After his son Reid died in a car crash, Tim Hollister helped transform Connecticut’s teen driving laws. The provisions include earlier curfews, no electronic devices, a two-hour teen driving safety course for both teens and their parents and restrictions on who can ride with young drivers.
Evermore is dedicating this Father’s Day week to bereaved dads who will always be fathers.
A teen driver on an unauthorized joy ride. At night. On a road he probably had never driven before. With teenage passengers who needed to get home by their 10:30 p.m. curfew.
“You had a combination of circumstances that was almost guaranteed to end up in a crash,” said Tim Hollister, whose son was behind the wheel.
And it did. In December 2006 on a Connecticut interstate, Hollister’s 17-year-old son Reid was rushing to get his two passengers home, but never made it. After getting too far into a curve, he overcorrected and hit a guardrail, crushing the left side of his chest. His two passengers survived.
It was the beginning of more teen driving deaths in Connecticut. Nine months after Reid’s crash, seven teens died in six weeks. Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell quickly formed a task force to overhaul the state’s teen driving laws, which, at the time, were the most lenient in the country, and appointed Hollister to the task force.
Tim Hollister’s 17-year old son Reid died in a 2006 car crash. Nine months after Reid’s death, seven teens died in car crashes in six weeks. Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell quickly formed a task force to overhaul the state’s teen driving laws, which, at the time, were the most lenient in the country, and appointed Hollister to the task force.
“Basically, in warp speed, … we transformed our teen driver laws into one of the strictest in the country,” Hollister said.
The provisions include earlier curfews, no electronic devices, a two-hour teen driving safety course for both teens and their parents and restrictions on who can ride with young drivers. In the last decade, the law has resulted in a 70 percent reduction in teen driving fatalities in the state, said Hollister, an attorney.
“It’s a remarkable public safety achievement, and states around the country have taken notice,” he said.
A re-education
As the task force wrapped up, however, Hollister continued his study and work to spread the word about the dangers of teen driving.
“When I served on the task force, I got a re-education in safe teen driving and learned that I really, even though Reid had driven crash free for 11 months, that I really had not understood how dangerous teen driving is and why,” he said. “After the task force finished its work, I kept going, reading everything I could get my hands on.”
He launched a blog and eventually wrote “Not So Fast: Parenting Your Teen Through the Dangers of Driving,” which both the Governors Highway Safety Association and the National Safety Council have recognized. A second edition, co-authored with Pam Shadel Fischer, co-founder of the New Jersey Teen Safe Driving Coalition and a longtime transportation safety consultant, came out in 2018.
Hollister also wrote a memoir, “His Father Still: A Parenting Memoir,” which Gayle King endorsed in Oprah Magazine. Proceeds from both books go directly to the Reid Hollister Fund, which supports infant and toddler education in the city of Hartford, Conn.
Can’t just ‘hope for the best’
Hollister said parents often aren’t aware of the dangers of teen driving when their own son or daughter gets behind the wheel.
“Most of the literature that’s available to parents tells you that teen driving is dangerous, but it doesn’t tell them why and what you can do to prevent very predictable situations that most often lead to teen driver crashes,” he said. “It just doesn’t tell them how to work with their teens to make them partners in safety, as opposed to turning them over to a driving school and hoping for the best.”
Hollister recommends a parent-teen driving contract and says parents should be aware of the five biggest dangers for teen drivers that can lead to distracted and dangerous driving. They are other passengers in the car; alcohol and drug use; not planning enough time to get home before curfew; texting and checking electronic devices; and not wearing a seatbelt.
For Hollister, his work on teen driving is focused on preventing another parent from suffering the same grief.
“People ask me, ‘Was it cathartic? Did it help you with your grief?’” he said. “My grief recovery, which was basically all of 2007 and into 2008, was based on the three Fs: faith, family and friends, which I’m blessed to have a lot of.”
“My teen driving advocacy, I think of as a public service,” he said. “I had to put this information out there.”
More information about Hollister and his work is on his website — FromReidsDad.org.
Also read:
Am I Still a Father? — After his son Jon’s death, Ron Kelly helps other fathers live with their grief.
