Interview with Lynn Boyd of the Every 15 Minutes Program
Announcer: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education. A weekly show featuring interviews with community leaders, school administrators, school business officials and individuals who are passionate about the future of Michigan Education. And now, here is your host for Inside Michigan Education, Rob Huisingh.
Rob Huisingh: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, this week we are joined in the Foxbright Podcast Studio by Lynn Boyd. Lynn is an active parent in the North Muskegon Public School District, and she is here today representing the first production in Michigan of an event and a national program by the same name called 'Every 15 Minutes'. Welcome Lynn, it's a pleasure to have you on our show.
Lynn Boyd: Thank you.
Rob Huisingh: Lynn, I'd like to start out with an actual clip from the program; so, here it goes.
911 Operator Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?
Caller There's a terrible car accident at Vanderwerp and Moulton
911 Operator How many are injured there?
Caller Uhhhm, it looks like several students are involved, at lease 5. Doors won't open, it's really bad. You gotta hurry up, kids are screaming and yelling.
<Tone>
Dispatcher To the attention of North Muskegon Fire, Muskegon Township Fire: have a vehicle accident with injuries, possible pin-in at the corner of Moulton and Vanderwerp. 777, 711, 223 and command to respond.
502 502 from dispatch.
Dispatch 502, go ahead.
502 502, personal injury accident ... <fadeout>
News Reporter Police and emergency vehicles are responding to a two car crash at the intersection of Moulton and Vanderwerp. Multiple life-threatening injuries are reported. It's not known at this time if there are any fatalities, or if alcohol played a part in the accident, but the intersection will remail closed. Stay tuned for further updates.
Rob Huisingh: I wanted to begin with some fairly daunting statistics, of the 20 million juniors and seniors in high school, half drink monthly. Approximately two-thirds of the teenagers who drink report that they can buy their own alcohol, and roughly 20% of the students who are 12-17 year olds drink at least once last month, and every 15 minutes someone dies in an alcohol related collision. Now, in May of 2007, just weeks before Prom, you helped orchestrate an event called 'Every 15 Minutes'. During those two days you allowed an entire high school to come about as close as anyone would care to come to experiencing a real alcohol related death. Lynn, how did you first hear about the 'Every 15 Minutes' program, and at what point did you decide this was something you wanted to do?
Lynn Boyd: My son-in-law is a fireman out in California, and he actually introduced me to the program. They were having their third child and I was there as an active grandma, just taking care of the other two, and he introduced the program to me through a video that he had experienced as a fireman. When you watch the DVD you can see that there is an active part that the firemen actually take part in. He was very touched by their small portion of the program, which at that point in time he said to me mom, you got to take this back to Michigan, it has never been done. In watching the program it was like wow. But, you know what, it was something that was an immediate passion of mine and always a concern, and it just turned out to be that I decided that's exactly what I needed to do.
Rob Huisingh: Let's walk through the program; during the morning of the first day I understand the Grim Reaper visits classrooms, what happens?
Lynn Boyd: The Grim Reaper goes in and actually taps the shoulders, there is no sound or voice, they just tap the shoulder of a student that's previously been prepared for this, to go out and they just kind of take their finger and say come with me. The student leaves the room and goes -- we send them to a counselor room to get an 'Every 15 Minutes' t-shirt on, and a white face painted which symbolize the fact that they at that point in time were a part of the Living Dead, that's what we called them.
While they were gone changing, a police officer and a clergyman came into the classroom to explain to the whole classroom that this student had previously been involved in an alcohol related crash and was now deceased. They basically read their eulogy, and after they changed they would come back to the classroom and that student was no longer allowed to talk to anyone, and no one was allowed to talk to them. There was also a date of birth and a date of death with their eight by ten picture put on their locker, so that as the kids throughout the day walked by this, there were 30 students who did this, walked by their locker, they saw that these were part of the Living Dead, and it just kind of created havoc for the morning.
Rob Huisingh: After lunch there is a Simulated Traffic Collision, tell us about that.
