Speaker Strikes a Chord with Alcohol Awareness Message

Five best friends and fraternity brothers Aaron, Pete, Jim, Darren and Mark drank and drove 100 miles per hour to an empty bar, near a Sanibel Island, FL, condo they were staying at for spring break in 1994.

Fifteen minutes later, three of them would be dead.

Dressed casually in an untucked shirt and jeans, Mark Sterner told his story at Brown Auditiorium at an Avon Old Farms School lecture series Saturday and showed video footage of the tragedy.

As seniors in college just months away from graduation, the five sat around for five days having fun in the sun and drinking alcohol during spring break, and on the sixth day they let the "least drunk" person drive after drinking beer and rum at the condo, and then some more at a bar. 

Sterner was that driver.

Less than two miles from their destination, Sterner drove the car's right front wheel off the edge of the road and couldn't control the vehicle. The car spun back across the road, flipped over and landed in a ditch.

Debris and bodies were spread across 200 yards of the accident scene. No one in the car had worn a seatbelt. Jim was the first to be found dead at the scene, and Aaron also died, crushed by the vehicle. Darren, who was found alive, told rescue workers to keep looking for his two other friends. After combing the woods, they found Pete, who was dead, and then Mark, who was barely alive.

Sterner had nine broken ribs and a broken pelvis; tree branches had caught in his arm and leg. He had lost a third of the blood in his body. For two weeks, he remained mostly unconscious with a tube down his throat and a neck and back brace.

Although Sterner said it was later determined that his blood alcohol level was 0.17 and the others’ were around 0.22 and higher, he was still impaired.

Students watched the video, wincing at the pictures of the totally demolished car. Sterner slipped behind the stage, appearing moments later dressed in a prison-issued orange jumpsuit, sparing no details as he continued his story.

His nightmare had been far from over and when he regained consciousness after the accident, police appeared at his bedside. With his father sobbing next to him, police arrested him on three counts of DUI manslaughter, “for killing my friends,” Mark told the students.

“I had hoped to be the first in my family to graduate college. But I became the first in my family to go to prison.”

Life is about making choices

He spent three years in a maximum-security prison in Florida, among violent criminals who beat him up and made him fear for his life every day. His life now is a personal crusade dedicated to speaking to students — mostly college kids — telling them his story.

“The only thing I can do is this,” he said, referring to his talk, “so you never have to live with my pain, my guilt, and my nightmares.”

He gave only one statistic: In drunken driving accidents, more people die being the passenger and not the driver.

Sterner has spoken to more than 2 million people across the United States. His central message to students is, before you get in a car when you or your friends have been drinking, choose to walk or call a cab. Even better, before you go out, decide who will be the one that night to not drink, and to drive.

“Life is all about choices,” Sterner concluded. “What kind of choices will you make?”

Students find talk powerful

Following his talk, the students, in a smart/casual dress code of collared shirts and khakis or cords, filed out of the room in a sober mood.

“I thought it was really powerful,” said Sam Feibel, a junior. “It was really insightful,” agreed junior Michael Nicolia. Senior A.J. Bauer said he found the presentation “authentic.”

The boys were moved when Headmaster Kenneth LaRocque said afterward that he planned to tuck money into his son’s wallet for emergency purposes, like calling a cab.

“Like our headmaster said, it’s so much smarter to call a cab,” said Nicolia.

 Kevin Driscoll, dean of students at the school, said he purposely brought Sterner to the school at this time, before the students head off on spring break March 8.

“The kids are going places with their friends, and I thought a powerful message should be sent out at this time,” said Driscoll.

For information on how to book Mark Sterner as a speaker, visit www.campuspeak.com.