating visitors for the November opening of the burley market were not prepared for what happened this week. The start of the Larry Mahoney murder trial has drawn a small army of reporters and brought Carrollton national attention. It also has disrupted life, and townspeople have had enough of that already. "Maybe when this is all over, we can get back to being a nice, little town," said Shelby Shelman, co-owner of Webster Drugs on the courthouse square. Wednesday night, after the first day of the trial, five merchants with stores on the square complained to the city council that the trial was hurting business. Customers cannot find parking spaces or are unwilling to risk being filmed by television camera crews, store owners say. "We have a community that's not used to TV cameras running around," Mayor Bill Welty said. The council appeased the agitated merchants by designating a newly paved lot between Main Street and the Ohio River for reporter parking, Welty said. More than 20 reporters from newspapers and television and radio stations have covered the first two days of the Mahoney trial. That number is expected to grow when testimony begins. Mahoney, 36, of neighboring Owen County, is charged with 27 counts of murder. Prosecutors say he was driving drunk and ran his pickup head-on into a church bus. In all, Mahoney is charged with 82 crimes. The bus, a former school bus, was filled with members of the First Assembly of God Church in Radcliff. The group of mostly children and teen-agers was returning from a day at an Ohio amusement park. Since the crash, many Carrollton residents have developed an animosity toward the news media, Welty said. Earlier this week, all four tires were slashed on a Louisville television news truck, special prosecutor Paul Richwalsky said. Many townspeople think they have been treated or portrayed unfairly by the news media, Shelman said. "It's not that we don't feel bad for their loss," storeowner Hazel Ray said of the victims' families. "But we've gotten enough bad publicity." Carrollton has become known far and wide as "that awful place where that terrible bus wreck happened," said Wanda Shelton, a friend of Ray. Many townspeople refuse to talk to any members of the news media. That includes the men in the morning coffee club at Webster Drug, who do not hesitate to grouse to one another about the trial. The trial is expected to last about six weeks. Jury selection continued yesterday, with Carroll County Circuit Judge Charles Satterwhite questioning a group of 59 prospective jurors. Attorneys for both sides have said jury selection might be difficult because the case has received so much attention and generated so much emotion. It also does not help that Carrollton is so small. One prospective juror yesterday said he was a close friend of Mahoney, and 10 said they either had worked with Mahoney at a Carrollton chemical plant or were related to someone who had. At the end of the day, however, only six prospective jurors had been excused. Two said they had relatives who were killed in accidents involving drunken drivers. One was dismissed for medical reasons, one because of conflict with a college class schedule, one because of involvement in a criminal trial 18 years ago and one because he was a friend of Mahoney and had discussed the case with him. 1990
Contents
WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, GRACIE MAYES? HARRODSBURG 1990
But mystery has shrouded the bridge and river since Mayes, 50, disappeared March 20, leaving her brown Buick Century -- keys in the ignition -- along the road nearby. Police think she might be lying at the bottom of the river, but a continuing search has turned up nothing. Harrodsburg residents, shocked and baffled by the disappearance of the well-known civic leader, can only guess where she is -- and why she might have committed suicide. "That's the question everybody's asking," Nick Huff, 69, of Harrodsburg, said as he stood on the bridge yesterday morning looking downstream at the muddy water.
