VOICES

January1989

SHE GAZED OUT OF THE UNCOVERED WINDOW at the ice and snow of Michigan's January. The tiny campus apartment was a relief after the six short months she had been transposed from her licensed career as a realtor in one of the wealthiest counties in the state of Michigan to a student on Eastern Michigan University's campus. Although she applied to several others, MARYGROVE COLLEGE, WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY and MADONNA College... a two year campus that she would need to file for transfer from, keep connection with her course instructo/county judge/new friend; and the newly licensed attorney instructor from the classes registered for. The first four year campus to return was EMU. Eastern's campus was the more open road which would let her avoid a jumble of directions in her mind. She was transposed to being a student, living on campus, squandering for a roof over her head. With the approval for admission and start of class in September 1988, Carmen... I... the she at this story's heart... drove the sixty miles south to confirm approval for enrollment and begin the necessary steps to attend classes. Despite the agonizing pain of a freshly fractured skull, I... she drove with her daughter in the passenger seat beside her and to the reluctance of her father's Pontiac SSE Limited to what would be the final ruination of her and her two children's lives. Her sixteen year old daughter, Juanita, was unusually aware of traffic about them and nervous for her mother's condition; but rode silently with her favorite selection on the radio. She was a very necessary escort of late. Although she was not yet licensed, it was with thanks to Mrs. Love, the Southfield High School advisor, that Juanita had already taken the driving instructions course. The first thing they had done on arrival in Southfield was to get her state identification while her mother transferred driver's license to the new state; and new eyeglasses... the prescription filled for her daughter during her mother's own appointment after the September 1987 military accident. Her new glasses came along from PearleVision... her mother's first focus upon landing in the new home space. Juanita had worn glasses, however resentfully, since age six. As co-driver, she needed to be attentive.

FEBRUARY1988

HER... my DIVORCE CAME FINAL, she... I would not have to fear revenge assault by an absentee husband. There shouldn't be any chase after me throes from past co-workers, male or female, that resented her for whatever reason. Her daughter was out of reach for any attack from high school classmates that she was not blending into the atmosphere of; and her son would be joining the household on a permanent basis at close of this freshman school year in May. She was finishing up the "Real Estate Continuing Education annual retraining course for licensing in the new state and located a National Guard unit for completion of her agreed enlistment term... 197th Civil Engineers... reattached to the new unit with approval of the Illinois National Guard Headquarters Command. As she awaited detachment orders and follow-up orders from the new military unit, she began attending regular appointments by Veteran Affairs at the Ann Arbor Veterans Hospital for neural damage. The head of house insisted she do more than sit... take a class in something. At that insistence that she enroll in classes and work, she registered in Real Estate Law and two Legal Assistance courses at Madonna College on Schoolcraft Road... not far from home. Despite the frequent popping of amitriptyline for dizziness and pain pills for the massive head pain during class at the college and the Real Estate School, she passed efficiently until her thought processes stopped. Orders issued from the new military base unit 127 TFW unit sent her to Texas on August 21st, prior to the initial benefits claim assessment and interview scheduled for August 29th. Texas orders delayed entry into the accepted month and year... September 1988... college courses at Eastern Michigan University by five months making her ineligible for the Real Estate Masters Degree program she'd been accepted to. She was pushed out but accepted to a Geography program, choosing the best related major... LAND USE PLANNING and ANALYSIS dual degree; she'd need to complete forty-four credit hours to graduate. She could not remember short-term information for longer than a few hours or less. She would live on what she already had within the inner folds of her brain. Life became a blur of military orders and field notes.

OCTOBER1987

With, Dion, her teenage son still at the School for the Deaf in Illinois, yet waiting to move with his mother and sister. She frantically arranged school and housing among her open end plans to work as a licensed realtor. she... I, would have to repeat state law and exam to work in Michigan.

SEPTEMBER1987

September drill was concluded. The last one she would need to attend before tying into the new state agenda. Her next drill date would be with the Air National Guard. Her distance drive to keep on course for the six-year enlistment contract would not be broken by her and she would not be labeled AWOL.They'd had a smooth session of scrambling and unscrambling coded messages and transferring same through connected channels, the routine procedure of their military section. "Let's pack up," couldn't be heard too soon, the weekend had been a nasty one. Rain poured the entire stay so that vehicles were stuck in the mud and muck of the training area they'd come to so often. The rig holding communication encoding equipment had to be freed from its weekend lodging space by pry bar and brute strength; but it was worked free and set out for home with all the other vehicles. It was a smooth trip... a ride in an alternate deuce than originally assigned, but smooth. She and the driver were both riding the vehicle that had to be freed from worst of the bog, towing one of several generators and hauling the encryption code cache. One quarter mile from the exit and home base, the front tire blew on the driver's side sending the truck careening across six lanes of expressway and back again to the median and throwing parts of it.. the 64K Generator... across the median into oncoming traffic in the southbound side of the highway.

SGT SANCHEZ was dispatched from the accident site to accompany the female soldier... me, to the hospital from the southbound side of the highway. He stood by and vocalized all details of the accident and retrieved correspondence of injury and medical reports for military record and for her future reference. He was assigned to follow up on a later medical procedure as escort when she was mandated a return trip to GREAT LAKES HOSPITAL for VETERAN AFFAIRS. He was a godsend for his dedication to collecting records pertinent to the incident and consoling a shattered female soldier. That was one day he was at his best. Without his there to steady my steps and stance I probably would not have made it thru that first day. Sanchez... a first responder.

I was told much later, in January of 1988, that the driver had to be cut from the wreckage on I-55 and that he was taken to a different hospital at the end of our northbound run. North only one quarter of a mile from the devastation. He was pronounced dead on arrival sometime after being freed from the wrecked military truck and arrival at the emergency room at Loyola Hospital in Chicago. We had crossed the lanes of traffic after the tire blew and after the vehicle veered to the side of the road on the passenger's side where a gaping material handling service pit... a limestone dig, awaited anything coming to its hell gate. We veered away from it due to some miracle and crossed all lanes of traffic behind or in front of us. Veered back to the median flipping and skidding over 1000 feet shearing off signs set for safe driving and scraping up gravel that could give one hell of a facial to anyone not forewarned to "raise your neck up" I heard that in the crash or in my unconscious state after hitting my head on something. I didn't see much except the mess of green, the gravel pit and trucks far below. Nothing except the road on the wrong end of tires going overhead and pavement and gravel and sheared street signs that nearly caught my eye.. my face.. and then nothing until Susan called my name and I crawled out to the side of the road and oncoming traffic. I didn't see anything that I would want to remember. But I did wonder much later. I wondered where was the soldier who insisted on riding in the back of the truck that I was not supposed to have been passenger... co-driver to, that day. There's been somewhat of an echo in my mind ever since. Voices talking, but none so sweet as that of my grandmother... deceased three years prior... telling me to hold my neck up in that upside down truck. I obeyed her. I'm alive.

AMEN

I was inadvertently ordered to safer driving practices and forwarded a bill for the damage to the 2 1/2 ton truck, equipment rig and generator on a trailer. I was hounded by one of the investigating officers. It was the second accident in a military rig driven by a co-enlistee. The incidents and vehicle drivers of a 1986 military accident driver that caused a head-on collision with a pick-up truck at Marsailles and the 1987 military accident driver on the I-55 near Brookfield were intermingled by state police and appointed incident investigation team members during the state Inspector General's (IG) investigation summary.