OUR BACKGROUND

My husband and I were fourteen years into our marriage. Our lives were full with four children, their school events, sports and other activities. Every year we took a family vacation to Estes Park Colorado, where my husband’s family had a home. We had made a goal of taking our children to as many states as we could before we would take them to Europe. My husband’s father was from Italy and we wanted to take the children there but were waiting until Allie (our youngest) was old enough to remember it well. We visited my grandparents in Maryland a few times and one of my all time favorite trips was during the summer of 1996 when I drove the children from Colorado to California making stops along the way. As a result our family loved road trips. The kids were named Christopher, Joey, Johnny (our oldest) and Allie (who is 9 years apart from Johnny).

THE SUMMER OF 1998

It was a typical summer night in Estes Park, Colorado as the sun set over the Rocky Mountain range. A cool pine scent infused the air surrounding my husband, Johnny, and me as we headed from the house to the little resort town. It was the end of July; he had arrived from Houston earlier that day to spend the middle week of a three-week vacation I was enjoying with our four children. This evening, we had left the children with our babysitter to celebrate our fourteenth anniversary at a favorite restaurant. After dinner, Johnny and I took a ride into the park, as we sat in the car viewing the stunning purple mountains against the evening sky, my husband put a CD in the player and told me the song he played, “You’re Still the One,” by Shania Twain was for our anniversary. The words could not have been more fitting.

My husband’s week with us went by quickly. We all enjoyed his joining in the activities and hated having to say goodbye. I drove him to the airport in Denver on a Sunday evening and stopped by the Target in Boulder on the way home. My sister, Becky, her husband Mark, and their two children Madison age 5 and Boone age 3, would be joining us for the last few days of our vacation. The boys were organizing a little camp for their younger cousins so I was getting prizes and supplies for their camp on my way back up the mountain. In the midst of all of this, our babysitter, who had come with us for the trip, decided she wanted to leave early. This meant I would have to drive back home myself with the children, and after discussing this with my husband we decided he would fly to Amarillo and meet us so I wouldn’t be the sole driver on the twenty hour trip to Houston.

THE ACCIDENT

It was a typical summer night in Estes Park, Colorado as the sun set over the Rocky Mountain range. A cool pine scent infused the air surrounding my husband, Johnny, and me as we headed from the house to the little resort town. It was the end of July; he had arrived from Houston earlier that day to spend the middle week of a three-week vacation I was enjoying with our four children. This evening, we had left the children with our babysitter to celebrate our fourteenth anniversary at a favorite restaurant.

In the midst of all of this, our babysitter, who had come with us for the trip, decided she wanted to leave early. This meant I would have to drive back home myself with the children, and after discussing this with my husband we decided he would fly to Amarillo and meet us so I wouldn’t be the sole driver on the twenty hour trip to Houston. At 5:30 the next morning, I woke the children early for the long drive back to Houston.

Despite the hour, we were all ready to go, because my oldest son, Johnny, had helped me finish packing the car. Johnny had just begun “the changes,” which had not gone unnoticed by his brothers. At the pool in town where the children swam, Christopher and Joey had teased Johnny about the long hair under his arms. He had no facial hair yet, and was still just five feet two inches tall, but still, he was long and lanky; his hands were more than an inch longer than mine, and his feet were growing fast, too. He would mature in fits and starts, I thought; he was destined to be a late bloomer, like my husband, who had grown four inches in college. But I could rely on him to play the role of the first-born who took a big brother’s responsibilities seriously.

Now I was buckling the children into the Suburban for the trip. The sun was just rising and the air was cool and crisp – a typical summer morning in this sacred country. While our Texas home still baked in the August heat, Colorado had already made its first turn into autumn; on this day, August 8, 1998, we could feel the premonitory chill of fall. Johnny would sit in the front seat for the first time ever on a long drive. He would take the place of our babysitter, handing the younger children drinks, changing the music, putting in a video to keep everyone happy. Christopher would sit behind Johnny and next to Allie in her car seat. Joey was in the third seat behind Chrissy. All of the children were on the passengers’ side.

Since getting back onto Interstate 25, I had been following another Suburban south toward the New Mexico border. Now we were driving through the prairielands outside of Pueblo, Colorado, where the mountains receded from plain view. The roads were narrow with a soft shoulder and the speed limit increased to 75 miles per hour. I wasn’t crazy about this stretch of the highway. My car swerved — to the right, first, and then I tried to make a corrective move, but my left tire went off the left side of the road into the middle grassy part of the freeway. I lost control on the soft shoulder. My left tire clipped the side and we were off the road; I could not get back on. We started to roll. We rolled four times – I didn’t know at the time but that is what we were told later. I held onto the steering wheel as my head slammed back and forth between the top of the ceiling, and my side window.