"I just don't think she'd be the type to pull a stunt where she'd park a car and give every indication she was in the river, then run off," said Russell, a longtime friend of Mayes. Russell, who was Mayes' employer at Fort Harrod Pharmacy until he sold the business five years ago, said Mayes apparently had had a conflict with the new owner. "She wasn't really happy, I don't think, since they changed ownership," said Lee McKinley, who worked with Mayes on the Mercer County Business and Professional Women's Association. Mayes, who had worked at the pharmacy for 25 years, resigned her bookkeeping job two weeks ago, owner Vance Smith said. She called Russell later that day and told him Smith had advised her to take a week or two off while the store's books were audited, Russell said. Mayes told Russell that the pharmacy had come up short but that every employee had had access to the cash register, Russell said. Russell said Mayes told him she offered to resign rather than taking the time off, and Smith accepted. Smith would not comment yesterday on why Mayes quit, but he said he expected her letter of resignation to enter into the investigation. The topic of conversation among members of the pharmacy's coffee club yesterday morning was the NCAA Tournament, the state tournament and Mayes, Smith said. "Most of the talk is they don't think she's in there," he said. "Did she skip town? Did she leave the country? I don't know." Ila Chilton, one of several townspeople who visited the bridge yesterday and peered down at the brown water, does not think Mayes is in the river. "She always seemed to enjoy life. She was right in there in everything," said Chilton, a member of a church group bringing food to search crews. Mayes, president of the Mercer County Chamber of Commerce, had served for five years as chairman of the local radio auction to raise scholarship money for high school graduates, McKinley said. "She was involved in a great many things," McKinley said. "She moved pretty fast." Mayes had spent the morning and early afternoon March 20 delivering information packets about the auction to potential donors, said McKinley, manager of Harrod Fashions. Mayes returned some material to McKinley about 1:15, McKinley said. Mayes told McKinley that she needed to talk to her more about the project but was double-parked outside the store and had to move her car first, McKinley said. McKinley never saw her friend again. Does she think Mayes is in the river? "I don't know," she said slowly. "I've changed my mind a couple of times. I didn't think so at first . . . ." Mayes' unlocked car was found Tuesday night with the keys in the ignition, parked off the shoulder of U.S. 68 just south of the bridge. Her sunglasses and driver's license were inside, but her purse was not, Deputy Sheriff Ralph Anderson said. There was no sign of foul play or car problems, he said. "It took everybody by surprise," said Huff, who drove down to the river with a friend yesterday to watch police search the muddy waters for Mayes' body. "You can never tell what's on somebody's mind. I hope she's not out there,” he said, looking down the river, "but I'm afraid she is." On the blue-steel handrails of a maintenance ladder on the east side of the bridge, black smudges remained from when police tried to lift fingerprints to see if they might match those in Mayes' house. On Sunday, 30 people used eight boats to search the river and its muddy banks, Anderson said. Specially trained dogs seemed to pick up Mayes' scent several times, but her body was never found in the 20-foot-deep river. Scuba divers were called in but did not go beneath the murky water because rescuers did not have even a general idea where her body might be, Anderson said. The search might be called off if nothing is found this week, he said. "We'll go until we feel it's fruitless." "If we could just get a glimmer -- a piece of clothing, a shoe, anything -- we'd continue."
LEXINGTON 1990
White bread, yes. Bagels, no. But that was Before IBM, whose arrival in 1956 transformed Lexington from a sleepy, Southern college town into a thriving, diverse city where people like William D. Reed could find food they liked. Reed was among the group of employees from New York state that IBM sent to Lexington to start up the new plant. At first, he had to drive to Cincinnati to buy the things he had grown used to having while living in New York. He would return with bags full of bagels, salami and other things he could not find in Lexington. All that soon changed, just as many other things about Lexington changed during the rapid growth that began with the IBM era.
"Lexington was a very delightful but typical Southern town. I think it's become far more cosmopolitan as a result of IBM's coming in." What would become of Lexington if IBM shipped out is not something city officials like to think about. Mayor Scotty Baesler and Ed Houlihan, president of the Greater Lexington Chamber of Commerce, all but refused to acknowledge last week's unnerving Wall Street reports that IBM might sell its plant here. "I don't have any reaction, because I've been hearing rumors for six months," Baesler said. Still, community leaders might have to face the music. Or lack of it. With more than 5,300 workers, IBM is Lexington's largest private employer. It is -- and always has been -- a generous supporter of local charities, the arts and the University of Kentucky.