Kelly Farley and Barry Kluger are the dads behind the Parental Bereavement Act.
Evermore is dedicating this Father’s Day week to bereaved dads who will always be fathers.
Kelly Farley and Barry Kluger met because of a horrible coincidence: They knew what it was like to mourn a child.
For Kluger, it was his 18-year-old daughter Erica, who died in a car crash in 2001. For Farley, it was two children — his daughter Katie, who died by miscarriage in 2004, and his son Noah, who was stillborn in 2006.
The two met several years later after Farley launched a blog that covered his own experience grieving the death of his children, and Kluger invited him on his talk radio show.
As they chatted about what they both had been through, the two fathers started talking about finding an issue they could work on together. That discussion eventually turned to better bereavement leave for parents mourning the death of their child. Soon, they became the dads behind the Parental Bereavement Act.
“Your employer will give you three or five days of bereavement leave, if you’re lucky. That’s just not enough time. You bury your child, and you’re expected to get back to work the next day. We didn’t think it was realistic.”
Updating FMLA
Right now, the Family and Medical Leave Act gives eligible employees 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a newborn or a sick family member, but not to grieve a child who has died. And private and public employers aren’t doing much better. An industry survey shows that 69 percent of employers give parents just three days off after a son or daughter dies. It’s barely enough time to plan a funeral.
In 2011, Farley and Kluger crafted the Parental Bereavement Act, an update to the Family and Medical Leave Act that would allow parents to qualify for unpaid leave when a child, who is under the age of 18, dies. Twelve weeks, they say, is not enough time to fully mourn a child, but it’s a start.
“It gives them time to assess what has happened to them and, maybe, start the grieving process,” Farley said.
Not so fast
By the summer of 2011, the two dads got some great news. Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana, introduced the bill in the Senate. They hoped for quick action, which hasn’t come. But the bill has continued to get backing from lawmakers through the years. And, in February, it received bipartisan support in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate.
Supporters said it was time to help grieving parents. Senator Martha McSally, a Republican from Arizona and a co-sponsor of the bill in the Senate, stated in a news release:
“Parents coming to grips with the loss of a child should not have to worry about anything other than taking care of themselves and their loved ones,” said . “It is critically important to ensuring mourning parents have the peace of mind to be able to take the time they need while going through the grieving process.”
Representative Don Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia and a co-sponsor of the House bill, added in his press release:
“Expanding the FMLA to include parental bereavement is the most compassionate action we can take to do something, no matter how small, to help bereaved families. This legislation is a good start to make a positive change and I’m proud to support it.”
The latest endorsements make Kluger and Farley hopeful once more.
“We continue to build momentum and support, and a couple of weeks don’t go by without another senator or another representative signing on,” Kluger said. “We’re hopeful, but we’re looking at the bigger picture because there are so many people who have a stake in this.”
Uphill battle
Despite the bipartisan support in both the House and Senate, the two know that they still have an uphill battle. As the country grapples with an opioid epidemic, mass shootings and other pressing issues, helping bereaved parents isn’t top of mind for many.
Kluger and Farley continue to build momentum and support, and say that a couple of weeks don’t go by without another senator or another representative signing on.
“Bereavement leave is something where people say, ‘That’s a pretty good idea,’ but … the passion is not there,” said Kluger, who wrote a book about his daughter and her death called “A Life Undone: A Father’s Journey Through Loss.”
But, they say, it’s still worth the fight.
“I made it through the dark tunnel, and it is my responsibility to be an advocate for parents who follow in our footsteps,” said Farley, who now travels the country to work with grieving fathers and is the author of the book, “Grieving Dads: To the Brink and Back.”
Say something
To move the bill forward, Farley and Kluger are encouraging more people to speak out. So far, through an online petition, more than 120,000 people have sent messages to their lawmakers in support of the bill. There, parents also are sharing their own experiences after the death of a child.
“Three years ago we lost our first born. My husband received one weekend, then back to work,” wrote one mother. “How can you return to work when your mind and heart are somewhere else completely. We needed more time!”
