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Article published Jan 4, 2004
Web
site puts face on highway's toll
Associated
Press
COLUMBIA -- Families now have a place to tell the stories of
hopes and dreams of people who lose their lives on South Carolina highways.A
South Carolina Highway Patrol Web site set up last month for fatality memorials
lets people read tributes to auto crash victims and see their pictures.Highway
Patrol commander Col. Russell Roark says the Web site, www.schp.org/inmemoryof,
puts a face to the statistics and allows relatives of crash victims to connect
with each other."It's very therapeutic," Roark said.The idea came as an offshoot
of the department's practice of sending notes of condolence to the families of
victims. A card asking for families' tributes for the Web site is now included
in the note.It makes people like 18-year-old criminal justice major Bobby Welch
Jr. and 19-year-old Jennifer Teuton, who wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon,
more than the stark statistic of two of 1,059 people to die on state highways in
2001.Welch's mother described what the loss of her son did to her family. "We
cry every day because we miss our baby so much," she wrote on the Web
site.Relatives of crash victims can add their tributes by logging on to the
site. When providing information, they are asked to consider introspective
details, like what they miss most about the person or what people should know
about them.Lisa Radvansky's contribution tells visitors more about Chad, her
17-year-old son who died Sept. 6 when his sport utility vehicle flipped near
Marion."I think it's great," Radvansky said about the site. "It lets people know
that they are not statistics. It's my son. It's my children's brother."