;)
Today I found this little angel reaching out with a flower from the tumble of stones that remain of what very recently was a memorial to a mother and a baby who died in a car crash at this place.
I did not touch the angel, I did not move it. This is exactly how I found it.
;)
This is what the memorial looked like on May 6, 2005. Until I pedaled my bike up to it today, I had never before stopped here. I had taken a few pictures as I zipped by in the car and from my bike as well, but I never stopped.
Other than that two lives were lost, I have no knowledge of what happened here. I do not recall reading about it in the paper, seeing the story on TV or hearing it on the radio. Perhaps someone who reads this will know and will fill me in. (Three lives, it turns out. Update at bottom.)
All I know is that one day, well before I took this picture, the white cross appeared. I wondered why. A lady who is now dead and who I would often see in her yard and who seemed to know about everything that ever happened anywhere near this neighborhood told me that a young mother and her baby had been killed when she crashed her car here. She thought it was a single-car crash, that she had just gone off the end of Church Road, across Shrock and into the embankment.
This might be correct, it might not be. I did some googling today, but I could not find the answer.
Later, the brown cross, decorated with the engraved bear, appeared.
Throughout the years, the memorial always seemed to be well-cared for.
It was the work of an ever-loving and forever-pained heart.
Only a very different kind of heart could vandalize it.
I chose this photo because it was the only one that my search engine found when I typed in the word, "cross."
;)
One day very recently, as I passed by, I noticed that the white cross had been split and knocked down. It looked to me to be the work of vandals. I do not know for certain. It is possible that another car lost control here and drove over the cross and damaged it.
Perhaps someone driving a four-wheeler off the side of the road too fast after dark did not see it and ran over it.
I do not know.
But it looked like the work of vandals.
I had intended to take a photograph of the damaged cross, but I never did.
And now both crosses are gone.
If you look closely at the upper-left hand corner of the rock pile, you can see the little angel, lying at the junction of three rocks and a leaf.
And if you look to the right, you can barely make out some wilted flowers, and some plastic flowers.
;)
These are the plastic flowers.
;)
Not far from the destroyed memorial, I rode my bike through a blanket of downed leaves as fast as I could without losing control while reaching as far forward with my pocket camera as my arm would extend so that I could photograph the action.
It was hard, but I did it. How about that, Charlie? (Explanation in Wednesday's comments).
;)
Later in the afternoon, as I was returning home from my coffee break, I saw this lady checking the mail. As you can see, the leaves are just about all down now.
Last year, by this day, the snow had set in for the season.
I am still in cocoon mode, but I have gone maybe 15 minutes over my time limit.
I wanted to keep my title short, anyway.
*Update, 8:42 AM: I originally posted this under the title:
A memorial to a deceased mother and baby is destroyed
Mark Dent, editor of the Alaska Newsreader at the Anchorage Daily News, read the post and sent me this ADN clipping from October 9, 1999 - ten years ago today - with an account of the fatal accident:
By S.J. Komarnitsky
Daily News Mat-Su Bureau
Day: Saturday
Page: E1
Print Run Date: 10/9/1999
Dateline: Palmer --
Text: A Wasilla man with a history of alcohol abuse and driving
illegally was charged with two counts of murder Friday in connection
with an August accident in which a teenager and pregnant woman were
killed.
John F. Magee, 37, was arraigned in Superior Court in Palmer on two
counts of second-degree murder, one count of first-degree assault and
driving while intoxicated. He may also face additional charges in
connection with the death of the fetus, prosecutors said. The woman was
eight months pregnant.
According to court documents, Magee was drunk and apparently driving
with broken windshield wipers in the rain in the early morning hours of
Aug. 15 when he ran a stop sign and crashed into a Subaru driven by
Laura Boles, 20, of Wasilla, at the intersection of Shrock and Church
roads. Boles was headed west on Shrock when she was hit by Magee, who
was headed north on Church, troopers said.
TX: The impact shoved both cars more than 60 feet off the road.
Killed were Boles, the fetus she was carrying, and a passenger, Mary A.
Williquette, 16, of Wasilla. A third passenger in Boles' car - Jacob
Buswell, 18, also of Wasilla - suffered severe injuries. Magee was also
injured.
According to court documents, Magee told troopers he had been drinking
at the Wasilla Bar, and the last thing he remembered was seeing a
stoplight near the Safeway grocery store in Wasilla, several miles from
the accident scene.
He registered a blood-alcohol level of 0.138 three hours after the
crash, according to court documents.
Ira See, an acquaintance who told troopers he was at the bar with Magee,
said the car Magee was driving did not have working windshield wipers
because the wiring had burned out, according to the court papers.
And while troopers said Magee had a valid driver's license when the
collision occurred, that has rarely been the case in recent years.
Over the past decade, Magee has been convicted at least six times for
driving without a license or driving while his license was revoked or
suspended. He also has been convicted of assault, criminal mischief, and
misconduct involving a controlled substance.
In 1980, he was convicted of driving while intoxicated and in 1988, he
was convicted of reckless driving.
Thank you, Mark.