{"id":96959,"date":"2020-04-01T15:45:24","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T15:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.madd.org\/?p=96959"},"modified":"2024-11-14T09:28:41","modified_gmt":"2024-11-14T17:28:41","slug":"why-we-walk-the-mcconnell-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madd.org\/why-we-walk-the-mcconnell-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Voices of Victims: The McConnell Family"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A drunk driver killed four members of the McConnell family 14 months after this photograph was taken: Nathan, 24; Roy Jr., 51; Kelly, 19; and Roy III, 27.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Patricia Voelker<\/strong><\/p>\n

They smile with the sun in their faces in that final group photograph.<\/p>\n

My grandson, Kelly McConnell, is at the center, bearded and broad-shouldered and handsome in his high school graduation gown. He stands between his stepbrothers, Nathan and Roy III, while their dad, Roy Jr., hovers just behind them.<\/p>\n

Fourteen months later, they would be dead. All of them. They were vacationing near St. Petersburg, Florida, when a drunk and drugged driver ran a red light, smashing into their car at 84 mph and instantly killing my daughter\u2019s family: 51-year-old Roy Jr.; 27-year-old Roy III; 24-year-old Nathan; and Kelly, my only grandchild, who one day earlier had celebrated his 19th birthday.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how quickly it happened. That\u2019s how quickly my daughter, Amy, lost her son and her husband and two stepsons she\u2019d co-parented since they were boys.<\/p>\n

Grief is different for everyone. Everyone\u2019s loss is unique. For me, a grandmother who lost her only grandchild, it was as if the future ceased to exist: Who Kelly would marry. What he would become. All the things I thought he would see that I would never see because he was supposed to outlive me. The newsy, upbeat family letters my daughter, Amy, had always sent stopped because there was no longer a family to write about. Our conversations became stilted for several years. I didn\u2019t want to say the wrong thing. So I never talked about anything that she didn\u2019t talk about first. When, three years after the crash, Amy and I were both diagnosed with breast cancer, we faced it without the support of family who otherwise would have been there.<\/p>\n

These are the things a 20-year-old took when he made the choice to drive drunk and high on the night of July 31, 2010. He ended four lives, left three women widowed and two children fatherless. He destroyed families, changed relationships and altered futures \u2013 including his own. Today, he is serving a 44-year prison sentence.<\/p>\n

Time and trauma erase certain memories<\/strong>. Like the details of the call from Amy on an early Sunday morning delivering the worst news I would ever get. Other memories, though, shine all the brighter. Like my last day with Kelly.<\/p>\n

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