MARYSVILLE – Jordan Maddux wasn’t embarrassed to hug his dad in front of 2,300 classmates and say how much he loves him.
Elizabeth Armstrong / The Herald
It is an unconditional love mixed with a tinge of sadness.
Growing up, Jordan knew his dad, Les Maddux, couldn’t do everything a lot of dads could.
Seizures sapped his strength.
The cause of his dad’s disability made Jordan angry as a youngster and sad as a teenager. Today, it galvanizes his resolve to make a difference in the world.
Les Maddux has been struck twice by drunken drivers.
The first accident, on his way home from work in Portland, Ore., in 1988, caused brain damage and frequent seizures. The second, in Marysville in 2004, heightened his anxiety and aggravated his seizures.
With the Marysville-Pilchuck High School prom coming Saturday and graduation next month, senior Jordan Maddux wants his classmates to resist drinking and driving. He wants them to hear his family’s story and see his father’s face.
“I care about my dad so much,” he said at a hushed assembly Tuesday. “You guys, be the change so it doesn’t happen to him again or someone like him again.”
The assembly was part of a student-led “Don’t Drink and Drive” week. Prom season is in full swing across the region, and at Marysville-Pilchuck alone, more than two-thirds of the senior class had purchased prom tickets as of Tuesday afternoon.
In 2004, the last year statistics were available, there were 214 drunken-driving fatalities on Washington’s roads.
Jordan, president of the school’s DECA marketing chapter, has spent a year planning for this week after being asked by a school counselor to bring attention to the issue.
The DECA chapter has rallied around it.
Jared Schindler, a senior who made a video with messages from teachers, students and younger siblings, said the campaign has emphasized the value of life, that “you are worth it.”
Each day brings a new message. On Thursday, for instance, Everett District Court Judge Roger Fisher will hold DUI probation court on the high school campus to give young people a glimpse of the judicial system.
The school is also handing out hundreds of free telephone calling cards to students. The cards, from the North Region EMS Trauma Care Council, include written reminders about the cost of DUI court fees, treatment courses and insurance premium increases. When the cards are used, there is also a verbal reminder to not drink and drive.
On Tuesday, the students also heard from Lori Moran, a Marysville mother who will have two students at the high school this fall.
It was the story of her two other children that silenced the gym.
Moran recalled how Valentine’s Day in 1990 started as a routine day with the exception of candy gifts. There would be school, day care and work.
And then, the ominous signs on the way home: a medical helicopter overhead, the mail still in the mailbox and the absence of her husband’s car in the driveway.
Next came the dreadful call.
An accident left her husband in an Everett hospital. Her daughters, Kami, 7, and Nichole, 4, were taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
Surgeries couldn’t save them. Her daughters died the next day.
Moran would learn that the other driver was legally drunk when he crossed the centerline and struck her husband’s car. She had to arrange for their daughters’ funeral while her husband remained in the hospital.
She had to find a turtleneck for Nichole that would mask her cuts and hats for both of them that would cover their injuries and partially shaved heads from their surgeries.
She had to choose a casket that would hold them both under a tombstone that reads, “Together forever.”
Today Moran is an emergency room technician at Providence Everett Medical Center where she still sees the human toll of drunken driving. She said she hopes her talks such as the one at Tuesday’s assembly make a difference, and that students get the message.
“They are not invincible,” she said of her young audience afterward. “It could happen to you, and you don’t want to be on either side as the victim or the offender. Just think before you drink.”
Reporter Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446 or stevick@heraldnet.com.
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