COMMENTARY
Donn Esmonde: Mother turns catastrophe into a cause
Donn Esmonde
Updated: 05/09/08 8:25 AM
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Write the law with a mother’s tears. Turn tragedy into triumph. Spare more mothers the grief that engulfs Kelly Cline.
There is a smudged picture of her son, A. J. Larson, on the family’s refrigerator. He is 20, forever frozen in time. The photo captures a moment of joy; his wide smile bursts from the faded print. The smudge mark near A. J.’s cheek expanded in recent months, growing each time Kelly Cline stopped to kiss the image of her dead boy’s face.
It did not have to happen. That is usually the story when young people die. Their sense of invulnerability dooms them. Their belief in indestructibility is their downfall. Care and caution are not in their vocabularies. But this was different. This was something new.
A. J. Larson’s death behind the wheel of his car, two blocks from his house in West Seneca, was not fueled by alcohol or fashioned by speed. It was technology that stole the young man’s future. It was a new way of communicating — text messaging — that distracted him from the road that December day. His car glided through a stop sign on Clinton Street and into the path of a sanitation truck. Small wooden crosses, memorials from A. J.’s friends, still mark the spot.
A memorial ceremony is scheduled for tonight at 6:30, before the lacrosse game at A. J.’s old high school, West Seneca East. Many of his former teammates will be there.
Kelly Cline is a bright woman whose soft face frames intense eyes. For weeks after her son died, she thought a slippery road and a too-high speed limit caused the accident. Then police checked the cell phone found with A. J. in the car. They discovered that he sent and received text messages just before the fatal crash. “I literally doubled over when they told me,” Kelly Cline said. “It was like a punch in the gut.”
It is a grim irony. A friendly kid was killed, in a sense, by his sociability. But it is more than that. It is a case of technology outpacing the law. It is about the gap between adults who make rules and young people who communicate in new ways.
Spend time with a teenager. The cell phone is not used much for talking. It is used to type and send brief “text messages” to a network of friends. Any news, joke or event can be instantly shared. It is a wonder that their thumbs are not worn down to nubs, the speed and frequency with which the texts are typed.
That apparently is what A. J. was doing, sending or checking a text message, when his car rolled through the stop sign that fateful afternoon. We have laws against talking on a cell phone while driving. Yet there is, astoundingly, no law against text messaging behind the wheel — even though it is more distracting, and demands more of one’s attention, than speaking on a phone.
Cline is pushing for a state law against texting while driving. Such a law might save young people like A. J. This is how Kelly Cline injects sense into senselessness, turns a catastrophe into a cause. Barring unforeseen circumstances, “A. J.’s Law” will soon be a reality. “It helps me deal with my grief,” Cline said of the crusade. “He cannot have died in vain.”
It is not just her son. Police say text messaging contributed to the crash that killed five recent Fairport High graduates last June. Across the state, the toll mounts. Cline has no illusions. A law against texting while driving will not stop every young person from doing it. But it will stop some of them. It will give police a weapon in the fight. It will save young lives. It will spare more mothers the grief that Kelly Cline knows.