Lynn Boyd: A drunk driver was -- I mean it actually was six students in a car and it happened very locally, right by our school, and we just made an announcement over the PA, it was an actual 911 call is what we did. Of course this was after months and months of preparation for this actual accident to take place, but it was an actual accident that our local fire police and everyone involved in an accident otherwise pulled off very -- produced very well, and came across very well to the students.
So, once the 911 call came across on the PA, the students were then excused to walk, and they obviously knew that this was a mock collision, if you will, but it turned out that the kids fell right into the cracks of the reality of it, because it actually with the hearse and the -- we had the makeup done by the local community college, and we had an actual fatality rate in the street when the kids came out there, and it was one of the popular kids from the school that -- into band and into all of the athletics and what not. He was actually lying there when they came out, and all the fire trucks and everything came up on the scene, just like real.
By now all the students are out there watching, and in the meantime we had the 30 students that were part of our Living Dead just kind of walking through the scene, and kind of just an eerie feeling of death in itself. A hearse actually came and took away the deceased boy, and then the ambulance took the other; there were three other that were injured. One of them went to the emergency room and went through the whole work up there because he didn't die until after the emergency room for maybe 15 or 20 minutes, and then we had to tell those parents that he was deceased as well.
I mean the whole crash -- they went through all of the work up at the emergency room, and then the emergency room physician actually had to go tell the parents that he didn't make it as well. So, in the meantime they -- all the students back were finishing watching the rest of the crash, and then extricate some of the students from the crash cars and what not.
Rob Huisingh: That evening the students who were selected as the Living Dead are actually taken away from their homes for the night. After watching the video it's obvious that this is a very emotional time for both parents and the students alike, what was it like for you both as a mother and as a program coordinator to go through that?
Lynn Boyd: It was indeed very emotional. I'm going to back up just a little bit Rob because we went actually to the courtroom prior to that evening, and that was another emotional event where we actually went through the proceedings of the booking of the drunk driver.
Rob Huisingh: Oh really, okay.
Lynn Boyd: That was where the drunk driver was actually thrown into jail and had the handcuffs and had to put the scrubs on and the Prosecuting Attorney prosecuted him. They had to interact with the parents of the deceased students. He had to apologize to them. Then he actually gave them the booking of what would happen if this exactly did take place, and he would have been -- he was 17 on that day and he would have been 46 years old before he was allowed to get out of prison again.
So, that impact in itself -- and we had our students all in the courtroom, all that Living Dead, those thirty students were allowed to observe this whole court case from beginning to end, and that was another huge impact of, one bad choice and here is what happens. All the families that it involves, all of the community that it involves, all of the professional people that it takes to put this one boy away because of this one bad choice.
Then we did indeed go on the local hotel to spend the night, to give the parents the idea that Johnny or Susie is not coming home tonight, they're just not going to make it.
Rob Huisingh: Part of that process I have heard you talk about already is writing a letter, and that the parents have to write a letter and the students write a letter, could you tell us about that?
Lynn Boyd: Originally, we had to get the okay from the parents obviously for the students to participate, because it was quite an emotional event, but not one parent turned us down, so that was pretty awesome. We had to get a letter from each parent, and it starts out by saying, Dear Johnny, today you were killed in a drunk driving accident and I am very sorry to tell you that I never had a chance to say. Then they had to complete this letter.
As it turned to be, deep, deep down emotions that maybe parents never really did get a chance to tell their kids, that they really did want to. I had a few parents call me say I can't do this, I can't do this, this is like writing his funeral. It turned out that once I explained to them why they had to do it, it was okay, and it was okay to just maybe write a poem or something, they didn't have to get into their emotions to the degree that it was going to hurt them or anybody else. It was just a matter of fact that we were going to be producing these letters at the retreat that night, and everybody had to have a letter, it would not be fair for one person to not have a letter, because somebody's parent didn't choose to go through that. We let the parents know that this is very emotional for you, but your child needs to read this letter in our retreat. Then they in turn are going to write a letter back to the parent that says, Dear Mom and Dad, today I was killed in a drunk driving accident and I am sorry I never had a chance to tell you as well.
