AW Mock Crash Scene Shows Dangers Of Drinking And Driving
BY KAREN BERGER — MIRROR REPORTER
As Chelsea Chadwick lay dead on the hood of the wrecked car, three other teens were trapped inside.
“As you watch them suffer, do you think a six-pack of beer was worth it?” Ohio Highway Patrol Trooper Mike Rodriguez asked Anthony Wayne High School juniors and seniors gathered around the mock crash.
As police and EMS crews arrived, Rodriguez updated the students on the time that had ticked away in what health care professionals call the “critical hour” to get victims to an emergency room.
“A car is like a 5,000-pound weapon,” Rodriguez said, describing how the gravity of impact forces a body off the seat and through the windshield. As he listed each riders’ injuries in excruciating detail, a few students felt lightheaded and needed to sit down.
The driver, portrayed by Mac Church, was given field sobriety tests by a trooper as rescue workers pried the roof off of the car.
Church prepared for his role by wearing fatal vision goggles – glasses that show how vision and balance can be impaired by alcohol.
He failed the test and was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol and aggravated vehicular assault.
It would probably be the next day, as he sat in jail, when he’d realize that one of his friends had died. Emily Simon’s character was paralyzed from the neck down, and Kevin Bernhard’s character suffered permanent hip problems that would require multiple surgeries throughout his life.
As Chadwick’s body was transported from the wreckage, zipped into a body bag and placed in a hearse, students heard a poem that the senior recorded. That poem, which described in first-person detail how her death affected her friends and family, hit home for her.
“I was shaking,” she said of recording the video. “I knew the body bag would be freaky. It was really scary.”
Rodriguez presents mock crashes in several area school districts during prom season. He shared with students that his own nephew died while riding with a friend who had been drinking, and the car flipped end-over-end five times, expelling the teens into a field.
Waterville, Whitehouse, Monclova Township, Providence Township and Waterville Township police, fire and EMS, as well as LifeFlight, the Ohio Highway Patrol and Peinert Funeral Home participated in the event.
Although a mock crash was scheduled at AWHS for last year, it was canceled due to the weather.
AWYF Breaks Ground Sunday On Blue Creek Recreation Area
BY KAREN BERGER — MIRROR REPORTER
For youth who play football, baseball and soccer – and the parents who drive them throughout the Anthony Wayne area to practices and games – Sunday’s groundbreaking at Blue Creek Recreation Area is a reason to cheer.
Since 2004, the Anthony Wayne Youth Foundation, which represents the youth sports organizations, has been raising funds to start a $2.2 million recreation area in Whitehouse.
When completed, the area will have six baseball/softball fields, four full-size football/soccer fields, three junior-size football/soccer fields, a large community playground, a pavilion with restrooms and concessions, community room, a maintenance and storage building and a parking area.
For families with children in multiple sports, having the fields, diamonds and practice areas all in one place is a dream come true.
The $675,000 raised so far will allow the AWYF to start phase one.
“We’re moving forward with the excavation and grading of the fields so we can put in grass seed to be ready by the fall,” said Todd Frendt, AWYF founder and president.
The restrooms and concessions will be completed as the AWYF brings in more funding through donations or grants. The AWYF has applied for $450,000 in grants and expects to learn more about funding soon.
The 2:30 p.m. groundbreaking is part of Anthony Wayne Community Soccer Day, which takes place from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. and includes games, a bounce house, ice cream, face painting and St. Vincent’s LifeFlight.
“This is truly an exciting time for the kids and all communities of the Anthony Wayne area. After many years of planning, research and fund-raising, the dream of many will start to become a reality,” Frendt said.
Local, county and state representatives, as well as children representing each of the youth sports organizations will participate in the ceremony.
For more information, visit www.awcommunity.com.
The Anthony Wayne Youth Foundation groundbreaking takes place at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 18 at the Blue Creek Recreation Area, 7035 Providence St., Whitehouse. The Anthony Wayne Community Soccer Day will be held from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.
Whitehouse Second-Grader Says: Recycling Rocks!
BY KAREN BERGER — MIRROR REPORTER
Sporting a T-shirt that says “Recycling Rocks,” Brady Simpkins proudly points to the box overflowing with papers, destined for the recycling bin.
Last fall, the Whitehouse Primary second-grader watched another boy throw out a piece of paper and got to thinking, “If he got up 20 more times, that would be a lot of paper.”
Brady got up and approached his teacher, Kelley Coronado, with a plan to recycle paper in his classroom – and throughout the school.
“I didn’t see any reason not to,” Coronado said.
Starting in the classroom, the recycling fever spread through second grade, and then, after a visit to student council and an announcement by principal Brad Rhodes, the entire school was soon in on placing papers of all sorts in bins throughout the building.
Although the teachers and administrators had been using both sides of paper and tried recycling before, the school didn’t have an organized program, Rhodes said.
Integral to the project are Brady’s parents, Alyce and Earl Simpkins. Each week, Earl loads up the recyclables into his pickup truck, drives to a recycling site and unloads them.
Brady wishes he had a way of measuring how many pounds of paper they’ve recycled.
“We’d need a scale for Bigfoot to do that,” he said.
Coronado told the students that if they weren’t recycling, imagine how much would be in the landfill, Brady said.
Although he hadn’t given much thought to landfills, since his family recycles many products, he did learn some facts from the book 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Recycle, including:
• If you stacked up all the paper an average American uses in a year, the piles would be as tall as a two-story house.
• If you and your family recycled a ton of writing paper, you would save as much as 7,000 gallons of water. You would have to drink 130 glasses every day for more than a year to get that much water.
Brady is thinking about asking the village of Whitehouse if it will help pick up the recyclables.
“He is always thinking about a project,” said his grandmother, Lynn Moses.
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