Crosses to bear
One Rhode Island woman goes to the highway, not the cemetery, to remember her husband. But in other states, highway crews remove roadside memorials -- for safety reasons.
BY TOM MOONEY
Providence Journal Staff Writer
01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, October 23, 2005
Christy Perry drove trucks for 30 years and instructed others on the safe rules of the road. So when his own van developed a noise on Route 146 in North Providence one night five years ago, he knew to pull beyond the breakdown lane to check it. To pull off into the grass.
His precautions were not enough to save him.
A car, swerving along the highway, left the road and struck 51-year-old Perry while his wife, Shirley, waited in the van.
Since then a white cross has marked the spot where Chris Perry stepped out and died in a place defined by the piercing whir of wheels and wind. The wooden cross stands not only as a remembrance of a man but as a symbol of a modern phenomenon.
In the last decade roadside memorials have become so common, many states and local communities are now weighing whether these public displays of grief constitute roadside distractions for drivers and need regulating.
Meanwhile, the prominence of such memorials has spun off at least one book, and a new business by a Colorado trucker who saw opportunity waiting along American roadways.
LAST YEAR 42,636 people died in traffic accidents in the United States, says the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Thousands of those deaths were remembered with crosses or flowers or pictures along the roadway.
Perhaps nowhere in Rhode Island is the concentration of roadside memorials greater than along Routes 4 and 1.
In an 11-mile stretch between East Greenwich and Wakefield, at least a half-dozen crosses stand to those who have died in car crashes, some caused by drunken drivers, others by speed and poor driving.
John DeCubellis knows the location of each cross and each name honored -- including 13-year-old Kaitlyn DeCubellis, his daughter.
Kaitlyn and her friend Rebecca Bowman were on their way to the Warwick Mall with Rebecca's mother, Marsha, in 1999 when a drunken driver struck their northbound car from behind on Route 4 in East Greenwich.
The Bowmans' Honda veered across the grassy median where a southbound car struck it broadside.
Kaitlyn and Marsha Bowman died. Four others were injured, including Rebecca.
The man who rear-ended their car, Stephen Reise, was traveling at more than 85 mph. He had a blood-alcohol level of nearly twice the legal limit. He is serving a 14-year prison sentence.
Twice a day DeCubellis, of Narragansett, passes his daughter's robin-egg blue cross -- and the white cross beside it for Marsha Bowman -- driving back and forth to work in Cranston.
"A lot of people probably think it's a sad thing, and in a sense it's very difficult to pass," he says. "But in another sense, each time I go by, it makes me stop and take the time and remember the good things, and to say a prayer, and to feel that connection with her again."
Friends of Kaitlyn erected the cross. Over the years they have added items of remembrance: a picture of her on a swing, her black hair pulled back with a white band; red silk flowers which have faded to the brown of oak leaves; a verse Kaitlyn wrote: "I am a friendly girl whose name is Katie. I wonder how old I will live to be."
DeCubellis says roadside memorials aren't distractions; they're warnings for drivers to stay vigilant, and reminders of the price of negligence.
"Every time you see one of those roadside memorials you know someone died. Most of the time alcohol or drugs was involved or maybe someone wasn't wearing a seatbelt. They serve as a reminder that bad things happen, and maybe they help reduce bad things from happening in the future."
NEITHER Rhode Island nor Massachusetts regulates roadside memorials.
"If they are not an impediment or in our right of way, we typically don't touch them," says Dana Alexander-Nolie, spokeswoman for the Rhode Island Department of Transportation.
But some communities have imposed prohibitions on local roads.
Last month selectmen in Somerset set a two-week limit for makeshift shrines along their town streets. Those deemed traffic hazards or distractions can be removed immediately.
Selectman Eleanor Gagnon called the new regulation "a good step in the right direction in cleaning up our town."
Last May the town of Norton, Mass., set a 30-day limit for roadside memorials.
Meanwhile other states are dealing with the sensitive issue in various ways.
A few states, such as Wisconsin, prohibit the memorials altogether, noting they are potentially dangerous distractions for drivers.