Another mother wrote that her child’s father was fired for missing work to pick up their son’s ashes.
The two dads also encourage people to directly contact their representatives and share their own stories about why they support the bill, so that it gets the attention it deserves.
“I’m not discouraged,” Kluger said. “But I’ve learned the way it works. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.”
Also read:
Am I Still a Father? — After his son Jon’s death, Ron Kelly helps other fathers live with their grief.
In a new memoir, Once More We Saw Stars, father Jayson Greene vividly recounts the raw feelings after his two-year-old daughter Greta died and his continuous journey through grief.
Evermore is dedicating this Father’s Day week to bereaved dads who will always be fathers.
A stunning accident claimed the life of two-year-old Greta Greene in 2015, when a piece of masonry fell from a building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and struck her in the head.
In a new memoir, Once More We Saw Stars, her father Jayson Greene vividly recounts the raw feelings after the loss, his journey through grief with his wife Stacy, and the couple’s striving toward hope.
Q. You’ve spoken about writing as a tool for survival. Is that what brought you to write this memoir?
A. Journaling is a common approach to grief. I wrote a book because I’m a writer, but writing is an instinctual thing. I mean, I’ve been to Compassionate Friends meetings and other sorts of grief retreats.
People have written pages and pages and pages about their child or their loss, because writing is a profound way to process grief.
Q. How is promoting the book and talking to people and continually retelling the story?
A. It’s cathartic.
Telling the story of what happened to Greta is a way of testifying. I think that’s probably true for many.
One of the things that you do when you go to a grief support group is — because there might be somebody new there every time — you retell the story. And you know, every time you do that, it’s a way of acknowledging that you’ve been marked, because people might sort of intellectually know, ‘oh, yeah, there’s, there’s Jayson, that horrible thing happened — they lost their daughter, and how tragic.”
But in the course of a regular day, it’s not exactly at the surface of your interactions with people. It’s often several layers down. Sometimes you yourself forget the degree to which you are always grieving that person. I’m doing what most grieving parents do in a somewhat different set of circumstances. And through the sort of conduit of a book, and I’ve written the book, and it’s out there, and people are asking to speak to me.
I am grateful for the fact that I’m able to talk about my Greta all the time right now. And there’s a context for it. And there’s a receptive audience for stories about Greta.
There are a lot of people who will listen to me talk about her life, how much we loved her, how much we still love her. And what happened. So in some ways promoting this book has been healing.
Q. What would you like people to know about Greta?
A. She was very talkative from a very early age. She learned how to talk really early on, around 13 or 14 months- words and some sentences -which was startlingly early. But it gave us a chance to hear a lot of what she thought which was very, very meaningful. We feel very lucky to have had that.
She was very opinionated. And she had a really developed sense of humor. She always seemed to be smiling at a private joke.
Q. What does it mean to be a writer finding the right words and language to convey the vast and continuing consequences of grief?
A. As I’ve talked to people, I have learned a lot about the words that we assigned to our feelings. I’m a writer. And that’s basically what I spent my life doing is assigning words to my feelings, I’ve thought about it maybe a little bit more intensely, because it’s been my focus forever.
Healing has been a word that’s meant something to me. I remember thinking about my grief as a massive wound, even right in the days after the accident, My mind seized on this metaphor of wound care — the idea that I had massive life-threatening wound on my body, and if I didn’t spend every single day cleaning it and tending to it, and changing the bandages and applying salve that it would infect and kill me.
That’s what blunt force trauma, emotionally speaking, feels like. That’s what acute shock and catastrophic loss feels like. It is very literally threatening the fabric of your existence.
Everything you’ve ever understood is completely destroyed in an instant and that does feel life threatening. I mean, it is not going to literally stop your heart. But it feels like annihilation, because it erases everything that you thought you knew, it erases all your context.
Q. Jayson has written a Washington Post column about being a grieving parent on Father’s Day and other holidays. He says people struggle to know what to say to grieving parents.
A. People worry so much about what to say to grieving parents.
I always try to say that you’ll never say the right thing because there is no right thing to say what’s most important is that you listen to the person, and that you’re there for them.
