Pattonville High School, in collaboration with Maryland Heights Police Department and Pattonville Fire Department hosts an optional yearly event for juniors and seniors called ‘Operation Homecoming Safe’, reminding student drivers what could happen if they drove while inebriated.
This brings a stark contrast to the light-hearted fun of the Homecoming season with dances, football games, and parades. Around this time annually, we see several students get into DWI/DUI related car crashes, some even with a loss of life.
In November 2021, two Marquette High school students, and a De Smet Jesuit student lost their lives because of an alcohol related crash, with two more injured.
D.A.R.E. Officer Bob Heitert’s daughter was supposed to be in that crash.
“They were all gathered at a party after a school event, and one party became several parties. Some of the students and my daughter had an opportunity to be with a group of students, her friends, that were going to continue to bounce from party to party and she said that she didn’t feel comfortable doing that,” Heitert said.
“I’ve been doing this job for 30 years. I’ve had the unfortunate job of having to go knock on a door and we tell them that their child or their loved one or spouse is not coming home,” Heitert said. “And it’s gut wrenching because part of us, you know, we feel for that person, but there’s also a part of us that puts ourselves in that spot. What if this was somebody that I knew? What if it was somebody I love?”
Grief and loss are emotions that are truly felt if tragedy has struck. In the case of Marquette’s tragedy, we can only really imagine what they are going through, even two years later.
“When a student passes, it obviously affects the whole building and more than you would expect,” Counselor Christy Wills said. “You will have people affected that weren’t very close to the person that ,you know, seemingly on the surface more upset than people that work close to the person and so it affects the building in a really strange way.”
Death and mortality can strike people at their core.
“I think it’s so unnatural for kids your age to be brought face to face with their mortality,” Wills said.
