“You cannot imagine the feeling of loss — that pain, hurt — from losing a child,” Lynn Mickelson told Moorhead High School juniors and seniors as part of the Every 15 Minutes program held April 29-30.
The four-part program included the living dead, a mock crash, a student retreat, and a mock memorial service and presentations. Every 15 Minutes is designed to show students the consequences of drinking and/or texting while driving and help students make positive decisions
In 2012, Aaron, Allison and 18-month-old Brielle Deutscher were driving to a family reunion in Bismarck, N.D. Allison was nearly four months pregnant with their second child. The family’s trip ended abruptly when a drunk driver with a blood alcohol level more than three times the legal limit hit the family’s car head-on on Interstate 94 near Jamestown, N.D.
Mickelson, Allison’s father and Brielle’s grandfather, described how the troopers notified him of the accident.
“That’s when I heard the hardest words I’ve ever heard in my life. When the trooper told my wife and me that nobody survived,” Mickelson said. “I refuse to call that an accident — that was fully preventable.
The presentation by Mickelson was part of the final assembly. The first part of the Every 15 Minutes program occurred on April 29, when students were removed from classes as part of the “living dead” and obituaries written by their parents were read to their classmates. Students were part of the mock car crash on the afternoon of April 29. Police, fire fighters and paramedics responded to the mock crash. The students involved in the program were separated from family and friends overnight as part of a retreat.
One exercise the students did during the retreat was to write letters to their parents that began with the phrase, “Today I died in an alcohol-related accident and never got the chance to tell you…” Their parents also wrote letters to them.
Officer Scott Kostohryz with the Moorhead Police Department introduced the April 30 assembly, staged as a mock memorial service for the mock car crash victim.
Students then viewed a video of the events leading up to and the aftermath of the mock car crash, including the ambulance ride, emergency room treatment and, for the drunk driver, being charged with criminal vehicular homicide, among other charges, and going to jail.
Following the video, three students and their parents shared letters during the morning assembly. One student read to her parents, “I just want you to know that I’m eternally grateful for everything you have done for me.” Her father read, “I want one more chance to do a better job of keeping you safe.
Then Mickelson took the stage and shared the details of his story. “What we went through, that was real. That car you see outside, that was real. My family died in that car,” he said, referring to the display of the Deutscher family’s crashed car on display as part the Every 15 Minutes program.
Mickelson told the students he wasn’t there to lecture them about alcohol, but instead to talk about choices. “What is your fate in life? It depends on choices you make,” he said
Chief of Police David Ebinger and Dave Lawrence, Moorhead High School principal, concluded the program by reminding students that they will have choices to make and opportunities to intervene and help others make good choices.
“Sometimes when you make a bad decision or make a bad choice you can’t fix it by saying you’re sorry,” Lawrence said
Every 15 Minutes was developed in the mid-1990s, and at the time every 15 minutes someone died in an alcohol-related accident. The program is designed to challenge students to think about the consequences of driving impaired or distracted. For more information about the Every 15 Minutes program visit http://www.every15minutes.com.