The other thing I would say to that person who’s worried about what to say, is that you might step on a landmine. And that’s also not the worst thing that happened to that person that day.
If you’re talking to someone who’s just lost their kid, you saying something dumb is not going to matter. all that much, because they are grieving something so much larger than you, or your concerns about what to say. The only thing you can really, truly offer — the only true currency you have — is yourself. And if they get mad at you, just take it as part of what you can be there for, but they’re processing a lot of feelings. If they momentarily flare up, and you have the strength to absorb that and sit there with it and allow them to work through it, the chances are that they’ll probably vent at you and then soften and say that they’re sorry. And then you can both sit in that together.
Q. As you have what have other grieving parents connected with?
A. The stuff about the shock really speaks to grieving parents, as much as I can tell.
When I was sort of reeling from the loss, I had the nastiest, most poisonous, bitter thoughts I probably ever had in my life. And they’re all very clearly rendered in the book.
I think a lot of people have felt that — it spoke to memories they had. People have found a lot of resonance in some of those feelings — I don’t know that those kinds of feelings have made it to the page in a lot of published books about grief.
Q. What is your favorite passage in the book?
A. Probably the last two pages where I’m talking both to Harrison (his living son, who is now three years old) and to Greta, because it’s such a hard, hard and long journey to the place where I felt like I could hold them both inside of my heart.
I wrote it shortly after Harrison was born, and he was still very new to the world, closer to where Greta was, than he is now. Now, he’s very much of this world, which is a joyful thing. But you know, it also means that there’s distance between who he is and who Greta was. But in that moment, they were very close. And so I felt like I could sort of address them both. And it was maybe the only time in my life I’ll be able to feel that and so being able to capture that feeling and write it. To have it be the last two pages of the book is very meaningful to me.
Also read:
Am I Still a Father? — After his son Jon’s death, Ron Kelly helps other fathers live with their grief.
Camp Erin is the largest national bereavement program for kids and teens ages 6 to 17 who are mourning the death of someone close to them. Photo courtesy of Frank McKenna.
Evermore is giving focus to younger siblings who have suffered the death of a brother or sister. During the summer months, many surviving siblings are away from the structure and support system that school provides. Being with caring adults and peers who share their experience is extremely important. Bereaved parents are often so devastated by the death of their child, they can’t be there for their surviving children in the way they want to and need to be.
To some, Karen Phelps Moyer seems to have immersed herself in sadness and grief. In 2002, Moyer, a mother of eight who lives in southern California, helped found Camp Erin, the largest national bereavement program for kids and teens ages 6 to 17 who are mourning the death of someone close to them.
The free weekend camp serves more than 3,600 campers who attend camp in 53 sessions across 46 locations. There, among others who are mourning, they talk about their loved ones and their grief, and they have some fun too.
It’s one of several efforts Moyer is involved in to support people navigating life’s hardships. Eluna, the nonprofit that runs the camp, was founded in 2000 by Moyer and former Major League Baseball pitcher Jamie Moyer. Eluna runs a series of programs supporting thousands of children and families annually all at no cost to families, including Camp Mariposa, a program for kids affected by a family member’s substance abuse. Moyer has also launched a business to help widows date again.
Karen Moyer co-founded Camp Erin — the largest national bereavement program for kids. “I think that no child should grieve alone. I really believe that and live that,” Moyer said.
For many, discussions about grief and death aren’t easy, but Moyer says she finds hope in her work with those who are struggling.
We checked in with her to learn more about her work with Camp Erin and how grieving children can benefit from attending a grief camp.
Q. How did the foundation come about?
A.I was married to a professional baseball player and through our journey, we were around other people and kids, who were in some type of distress. We met a young woman named Erin through Make-A-Wish and got to be a part of her last two years of her life as she battled cancer. We knew her family. I had known about a [bereavement] camp that was in the area where I grew up in Indiana.
When she was passing, we thought this would be a great way to honor her — to model that camp and name it after her. We were thinking about her sisters as they grieved. So Camp Erin started. We partnered with the hospice that her family had used. And it grew exponentially across the United States and Canada as a model for camp for kids ages 6 to 17 who grieve the loss, sometimes multiple losses, of people close to them.