"It really was the beginning of Lexington's industrial revolution," said Carl B. Cone, a former chairman of UK's history department. IBM's departure also would be a turning point. Replacing a large employer is one thing. Replacing a civic pillar is entirely another matter. "I don't think any community could fathom replacing a corporate citizen the magnitude of IBM," said Gary Kleine, a Lexington businessman who worked for IBM in Texas. Former Kentucky Gov. A.B. "Happy" Chandler, who celebrated his 92nd birthday this month, said: "Bringing IBM to Lexington was one of the fortunate and outstanding things that's happened to us in my lifetime. "It brought hundreds of outstanding people here and did much for the welfare of our people. "It would be a great tragedy to lose it." Chandler was instrumental in persuading IBM to put a plant in Kentucky in 1956, said retired Transylvania University professor John D. Wright, a Lexington historian. The world was much different then: Dwight D. Eisenhower lived in the White House; Mickey Mantle led the Yankees to a world championship; families gathered around black-and-white televisions to watch "Father Knows Best"; and Peyton Place was a best-selling book. But the world was not something that much concerned little Lexington. "It wasn't stagnant at all, but it was a self-satisfied little town," Cone said. The city was much smaller than it is today; there were no suburbs or shopping malls, and downtown still hummed with life -- especially on Saturdays, when residents converged on Main Street to shop. A railroad track ran down the middle of Main Street, and the end of civilization was Albany Road and Southland Drive. Chevy Chase was a "separate little village," Reed said. Lexington had not yet merged with Fayette County, and the city limits were bursting at the seams. "It was terribly crowded," Cone said, "and it was hard to find a place to live." Reed and his family could hardly find an apartment when they moved to Lexington. Major subdivisions like Gainesway, where he lives now, did not exist; rolling farmland still prevailed, and Tates Creek Road -- now a five-lane road to the county line -- was just two lanes wide. In Fayette County, population 116,700, the economy was based on tobacco, the horse industry and UK. And it was stagnant. In a March 1955 speech to the Lexington Optimist Club, a Kentucky Utilities official reported that non-agricultural employment in Fayette County had dropped from 34,280 in 1952 to 30,726 in 1954. To boost the sagging economy, the Chamber of Commerce created the Lexington Industrial Foundation. The town planned to recruit some good, clean industry. It succeeded, luring big names like Square D and WABCO and Trane. But first and foremost came IBM -- "a model of the type of industry people in Central Kentucky wanted to have," said Theodore Broida, president of QRC Research Corp. of Lexington. "Prior to that time, Lexington had no real growth, no industry at all," said W.L. Rouse Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of First Security Corp. of Kentucky. "They kind of broke the ice." Workers at the plant at Newtown and New Circle roads churned out the first typewriter in the winter of 1956-57. Only a year before, the 271-acre plant site had been a working farm, said chamber president Houlihan. Change came fast and furious. "It's still almost inconceivable that it would grow this fast and this large," Reed said. "The whole character of the city undoubtedly changed," Wright said. "You brought in a good many people from outside Kentucky. "You had so many new employees and so much money, it just really started the ball rolling." Up popped Southland and Eastland shopping centers on what then were the outskirts of town. Subdivisions -- including the sprawling Gainesway development -- began springing up along Nicholasville, Tates Creek and Clays Mill roads. "It was the explosion of suburban Lexington," Wright said. Chamber of Commerce statistics tell the story: There were 34,661 cars in Fayette County in 1956. There were 37,596 in 1957. Fayette County's population in 1956 was 116,700; it ballooned to 131,906 in 1960, 153,900 in 1965. Per capita income rose from $1,711 in 1956 to $2,167 in 1960, an increaseof 27 percent, while inflation cut the value of the dollar by only 6 percent. The number of new housing units was 1,207 in 1950; 1,793 in 1960; and 3,104 in 1970. In 1975, the number dropped to 1,438. "It was the beginning of modern Lexington," Cone said.