Then after they read their letters they had to rewrite the letters, and there seriously was not, as the DVD portraits, there was not a dry eye in the place, it was very, very emotional, and as real as you possibly could be without actually being real.
Rob Huisingh: Tell us about the second day.
Lynn Boyd: Second day was a memorial for the two students that were killed; the one that was killed at the scene and the one that died in the emergency room. It was an actual funeral. We had the casket, we had the flowers, we had the singers, we had the DVD of each student, and all of their baby pictures, and all of their fun pictures when they were with their favorite songs dubbed into the DVD. The whole student body watched this video of the funeral of these two boys, as well as the parents. The parents were there. Then we gave an actual -- each person that was involved in the funeral right down to people that just were living with an alcoholic, or people that had a son or a daughter that is or was an alcoholic, that poured out their heart and soul to the fact that please, please, please, listen to us. It's not just somebody standing up there speaking, it's somebody that's living that.
The emergency room doctor gave some statistics, and some of the things that he has seen. That's realism, that's what happens, that's just the way it is. Then to top it off we had a mother who lost a daughter a few years ago in an accident, and she had to go to the morgue and identify the burned body, and all she had was a toe that she recognized. That mother stood up there and I think it was probably 10 or 12 years earlier, and she stood up there and she was very emotional still as yet, because she would love to know what her daughter would be doing today as well. But, I think it hit home pretty good to our whole student body, which entails just about 400 kids from ninth through twelfth grade.
Rob Huisingh: When as a parent watching the video, I knew this was a stage program, but I still found myself at times overwhelmed by it, and for some of the students this event comes unannounced, and the tears, the raw exposed pain, the trauma, these are real emotions, and just how real did it get?
Lynn Boyd: Some of the students -- obviously again in watching the DVD, its self-explanatory, but without being able to see that, there were still students that came to me, there are still students today that come to me, and thank me for the fact that it was not an easy event to go through. In my statements at the end of the whole program on the second day I mention and apologize for the trauma that we put some kids through, because it is, its a horrible, terrific event to have to go through for some kids that don't tolerate trauma well.
Rob Huisingh: Now, I can imagine that there is a cycle that people go through, because freshman become sophomores, and juniors and seniors, and you probably have to repeat a program every so often, is there a plan to do that?
Lynn Boyd: We plan to do that at North Muskegon High School. We have kind of an agreement with the board and the administrators to do it every four years, so that every high school student will go through the 'Every 15 Minutes' program. Obviously the success of the program will be diminished slightly, but still when they see their own friends and their own relatives actively involved in this high traumatic event, it's a whole different thing. They can only imagine what they're going to go through.
Rob Huisingh: If a parent in another school wanted to present this program, what advice would you give to them?
Lynn Boyd: I personally had a really tough time trying to initiate the program, and the point being that you have to have the passion to begin with. You have to persevere, you have to be able to understand that you're going to have to come up against some brick walls, there is no two ways about it. So, persevere, go forward, the kids need it, the community needs it. I am more than happy to -- I had given my right arm if I had a mentor, somebody to help me through the process, because we now know a lot more than we knew when I was going through this the first time. So, I would hope and pray that I could do that and help someone else out and just kind of be there for them. I would never be able to Chair the program, but I would certainly love to be able to mentor the program at a later date.
Rob Huisingh: Lynn, I want to thank you for taking the time to be with us today, and not only for sharing the information about the 'Every 15 Minutes' program, but for your dedication in making a difference in Michigan Education.
Lynn Boyd: Thank you.
Rob Huisingh: If you would like to contact Lynn Boyd, she can be reached by telephone at (231) 719-1133, again that number is (231) 719-1133. To read about the 'Every 15 Minutes' program online, visit them at www.every15minutes.com, again that URL is www.every15minutes.com. Until next week this is Rob Huisingh with Inside Michigan Education.
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