Q. How do kids experience grieve differently? What’s most difficult for them beyond the loss?
A.I find children to be pretty resilient. I find it depends on how they’ve lost their loved one.
A tragic loss, certainly the suicide losses, are much harder to deal with. We teach them how to memorialize them and how to remember them. We give them an opportunity to say goodbye.
Q. What is it about this issue that has touched you so much that you would want to be around it all the time? Death is a hard thing to talk about for so many.
A.I grew up in a family where my dad’s dad was an undertaker. And when I was with my grandfather when he was passing, I was comforted by hospice.
It does take a unique set of personality traits to comfort these kids, but my whole heart is just with them. I feel their sadness and I’m grateful that there is a place for them to go and have fun and they are getting better and they don’t even realize it.
Q. What tips do you have for parents who are sending their children to a program like yours?
A.Trust the history of what we’ve been doing. Trust the incredible model and that we partner with people who are experts. This is what professionals who work in grief do all the time, working in grief, whether it’s a bereavement organization or hospice.
Karen Phelps Moyer and some campers.
And actually, I think, at the end of the day, there is gratitude because I think when parents are grieving the loss and you are just trying to hold it all together, having their child at Camp Erin becomes a moment where maybe parents can focus on themselves. They know their child is being taken care of, and it’s helpful to them, but also helpful to parents.
The camp is a silver lining in a bucket of sadness.
Q. Are there any specific stories or moments at a camp that you’ve experienced that have really stuck with you?
A.Every time I go to camp, I am touched. And my heart is absolutely filled with these kids and their stories and their sadness and their smiles and their laughter that they get in during those 2 1/2 days at camp.
I’m always touched by the littles. They are as young as six at our camp. Typically, on a Friday, they are pretty exhausted because of their week, but then they get to release these emotions and it turns into fun. I’m very touched by the teens. Who in their teens wants to go to a grief camp? But they come, make friends and now with social media, they can stay in touch. It becomes quite a gift. And I marvel at the kids that come as campers and come back as counselors.
Q. That happens often?
A.Yes, it does. And truthfully, it’s the kids who kicked and screamed when they came to camp … A lot of them are still continuing to heal from sadness that they had losing a loved one when they were younger, but they are giving back. On so many levels, there are so many beautiful things to witness.
Q. What are your hopes for the future of Camp Erin?
A.I think that no child should grieve alone. I really believe that and live that. My hope and my wish is that there are Camp Erins everywhere.
At the same time, as we figure out how to reach more kids, we must recognize that grief is important to discuss and to support on all levels and to sometimes just be a good listener and just be somebody who gives good hugs. That, in and of itself, can go a long way.
In one study grieving parents ranked support groups and psychics as the most helpful in coping with their grief. Photo courtesy of Yeshi Kangrang.
An expert on grief says bereaved parents shouldn’t discount the benefits
One of the most difficult aspects of dealing with the death of a loved one is its finality. Surviving family members may have great difficulty accepting the fact that they will never speak with their loved one again.
Consequently, some bereaved individuals decide to contact a medium. Mediums claim that they can receive messages from deceased loved ones, and act as a channel between people who have died and loved ones who are still alive.
It’s easy to make fun of those who claim to talk to the dead and the people who call on them. Comedian John Oliver laid out plenty of reasons in his February 2019 segment on “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.”
Mediums may appear to make wild — or slightly educated — guesses. In one case aired on NBC’s Today show a medium suggested that fishing was an important hobby for former NBC anchor Matt Lauer. Oliver later revealed that information was easy to find with a simple Google search looking for information about Lauer and his deceased father.
And they can be wrong — and hurtful. While in captivity, Amanda Berry, a teen who was kidnapped and helped captive for a decade, watched in horror as a psychic on The Montel Williams Show told her mother that she was dead. Williams later apologized, but Berry’s mother died believing her daughter was no longer living.
In this 20-minute segment, Oliver says mediums are simply “ventriloquizing the dead” and part of a “vast underworld of unscrupulous vultures.”
