I have a few images from dad’s childhood. He was six years older than his little sister, my Aunt Becky.
She loved her big brother so much, when he was killed by a tired semitruck driver December 23, 2004, she was heartbroken. They are together in heaven now, I imagine it was a pretty special reunion.
This coming Tuesday is Giving Tuesday. I hope you will consider giving to the nonprofit I’ll be highlighting, CRASH (Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways) which is a partner with P.A.T.T (Parents Against Tired Truckers) to form the Truck Safety Coalition.
We provide support to families of those lost in semi crashes, and to those who have survived crashes too. Every year there are more heartbroken families.
And we work hard at changing regulations, rules and laws in order to protect everyone on the road. But the crash statistics are going up, more than 5,000 dead, almost 150,000 injured in 2021, the last year for which we have numbers.
So we can’t give up, can’t even slow down now. Please consider helping us on our mission to provide comfort, to make a place for families to put their grief, and to make our roads safer for everyone, truck drivers included.
Thank you for the years of support you’ve already given me.
Change Is Hard 
November 25, 2023 at 2:44 pm
What a beautiful collection of photos, Dawn. It’s when we are directly affected that we realise there is a serious situation out there. Tired is as dangerous as drunk.
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November 26, 2023 at 3:36 pm
Tired IS ad dangerous as drunk. Unfortunately not everyone realizes that. And there’s no real test to prove you’re tired if you’re pulled over. Tired isn’t illegal. And worse, we’ve probably all driven tired. So there’s some sympathy for tired truck drivers, where there is none for drunk or high drivers.
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November 26, 2023 at 4:48 pm
I know. It’s not enough to limit the number of hours per day a driver can drive… I know I have driven when I shouldn’t…
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November 26, 2023 at 9:22 pm
Me too. I remind myself how bad it would look for a safety advocate to crash due to lack of sleep.
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November 26, 2023 at 9:30 pm
Yeah, that would not be a good thing!
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November 25, 2023 at 11:06 pm
Money sent, no hesitation. Always. Thank you for keeping this out in front of us.
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November 26, 2023 at 3:37 pm
Thank you! I so appreciate your support! I know you know how hard it is out there on the road for the truck drivers, and for everyone else as well.
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November 26, 2023 at 1:21 pm
Seeing your dad as a young boy with his little sister sure makes him more real to those of us unfortunate not to have known him. Thanks for continuing the good fight, Dawn!
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November 26, 2023 at 3:38 pm
I sometimes just look at these photos of him as a young kid and think about all he did with his life, how those hands built things, and those eyes saw things and what a wonderful life he had, and that kid had no idea.
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November 26, 2023 at 9:50 pm
This is a nice post reflecting on your Dad and his younger sister – it is sad they are both together, but in Heaven not here on Earth. I had looked on your site before when you alluded to the trucking accident – this is terrible. I thought that there were new regulations that truckers had to follow for the amount of hours a trucker could work without taking a break – do truckers try to have some wiggle room with those rules and regs Dawn? Too bad those restrictions were not in place back then.
I have a high school friend that I’ve not seen since we graduated high school in 1973. Margaret and her husband live in South Carolina now, but they owned their own truck (and I’m taking this info off Margaret’s Facbook page: they were an OTR Truck Driver/team at Con-way Truckload.) In the beginning just Landon drove, but later Margaret went to truck driving school and joined her husband on the road. She was driving on a rainy day and the truck ahead of them was hauling logs, many of them stacked on a flat bed trailer. That truck slid on the slippery road, lost its load which rolled off the truck and came right toward them. Margaret swerved and tipped their truck over on her side, thus her left hip and leg were crushed. Landon had a punctured lung. I don’t know if he was beside her in the cab or sleeping. She is a friend, but we’re not that close and this was awhile ago. Margaret never drove again and went through a lot of physical therapy and is still in constant pain. In this case, it was not an overtired semitruck driver … I’ll say it was Mother Nature’s fault, but who knows … that driver may have been going too fast in weather conditions and carrying a bulky load. I am sorry for your loss of almost 20 years ago now.
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November 28, 2023 at 6:44 am
I love all those old photos. So sweet! My brother is a truck-driver and he’s amazed at how many truckers survive and how many have near death experiences. We were recently traveling and had to pass a semi, he was in the wrong lane and nearly caused us to crash. Amen to groups that help us all travel safely!
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November 30, 2023 at 5:30 am
What sweet photos. Thank you for all your hard work. I wish it wasn’t so difficult to make common sense changes.
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