Madd Remembers Those Lost To Scourge Of Alcohol Litany Of Names Read As Loved Ones Share Their Pain At Candlelight Vigil

It was cold, and their knuckles were white with it.

Saturday night’s sharp air wasn’t the best for outside singing, but not one of the 25 or so who clutched candles outside Gonzaga University dropped one. They were too precious for that: symbols of loved ones gone too soon.

It was the annual Mothers Against Drunk Driving “Candlelight Vigil of Remembrance,” where friends and family of those slain by drunken drivers tried to both grieve and make a difference for others.

“We ask you to send your angels to comfort these survivors,” said Spokane police chaplain Jim Murphy. A siren wailed somewhere as he prayed.

“We lost our mothers and brothers and sisters and children,” said Washington State Patrol Lt. Bruce Clark.

“Don’t think for a minute we’re not in a war.” The only difference, he said, is that the victims in this one never enlisted. Each year in the United States, about 19,000 people are killed in alcohol-related crashes, he said. Someone dies every 30 minutes.

Clark has been a trooper for 25 years, and he’s hauled in his share of drunks. But the ones no one caught are the ones he really recalls.

“The one that sticks in my mind is going to a house on Christmas Eve,” he said. He remembers walking up to the house, seeing the silhouette of a woman pass the shadow of the holiday tree in the window. Her husband had gone to an office Christmas party that night, drank too much, then drove into a tree and died.

His wife opened the door and saw Clark - and she knew.

Ross and Arlene Davenport know what’s like on the other side of the door. Ross lost his brother three years ago; he died when a drunken driver smashed into him with a logging truck. The driver had nine times the legal limit of alcohol in his veins, and he was driving 70 mph in a 35-mph zone. It was the man’s fourth drunken driving arrest.

“He left a wife and four grandchildren,” Ross said of his brother. “He’ll never see them grow up.”

The names of the dead were read, candles lighted one by one. Everyone sang a song originally written for a victim memorial service.

“We’ll remember you,” went the last verse. And a block away, the church bell rang.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: FATALITIES Each year in the United States, about 19,000 people are killed in alcohol-related crashes.