DATE: Thursday, March 13, 1997              TAG: 9703120108

SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN             PAGE: 02   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: FACES AND PLACES 

SOURCE: Susie Stoughton 

DATELINE: SUFFOLK                           LENGTH:   68 lines

ONE MOTHER'S HOPE: PREVENTING PAIN OF LOSS

All Pearl Harrell could think of when she heard her son, Rob, had been killed by a drunken driver was that he had been alone when he died.

Later she learned that two women - ``angels on the highway'' - who had been driving behind her son stayed beside him for hours, holding his hand until rescuers could cut apart the car to free him.

``They did not leave until the coroner drove off with him,'' she said.

Robert R. Harrell IV was 31 when he was killed in Jacksonville, Fla., in June 1995.

``But I think it will always be yesterday,'' Harrell said.

She had returned home that night from a family funeral in New York to find all the lights on in her house and cars lining the drive and street.

``It can happen to anybody when you least expect it,'' she said.

She doesn't want such a tragedy to happen to anyone else.

Last week, she participated in a luncheon and fashion show put on by the Suffolk Medical Auxiliary to raise money for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She hoped the event, held in honor of her son, would help raise awareness of the problem of drunken driving.

The man who hit her son had spent that Friday going from bar to bar. He ran into an elderly couple's car first, then struck the median and went airborne. His vehicle crashed into Harrell's windshield ``like a torpedo'' about 5:15 p.m.

The man's blood alcohol content registered .30 when he ran into her son, who was a block from turning off the highway on his way home from work, she said.

She and her husband, Dr. Robert R. Harrell, also have two daughters. Rob was the middle child.

Every year more than 23,000 people die in alcohol-related crashes, according to MADD statistics. In the past five years, 20 people have died in alcohol-related crashes in Suffolk.

Each one is somebody's child, she said. She believes the senseless deaths could be prevented.

``Why did that bartender let him out of there?'' she asked.

A passenger in the drunken driver's car later told her he knew he could have prevented the crash.

``I've got to live with this the rest of my life,'' he told Harrell at the court sentencing, with tears streaming down his face.

Her son, a Nansemond-Suffolk Academy graduate, received a bachelor's degree in history from Virginia Wesleyan College, then worked for Johnson and Johnson Medical Inc., selling medical supplies such as heart monitors to hospitals.

``He was a real people person,'' she said.

Three nights before the wreck, his wife - the former Mary Ann Chatham - had a nightmare.

``Rob died at a young age in her dream,'' Harrell said. ``It was uncanny. They had just been married a year.''

For the next two nights, the couple sat up talking about what he would want her to do if something did happen to him.

``That is what has really helped Mary Ann to go on,'' Harrell said.

``I do think that's got to be some way - some communication - to help people know there's a God,'' she said.

And her faith helps her deal with her own grief.

``I don't understand it,'' she said, ``but I believe there's a plan.''

Part of that plan for her is to try to prevent some other mother from suffering as she has. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

Robert R. Harrell IV was 31 when he died in Florida in June 1995 as

the result of an accident involving a driver who had been drinking.

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