Lexington Catholic High School was built in 1957 in southern Fayette County, and Bryan Station High School was built north of downtown in 1958. Tates Creek High School was built in 1965, and Henry Clay in 1971. In 1950, the median grade-level attained by Fayette Countians 25 and older was 10.4, U.S. Census Bureau statistics show. By 1960, that had jumped to 11.2. It was 12.3 in 1970 and 12.8 in 1980. It was the first time Lexington had had much of a middle class to support the school system or any other community venture, Reed and Cone said. Before IBM brought a new breed of young professionals to town, UK faculty and administrators had been the city's middle class. But UK almost was a community in itself. Outside campus, a large gap had separated the horse farm owners and the tobacco strippers. Thanks to IBM, Lexington became more diverse. "They certainly raised the wage scale, which had been abysmally low for many years," Wright said. "That put pressure on other businesses in Lexington to follow suit, and that fed into the capability of a large number of people to buy homes. "It had a snowball effect." The rapid growth forced city officials to come up with a more efficient form of government; Lexington was spilling over into Fayette County, and merger talk began. The merger in 1974 was a response to many of the problems, such as inadequate roads, that resulted directly from growth spawned by IBM, Cone said. The love affair between Lexington and the corporate giant has not been without its rough spots, although they have been rare. One of those, a run-in with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, came several years after IBM started production in Lexington. The group challenged IBM officials over their minority hiring policies, Urban County Council member Robert Jefferson said. IBM opened new job opportunities for blacks by the sheer magnitude of its operation, Jefferson said. Policy had little to do with it, although the plant came up with a plan for minority hiring soon after the NAACP's challenge.
"You can walk in stores here in town, and you show your IBM I.D. and you can cash a check," said Kenneth Current of Lexington, a former IBM executive who supervised the shutdown of an Indiana distribution center in 1986-87. "You're accepted as a trustworthy person. I think that's part of the reputation. It's something I think is attached to the name 'IBM.'" The thing that's attached is Lexington. Is anyone ready to believe the tie between Lexington and IBM might be severed now? After all these years? "I wasn't ready to believe it," Reed said. "I just couldn't imagine it would happen. It could be kind of devastating."
LEXINGTON 1990
They see no pictures of any of the children she bore and cared for during her life as Judy Hall; she would rather not explain over and over again what happened to them one bright June afternoon 15 years ago. Everything changed that day, most of it in a few fleeting seconds beside a sun-bleached Kentucky highway. Part of Judy Thompson Hall Thorpe is buried there beside Interstate 64 just east of Lexington, amid the soft summer colors of crown vetch and clover near mile marker 85. ''I feel like I'm living a second life,'' Judy says. ''My life was cut off that day. It was like I died.'' Reminders of her lost life abound in her current one, but they speak only to her, to her closest friends, to her adopted daughters and to her husband, Doug. See the little red sailboat on the mantelpiece? The Winnie-the-Pooh on the bookcase? The baby mug on the table? That's not all. Outside sits a Volvo -- she still drives one after all that happened -- and, like that other one on that other summer day, it’s just turned over 114,000 miles. The road is long, the road is cruel. The summer of 1975 began as summers should. The Halls, who lived on Eagle Lake in Winter Haven, Fla., a small town in the heart of citrus country, had a long vacation ahead. They knew exactly how they would spend it: driving. The Halls always drove a lot on summer vacation; it was less expensive than flying, and it allowed them to stop along the way whenever they wanted to see the sights. That was especially important this year, because the nation's bicentennial was coming up. Warren Hall, headmaster and English teacher at Winter Haven's private Ridge School, and Judy, his wife and secretary, wanted to mix fun and education for their five children. On June 6, the family packed up its blue Volvo station wagon, lashing luggage to the top of the car to make room inside for five children, and headed north. They would visit Judy's brother and his wife in Alexandria, Va., before continuing to North Vernon, Ind. North Vernon was home for Warren and Judy. They had been born and married there, and they had family and friends there awaiting their visit. For a while, the vacation was one of the