Johnny Mac and Jeanne Brown “celebrated” their wedding anniversary Friday by talking about their daughter, Alex.
A beautiful, bright and precocious youngster, Alex was a popular student in her Texas high school. She was involved in a number of scholastic and extracurricular activities and had her sights set on attending college to study broadcast journalism.
She never got the chance.
Alex died one early November morning in 2009 after crashing her pickup while on her way to school. She had been texting on her cell phone while driving.
The Browns and daughter Katrina shared their story Friday with Iola High School and Iola Middle School eighth-grade students in the Bowlus Fine Arts Center auditorium.
All three carried powerful — and painful — messages that had the audience spellbound.
The assembly was capped with the students signing a voluntary pledge to never send or read text messages while driving before heading outside to see the wreckage of Alex Brown’s vehicle. Her parents keep the pickup on a trailer as a visual reminder of the dangers of distracted driving.
JEANNE BROWN was a teacher at her daughter’s high school and recounted the morning of the accident.
Alex had been expected at school but hadn’t arrived. Calls to her phone went unanswered, so her mother set out to find her daughter.
There were two possible routes, Jeanne Brown recalled, a primary four-lane highway — the route they encouraged their daughter to drive — and a more desolate, rural county road.
On a hunch, Jeanne Brown decided on the rural route.
She was the first to find the wreckage.
According to official reports, Alex was driving 73 in a 60 mph zone when her pickup left the roadway, her mother said.
Alex, who was not wearing a seat belt, was ejected from the vehicle, which had flipped and rolled on top of her before coming to rest on its wheels.
A check of her daughter’s nearby cell phone revealed she had been texting four of her friends while driving to school.
Alex was airlifted to the closest trauma unit, in Lubbock, Texas, where doctors worked feverishly to save her life.
“They couldn’t stop the bleeding,” Jeanne said. “They could get her stabilized, but only on life support.”
The doctors had a question.
“They asked us what we wanted to do,” Jeanne recalled. “What did we want to do? I wanted my daughter back.”
But she also knew her daughter had no chance of survival without the advanced life support.
Within hours of seeing her daughter full of life and energy that morning, Jeanne and Johnny Mac Brown had to give their final farewell in a quiet and somber hospital room.
But before they left the building, they vowed to impress upon others the dangers of texting and driving. Since then, they’ve started the Remember Alex Brown Foundation, a group dedicated to safe driving by eliminating distractions, such as cell phones.
JEANNE BROWN noted that drivers can experience three types of distractions while driving: visual, which requires them to take their eyes off the road; manual, which requires them to take their hands off the steering wheel; and cognitive, which requires them to take their mind off their driving.
Sending and receiving texts incorporates all three distractions, simultaneously.
And the texting and driving habits are not exclusive to children, she continued. Parents and adults are just as likely to reach for their cell phone while at the wheel. Jeanne confessed that both she and her husband had done so prior to their daughter’s accident.
She also recounted other wrecks across the country involving adults texting and driving, including a highway patrolman responding to an accident, in which he was chatting on a computer, texting on his phone and driving at speeds of over 100 mph when he crashed, killing two sisters.
Statistics also have shown that distracted driving accounts for as many accidents across the U.S. as does drinking.
“One of those is illegal, yet the other is just as dangerous,” she said.
JOHNNY MAC Brown was a bit more blunt in his portion of the program, referring to cell phones as “crackberries” and the practice of texting and driving as “an epidemic.”
“We’re under the influence of our social lives,” he said.
A cell phone by itself is innocuous enough, he noted.
“If I threw it at you, and you didn’t see it, it might give you a bump on the head,” he said.
But put in the hands of a motorist, a cell phone could be considered a lethal weapon.
“What’s sad is that I know some of you won’t listen,” he said. “You think it’s not going to happen to you.”
If texting and driving, drivers are 23 more times to be involved in an accident; 23 more times as likely to suffer mortal wounds.
“You’re 23 more times likely to have your parents have to go into a hospital room and tell you goodbye,” he said.
He implored the audience to ignore any incoming text messages while at the wheel.
“Just drive,” he said. “Those messages for you are still going to be there. Your life is worth more than a text message.”
KATRINA BROWN, six years younger than Alex, noted that while her sister was the only one involved with the accident, it left an entire family and high school community devastated.
“If you die, other people will suffer,” she said. “I am suffering. My parents are suffering.”
Katrina referred to her older sister as her role model, and noted that everyone in the audience was likely a role model to somebody.
She recalled being unable to sleep at home for days after the accident, “because my sister was supposed to be in the room next to me.
“I’m glad my parents figured out it’s dangerous to text and drive,” Katrina said, referring to her parents’ old habits of doing the same thing as what killed her sister. “I don’t like how they figured it out, though.”
JEANNE BROWN closed the assembly by asking the young audience to have a frank conversation with their parents.
“Ask them if you have health insurance,” she said, noting her daughters’ all-too-brief stay in the hospital before dying would have cost the family $150,000 had they no insurance.
“Then ask them if you’re covered by life insurance,” Jeanne continued, because health insurance coverage does not account for funerals.
She also suggested those who insist on still texting and driving think ahead about planning their own funeral.
“Think of what kind of casket you would want,” she said, and other components, such as musical selections, pall bearers and burial sites.
Those were decisions, Jeanne said, that she and her husband had to make in the aftermath of their daughter’s death, “and I couldn’t handle those decisions.”
From a mother’s perspective, “there’s no way you can understand how important and valuable you are,” she told the crowd.
The Browns also directed the audience to visit two websites www.drivesafe.ly, a cell phone application that automatically translates incoming texts into speech in real time, eliminating the need to grab the phone when the text arrives. The application also can be programmed to automatically respond to the sender that the recipient is currently driving and will reply later.
Another website, key2safedriving.com, provides access to an electrical device that blocks incoming and outgoing texts while the vehicle is in operation, unless the driver has a hands-free Bluetooth device.
Information about the Brown family and their mission is available at www.rememberalexbrownfoundation.org.