Camille Wortman, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Stony Brook University, agrees that the world of psychics and mediums is rife with con artists.
But in her decades-long work with grieving people, she sees another side to the story. A study, which backs up her own experience working with the bereaved, shows that mediums and psychics also can help grieving people — even more than therapists, grief counselors and clergy.
Wortman believes that destigmatizing the topic of visiting with mediums could help bereaved parents recognize that even just one or two sessions could play a big role in their healing.
Wortman considers herself a John Oliver fan. But, she said, “for the sake of entertainment, he put material out there that can be very damaging.”
‘I can’t wait to tell you. I went to a medium’
Wortman is a longtime expert on grief and bereavement with a special focus on how people react to the sudden and traumatic death of a loved one. Her interest in the grief process started, she said, at the age of four when her father died.
Bereavement expert Camille Wortman says her experience with parents left her very interested in grief and very driven to understand more.
“Nobody ever talked about it. Nobody dealt with it on an overt level,” she said. “It left me very interested and very driven to understand more.”
Much of Wortman’s work has been with bereaved parents. And, in her work, she began to notice that many of them visited with a medium. Wortman had no feelings or beliefs about mediums, but the parents talked of very positive outcomes.
Consider the case of Joan, a friend of Wortman’s. Joan’s college-aged son, David, was murdered on his way home from soccer practice. Wortman was there to help her during those early days, connecting her with a therapist. But the mother’s pain was still raw, even a couple of years later.
Wortman, however, noticed a big change one day during a phone call. “For the first time, Joan’s voice sounded different,” she said. “There was a little bit of an upnote to her voice. I wondered what was going on. She said, ‘Camille, I can’t wait to tell you. I went to a medium.’”
Joan told Wortman that during the session, the medium immediately said David wanted to see his wallet, which only Joan knew she’d been carrying in her purse since the day he died. Among other details, the medium also knew that David had a tattoo on his foot with two wings and that his favorite food was sauerkraut.
And, finally, as the session wrapped up, the medium told her David wanted to tell her one more thing: “‘Don’t worry. You’ll always be my number one girl.” It was something David would tell his mom before he’d go on a date.
“This encounter with the medium jump-started her healing, which was going nowhere,” Wortman said. “And she is gradually moving in a positive direction in terms of moving forward with her life. I’ve noticed that of many parents.”
Wortman said she’s heard many stories like Joan’s. “The one thing I am struck by is what a powerful effect it has and how immediate those effects are,” she said.
What the research says
Research backs up Wortman’s discussions with Joan and other grieving parents. A 2012 study, described in the book “Devastating Losses: How Parents Cope With the Death of a Child to Suicide or Drugs,” found that grieving parents ranked support groups and psychics as the most helpful in their grief, followed by grief counselors; psychologists, social workers and psychiatrists, and members of the clergy.
In the study, about 30 percent of parents visited with psychics during the first four years after their child died.
Another 2014 study also found that grieving people reported lower levels of grief after a reading when compared to a visit with a mental health professional.
Wortman surmises that a conversation with a medium can be helpful because it addresses an underlying worry for a grieving parent that a traditional therapist can’t address: Is their child really gone?
“It conveys that their child still exists in some form,” she said. “That’s terribly important. And it conveys that the child is OK. The child is not hurting, not calling out for them. This enables them to put more attention on other important aspects of their life, such as their marriage, their other children, and their job.”
If you’re considering consulting with a medium after the death of a child, Wortman has some tips.
Ask around
If you know other bereaved parents who have had an experience with a medium, talk to them about it, she said. Learn about how a reading may have helped or hurt.
Don’t fall for a scam
Don’t fall for somebody who is out to simply get your money. “Give it full consideration, but be careful how you go about it,” she said.
Some therapists are critical of mediums, but others see the benefits, Wortman said. “Certainly, we need a therapist who does not sit in judgment of mediums and who can have empathy for the reasons a person might go to a medium and can help the person understand the impact of it,” Wortman said.
“They can help you process it,” she said. “And that’s really terribly important.”
