$5.4
Million Can't Replace Family's Loss
Akron Beacon Journal
March 3, 1998
by: Regina Brett
To anyone else,
$5.4 million would seem like a windfall.
To Vicky and Denny
Moore, the money means nothing.
"We don't care
about the money. We don't want to get rich over this," Vicky
said. "It's blood money to us."
Conrail paid them
the money last week after the Ohio Supreme Court approved
punitive damages the jury awarded when it found the rail
company partly responsible for the death of the Moores' 16
year-old son, Ryan.
Two other Northwest
High School teens died in that March 25, 1995, accident when
a Conrail train slammed into their car at a crossing that
had no warning lights, stop signs or gates.
Alyson Ley, 16,
of Clinton, and Joshua White, 17, of Canal Fulton, were also
killed. Ryan's brother, Jason, and passengers Jennifer Helms
and Rebecca White were injured in the accident on Deerfield
Avenue on the Stark-Wayne county line.
With the blood money,
the Moores have purchased angels wings. They donated their
$5.4 million to create Angels On Track, a foundation that
pays for railroad warning gates and lights to save lives.
"The only thing
you can go to court and sue for is money, but there's not
enough money in this world to take away the pain," Vicky
said.
"We wanted
to make the railroad pay for what they should be responsible
for," Vicky said. "Conrail is doing what we felt
they should in the first place."
During the lawsuit,
what hurt most were comments from people who criticized the
Moores for "trying to get rich."
Those people have
no idea about the pain the Moores experience each time they
discuss railroad safety. The Moores have started a Railroad
Task Force in Stark County, which will meet at 7pm March
11 at the Stark Regional Planning Commission at 201 3rd St.
NE, Canton.
While pursuing their
lawsuit, the Moores discovered the system to install already
approved crossing gates is fatally slow. The crossing where
their son died had been approved for gates and lights five
months before their son died.
The devices weren't
installed until eight months after his death.
Communities need
to be aggressive and identify their own dangerous crossing,
Vicky said.
"There should
be no doubt in your mind when a train is coming down the
track," she said.
Her son Jason, now
21, never saw the train that hit the car he was driving.
He was just 18 when he stopped at the tracks, looked for
a train and proceeded across.
"He's held
it all inside,"
Vicky said. "He lost his only brother and two of his closest
friends. I can't imagine what he feels inside."
"There's no
such thing as closure. It never leaves you. From the time
you get up until you go to bed,"
she said. "I lost one son and the other turned into an
adult whose problems I couldn't understand. I don't have any
kids at home anymore. I went from a house full of teenagers
with the phone ringing all the time to silence.
"I might start
to cry,"
she apologized. "Oh, he had dimples so big it looked like
they were drilled in. He did things that drove me nuts, just
like any teenager, but he was a sweet kid who went out of his
way not to hurt anyone's feelings."
She started to sob. "I
took it for granted I'd see the kids grow up. I realize now," she
said, pausing to compose herself, "that I didn't appreciate
what I had, and I'd give anything to have all that back."
Ryan would have
graduated this year.
"There's no
graduation. He never drove a car," she said. "He
never got to have a steady girlfriend or a job."
The award money
brings her no consolation.
Some people have
asked, "Aren't you over this yet? It's been three years."
"You get over
a cold, you get over the flu, she said. "You don't get
over losing a child."
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