bill lair - charleston times-courier -- may 13th (+/-) - 1996

Tragedy brings out the parent in all of us

Heavy rains this spring evolved from being a nuisance to become a killer on the sunniest, warmest day of the spring.

Four weeks of rain prevented farmers from getting into their fields, stopped homeowners from putting in their gardens and caused numerous headaches for motorists, construction workers and street maintenance crews. But Thursday was a greeting card-perfect spring day - sunny and a temperature in the 8Os.

A group of us in the newsroom were griping about being indoors on that beautiful Thursday afternoon when we heard that two people were stranded on the spillway at Lake Charleston.

The spillway? My gosh. Water from the Embarras River would be gushing over the spillway after all the rain this spring. The river has been out of its banks for days.

Then we heard that the Mattoon dive team was summoned. The two people were no longer on the spillway.

A co-worker and I had the same thought: Where are our sons on this beautiful afternoon?

My son was at work. She located her son at a friend's house.

The relief was only temporary. Because our sons were not the ones that had been swallowed by the river at the spillway, it meant that some other parents were going to go through the nightmare that the two of us at the newspaper had imagined just moments before.

Later, we learned that two Eastern Illinois University students were missing in the churning, turbulent water below the spillway. As we know now, Joe Bee and Tim Fix drowned. It was a tragic to what apparently started out as celebration of the end of final exams and the anticipated Saturday commencement ceremony.

It's not the first time that my stomach muscles have cramped after hearing in information on the scanner or from the [newsroom telephone or while on assignment.

The first time was in November 1979, shortly after I started working in news at he Times-Courier. I went to take pictures at a fire. A 2-year-old girl was trapped in a flaming house for almost 45 minutes before a couple of Charleston firefighters found her hiding in a closet. She lived but suffered brain damage and was blinded. My youngest son also was two at that time. How did that little girl's parents handle that tragedy? How would I have coped?

A few years later, the newsroom telephone rang. On the other end was a woman who said she had just had an accident. She struck my son on his bicycle with her car. I rushed over to where they ere. But it wasn't my son. It was a boy the same age with a last name similar to Lair. In her excitement after the accident, the woman had misunderstood the boy when he told her his name. Fortunately, the boy was only scratched. My stomach still ached. What if?

A teen-age girl killed in a drunken driving ving accident and the suicide of another; teen-ager prompted concerns for the parents involved, though I did not know any of them well.

Even the bizarre case of the young man arrested recently for carjacking here in Coles County leaves me empathizing with his parents, whom I have never met.

In so many instances, I find myself wondering how the parents are dealing with whatever misfortune has occurred.

Parents can't help but worry about their children's safety and well- being. The worrying begins sometime between conception and delivery.

Apparently, it never stops.

And when something bad involve any boy or girl or young man or woman, all parents have some idea of what those. other parents are going through.

Not because we have experienced a similar tragedy. But because we have thought about the possibility many times. And if my stomach cramped just from thinking that my son might have been on the spillway, how are the parents of Joe Bee and Tim Fix coping?

I'm sure that I am joined by many in thinking of them.

The gasoline tax. Trailmobile stalemate and the NBA playoffs no longer seem nearly so important.