best the family ever had. The sun was bright and warm, and the children didn't argue much in the car. ''It was,'' Judy says, ''just like the perfect trip.'' In her heavy heart, Michelle Hall Bjork, 27, still travels I-64 with her family every June 17. The rest of the year she can better live with the memory of that ill-fated vacation 15 years ago, although she does not often forget about it. ''I'd give anything to have the life I might have had if not for the accident,'' she says. Besides the deaths of her siblings, she blames what happened for her parents' divorce in 1984, which ended a 25-year marriage; and for her strained, almost non-existent relationship with her father, with whom she hasn't communicated for five years except in an occasional letter. She also mourns her lost youth -- ''I lost my childhood when that happened,'' she says. It deepens the torment that all she has left is the worst day of that childhood, which she relives for a few hours each June 17 -- a 12-year-old riding once again in her family's station wagon toward Lexington. ''Every single year,'' she says, ''that day is just horrible.'' This year it fell on Father's Day. She lay in bed half awake for a few moments that morning before she remembered the date. ''I got out of bed and just had the heaviest feeling inside of me.'' As usual, it lasted until 5:30 p.m., then dissolved into a sense of relief. The tragedy was over. Again. After some debate, Warren and Judy Hall decided to head for North Vernon from Alexandria, Va., via a new route. Instead of going the shorter way, through Pennsylvania and Ohio, they would swing west through West Virginia and Kentucky on I-64. They stopped for gasoline in Kentucky. Warren Hall was getting sleepy, so Judy offered to drive the rest of the way to Lexington, where they planned to stop for dinner. When they hit the road again, Michelle, 12, Allison, 3, and Kevin, 5, were in the back seat. Scott, 14, and Andrew, 8, were in the back of the station wagon. Those who weren't dozing were listening to Michelle read aloud from a book about Lexington. Fifteen minutes later, Judy looked in the rearview mirror and caught Andrew's gaze. He smiled and waved at her. He smiled a lot, a smile Michelle will always remember rimmed in an orange stain of Tang. Five minutes later, she steered the car onto the shoulder of I-64 and turned on the hazard blinkers so she and Warren could switch places. The odometer on the Volvo read slightly more than 114,000 miles. Just as she started scooting from the driver's seat to the passenger's seat -- as Warren was walking around the back of the car to get in the driver's side -- Judy glanced in the rearview mirror one more time. She saw a white car speeding toward theirs in the emergency lane. And she saw Scott with his hands over his face in horror as he stared out the rear window. Paul Lucarelle of Dayton, Ohio, had noticed the new, white Ford Granada about 16 miles up the road near Winchester, Ky. Lucarelle was driving his new Pontiac Firebird in the same direction as the white car, but the Ford was moving much slower. When Lucarelle pulled alongside the Ford, he noticed its wheels were over the center line. Lucarelle dropped back to avoid the car. He kept track of it for the next 16 miles, watching its erratic path down the highway. It slowed down. It speeded up. It straddled the center line. It swerved into the path of other cars. ''That guy must be sick or sleepy or something,'' Lucarelle told his wife. He saw the driver's head fall as if he were going to sleep. Soon Lucarelle noticed the flashing lights of a little station wagon in the emergency lane. The Ford moved all the way across the road, from the left lane into the emergency lane. It was headed full-speed toward the back of the Volvo. ''Look,'' Lucarelle told his wife. ''Don't you want to see a wreck?'' When Judy Hall came to, she heard her husband screaming. She turned around to find the back of the car crumpled like an accordion against the front seat. Kevin was stumbling around outside the car, having been thrown free on impact. Judy screamed Michelle's name, then picked up Andrew's lifeless body and lay it in the grass beside the road. ''Those few moments are the worst in my whole life,'' she says, her voice trembling. Motorists helped extract Scott's and Allison's bodies from the car. Judy clung to Kevin, carrying him around in her arms, refusing to put him down. And then she noticed the driver of the Ford starting to walk toward them from his car several hundred yards down the road, blood on his face that he had not bothered to wipe away. It was the only time she ever saw John David Frederick Sr., and she didn't want him any closer. ''Don't let him come near us,'' she told a police officer. ''Don't let him come near us.'' She did not yet know that Frederick had been driving drunk.