But the alternative Wisconsin devised seems to carry its own potential danger:
Relatives of the deceased can adopt a two-mile section of highway and have a standard sign erected there in the name of the deceased. But they must also agree to clean their section of roadway at least three times a year.
The potential danger of people walking along the highways was one of the reasons Virginia lawmakers voted in 2002 to ban roadside memorials.
The lawmakers, trying to balance safety with sensitivity, advocated instead for a standard state sign that includes the phrase "In memory of . . . " and the message: "Drive Safely." But few Virginians have asked for the signs, and highway workers have been reluctant to remove homemade memorials unless they become traffic obstructions.
Several other states, such as New Mexico and California, also allow people to buy standard signs inscribed with the name of the deceased and a safe driving message. But the states limit how long the signs can remain up.
Last year, in Minnesota, highway workers cleared memorials on all state roads after hundreds of mourners descended on the side of Interstate 35, where famed 1980 Olympic hockey coach Herb Brooks died, leaving everything from flowers to a massive plywood M.
And in some places, the ubiquitous crosses have generated religious controversy.
Transportation officials in Nevada, for example, removed an 8-foot-high cross erected beside a highway in memory of a murdered child after being told they could face a legal challenge over the constitutional separation between church and state.
IN THE DAYS following her husband's death, Shirley Perry prepared for his wake and funeral while a friend of Chris', a fellow truck driver for Frito-Lay, sunk a three-foot cross into the ground along the north side of Route 146.
"I think it's a wonderful thing," Shirley says of her husband's memorial. "A lot of people tell me they see it, and, whenever they go by, they say a prayer. It's also a reminder to other people about reckless drivers."
For Shirley Perry, the cross has healing powers. She prefers going to the highway, where her husband is remembered, rather than to the cemetery where her husband is buried.
"I go because that was the last place I saw him alive," she says.
"Several times when I've gone to change the flowers on the cross, state police will pull up and wonder what's going on. When I tell them, they just say be careful."
All summer Perry thought about the cross; it is peeling and needs a fresh coat of paint. And the pictures of Chris have all but disintegrated from the elements.
"I hate to see it that way."
TWENTY OR thirty years ago, constructing a roadside shrine to a lost loved one "would not have been considered part of the repertoire of things you could do as part of the grieving process," says Holly Everett, who in 2002 published a book called Roadside Crosses in Contemporary Memorial Culture.
But the process of grieving is changing, says Everett, 37, who grew up in Texas and now teaches folklore at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada.
"I think the way people grieve in general is in flux right now," she says. "People are looking for more satisfying ways to commemorate people who have passed on, so we're looking for other kinds of cultural practices."
Roadside memorials are widely reported about in news coverage of bad accidents and have thus become an accepted practice, Everett says.
But this new phenomenon actually has old roots, she says, dating back to the early days of Spanish and French exploration in North America.
"The journals of these explorers from that time describe doing this very same kind of thing," she says. "In Canada, for example, fur traders would mark treacherous spots along the rivers where fellow traders had drowned."
Scott Newton is a trucker out of Denver.
For years he's watched the growing number of roadside memorials spring up along the highways of the West.
"Some of them look elaborately made and others look like they were made out of garbage in a ditch," says Newton. "I couldn't find anyone doing them as a business, so I started making them."
Newton designed a Web page, aroadsidememorial.com, and began advertising his steel designs.
Each 4 1/2-foot cross runs about $200. Customers can choose between two standard cross designs: one is made out of linked circles, the other is shaped by two twisted steel rods.
Since Newton started his Website business in August, he's sold about 100 of his white-painted crosses.
"I think there's an onslaught of them [memorials] because somebody did it and it just caught on. It's a sobering effect for a lot of people when you come across one. You think: What happened here?"
Newton hopes his brand of roadside memorial catches on. He's designed them knowing well of the scary roar of traffic passing only a few feet away:
Each of his creations comes with a sort of cork-screw bottom so it can be twisted into the ground in seconds without tools or digging.
Take a multimedia look at roadside memorials, narrated by Journal staff writer Tom Mooney, and share your thoughts, at:
http://projo.com/crossestobear
Online at: http://www.projo.com/news/content/projo_20051023_cross23x.36b9c61.html
