THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 26, 1995 TAG: 9511230079
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 151 lines
THEY LOOM OVER a crescent of rutted sand and pinestraw where the little sedan hurtled off the road: Two white crosses, their arms entwined, stark against the damp dark of the woods.
``Marianne,'' one reads, its lettering almost jaunty. A poster, rain-streaked and fading, hangs from the other: ``Happy Birthday, Lainey!''
Calm envelops the pines along this section of Shore Drive in Virginia Beach. An occasional gust shakes the drizzle from the branches, and fat drops plink onto the shrine and the silk daffodils clustered at its base.
Then comes the building rumble of an approaching car.
Nineteen months ago, on an afternoon much like this one, four girls sped home from school on this stretch of road. The pavement was wet, and their Nissan Sentra was moving fast. Not far from here the car fishtailed, slid off the asphalt and smacked trunk-first into the trees.
The accident killed Laine Schroeder and her best friend, Marianne Olivieri, both popular students at Cox High School. It prompted this roadside memorial, which continues to pull friends and family back to the spot where two lives were lost.
The two-foot-high crosses are more than a remembrance, however. To drivers who did not know the girls - like the man in the pickup now racing past - they are a warning, as well.
Memorials to lost loved ones had multiplied alongside the region's roads for years by the time Mark and Pattie Carroll erected the first set of crosses to Laine and Marianne.
A half-dozen had sprung up along Shore Drive, a few of them clearly visible to passing traffic, others hidden among the trees, all marking fatal accidents along Virginia Beach's deadliest road. A tall cross stood beside a lane in tiny Knotts Island, N.C.
In the months after the girls' deaths, others materialized on International Parkway, alongside the George Washington Highway, on the median of Interstate 64.
And long before their appearance in Virginia, the shrines had been a common sight in the states bordering Mexico, where crucitas, or ``little crosses,'' outnumbered mileposts on some desert highways.
All were part of a tradition imported to the New World centuries before by Spanish settlers, who enshrined not only their loved ones' bodies, but the spots where their lives ended.
The Carrolls, longtime friends of Laine and her mother, were unaware that they were participating in ancient ritual when they fashioned crosses from two-by-fours and planted them on Shore Drive shortly after the accident.
``We were so devastated, we just felt we needed to put something there in memory of Laine and Marianne,'' Pattie said, ``and as a reminder to other motorists that they need to slow down on that stretch of road.''
``I do not want any other mother going through what I've been through,'' said Victoria Matheny, Laine's mother. ``And I think a lot of teenagers, seeing that cross, will think, `Hey, I better slow down. I'm not immortal.' ''
Linda Cooper had the same motive in mind when she and her husband, Marvin, erected a large, white cross near the bend in a Knotts Island road where their son died on a muggy Friday night in July 1991.
John Cooper had been riding shotgun in a pickup that flew off the narrow blacktop, slammed into a ditch, hit a tree, flipped, then slid into a utility pole. He'd been catapulted through the truck's roof.
``They were going 115 miles per hour,'' Linda Cooper said. ``He never had a chance.''
Two years went by with nothing but memories to mark the accident. Finally, in April 1994 - the same month the Carrolls erected the crosses on Shore Drive - the Coopers felt ready. They gained permission from a landowner to embed a large white cross painted ``In Memory of John Cooper'' near the crash site, and ringed its base with flowers.
``It's hard to pass by there,'' Linda said. ``It's getting a little easier, but it's still hard. It's like I'm looking for him there, for something comforting.
``But the cross did help, because it felt like I was trying to get the message over to all the other young people, to slow down on that curve.''
The power of that warning spurred Mothers Against Drunk Driving to adopt roadside shrines as part of the group's national campaign. One Texas judge took the idea a step further, sentencing convicted drunken drivers to erect crucitas to their victims.
Alcohol, though, has played a part in few of the deaths enshrined locally. More often, Hampton Roads crucitas sprout along particularly dangerous roads.
Thus, Shore Drive, where more than 70 people have died since 1970, is studded with crosses. International Parkway, curving and heavily traveled by speeders, is marked by a cross dedicated to Michelle Bajowski, a 17-year-old Kellam High School student who died in an accident there in April 1994.
George Washington Highway, a two-lane straightaway on the bank of the Dismal Swamp Canal, has seen dozens of serious accidents in the past 20 years. Near its intersection with Douglas Road in Chesapeake, two small crosses marked only with dates bear witness to the October 1994 accident that killed David Holland and Deborah Tew.
More often than not, local shrines commemorate the death of young people. Along a straight, sparsely populated leg of Elbow Road, a small cross painted ``We Love You Charity'' recalls 16-year-old Charity Boucher, whose body was found on the spot earlier this year.
``When a child has died, just doing simple things, anything, in that child's memory helps get you through the grieving process,'' explained Jerry Drye, whose son, Tracy, was killed on Shore Drive in August 1990.
Grief may motivate friends and family to build the little crosses, but over time the shrines seem to metamorphose into sources of comfort.
The transformation can be a slow one, and it may never be complete. Jerry Drye said he occasionally ties balloons to Tracy's cross, but cannot stay long: ``If I do, I'll get deeper and deeper into depression.''
Vincent Olivieri, Marianne's father, acknowledged that passing his daughter's cross ``is a bittersweet thing.''
``One thing I've learned about the grieving process is that everyone grieves in his own way,'' he said. ``I do see people stopped there. I'll see kids who were classmates of my daughter's.''
``You don't know how to look at it,'' Victoria Matheny said. ``You don't know whether it's a place to go, or a place to avoid.
``I'll drive by and I'll see groups of people stopped there. I was driving by there once and there was a huge number of people over there. There must have been 20, all standing in a circle, holding hands. I'll go over there and I've found letters from their friends, propped up on the crosses.
``You have to understand: I avoid Shore Drive,'' she said. ``It used to be my favorite road. It's not now. It's a hard one for me.
``But people have found comfort in it, somehow.''
Three pairs of crosses to Laine and Marianne now stand under the trees. Mark and Pattie Carroll's original two-by-four monuments have been augmented with a set fashioned from unstained picket, and with the white crosses that now form the shrine's centerpiece.
The spot remains an emotionally loaded one for them, the Carrolls said. But having the place marked, seeing the tragedy acknowledged, sometimes soothes more than it hurts.
``I think it depends a lot on how I'm feeling that day,'' Mark Carroll said. ``Sometimes it'll bring me comfort, the thought that I have a friend up in heaven.
``Sometimes, if I'm feeling good, I'll say, `Hey, Laine.' ''
``I always say that,'' Pattie agreed. ``When I drive by, I'll say, `Hey, Laine. Hey, Marianne.' '' ILLUSTRATION: RICHARD L. DUNSTON COLOR PHOTOS/The Virginian-Pilot
Laine Schroder and Marianne Olivieri, Shore Drive
Nineteen months ago, four Cox High School students sped home from
school. The pavement was wet and their car fishtailed, sliding off
the road into a tree and killing Marianne and Laine.
John Cooper, Knotts Island
``They were going 115 miles per hour. He never had a chance,'' said
John's mother Linda, pictured.
Michelle Bajowski, International Parkway
The 17-year-old Kellam High School student died in an accident here
in April 1994.
KEYWORDS: ACCIDENT TRAFFIC FATALITIES by CNB