''He was drunk that morning,'' said Rick Conway, a former colleague of Frederick's at Paul Miller who now pays Frederick to keep track of his books. While the Halls were eating lunch in Charleston, W.Va., Frederick was dining with an employee of the Winchester dealership at a restaurant on the Kentucky River in Clark County. They drank the afternoon away. The last thing Frederick remembers was waving goodbye to his lunch companion after dropping her off at work. Then he climbed into his Granada for the drive back to Lexington with more than twice the amount of alcohol in his blood than Kentucky law allowed. It was neither the first nor the last time Frederick drove drunk. He has at least six drunken-driving convictions in Kentucky, including the one stemming from the Hall tragedy. In the last three years, his drivers license has been suspended twice. He was cited in 1987 for driving with a suspended license. Frederick has not had a license since September. Frederick either cannot or will not remember the wreck, friends say. He never talks about it, Conway says. ''I don't have anything to talk about,'' Frederick said last week in response to a request for an interview about the wreck. ''I'd like to forget it,'' he said, hanging up. A psychiatrist who talked to Frederick in the Fayette County jail after the wreck said Frederick had amnesia that prevented him from recalling much about the wreck or events surrounding it. He had dried blood all over his face and white shirt. ''They tell me I've been in an accident,'' Frederick told the psychiatrist, Dr. John Schremly. ''It sounds very serious,'' Schremly said. ''Do you know any of the details?'' ''Only what I've heard here,'' Frederick said.
Larson has won murder convictions in two vehicular homicide cases. Had Frederick's case come up today, he probably would have been charged with murder, Larson says. In 1975, Frederick was charged with three counts of second-degree manslaughter. He pleaded guilty to amended charges of reckless homicide and received five years on each. He was out of prison in 30 days on shock probation and regained his job at Paul Miller. ''Today, you would look at that (amount of time served) and be shocked: 'Why did he do so little time?' '' says Pat Molloy, who was Commonwealth's Attorney then. ''Back then, though, people said, 'He's serving time?' '' Says Michelle: ''His punishment was really, really unfair. ''If he could just see what he's done to us. . . .'' Frederick, 63, a native of Lexington, is semi-retired and lives in Louisville. He still works some as an accountant. Lucy Bonta, a former neighbor in Lexington, described Frederick as a nice, very quiet man. His life has not been easy. He lost his job at Paul Miller in 1981, and in 1985 he and his second wife defaulted on their home mortgage and saw their house auctioned. Life has been anything but easy for the Halls, too. Michelle spent more than a month in the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center after the crash, 10 days of which she was in a coma. She was almost ready to be released when her parents told her the bad news. Two days earlier, Michelle had kissed each of her brothers' and sister's faces in a family picture she clutched as she sat in her hospital room. ''I'll see you in five days,'' she said to each face. Now Warren was kneeling in front of her, taking her hands and telling her that Scott, Andrew and Allison had died. Warren has had an especially hard time coping with the tragedy, Michelle says. He set out alone in September 1975 to retrace the trip, searching all the while for a way to deal with the tragedy. He left Judy in December 1984, and both have since remarried. He lives in a suburb of Cleveland and does not talk about the wreck. Neither does Kevin, a student at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. Judy lives in Annapolis with the two daughters she and Warren adopted after the crash: Molly, 14, and Emily, 9. Molly has announced that if she ever has a daughter of her own, she will name her Allison.
One tree shades three small, identical gravestones. The tree was young when the graves were new 15 years ago. The stones stand in a row on a common base. ''I think 100 years from now when people walk into that graveyard and read the dates on the stones like people do, they'll wonder what in the name of God could have taken those children at that age,'' Judy's sister-in-law, Jean Thompson, says. Those who know the truth have learned to deal with it. But that does not mean they ever will be able to put it behind them. ''You never, ever get over the pain,'' Judy says. She visits the graves at least once a year. The first time, at Christmastime in 1975, was hard. Snow fell from a cold, dreary Indiana sky. Since then, however, she has found peace there. ''I know they're safe,'' she says. But sometimes it is hard not to think about what might have been. Scott would have been 30 now, Andrew 23, Allison 18. Sometimes one of Michelle's friends says or does things that cause her to imagine what Scott would have been like as an adult. ''He probably would have gone into law or banking,'' she says. ''We always played Monopoly, and he hoarded all the cash.'' Outside Dorothy Hall's house in North Vernon, the bright June sun casts deep shadows under the towering Norway spruces and other trees that provided a haven for the birds her son, Warren, used to watch in better days. ''Warren always says he wonders what they'd be like now,'' she says. A wall clock tick-tick-ticks. ''I wonder what all our lives would be like.'' Yüklə 1,63 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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