June 8, 2005 has now become a darkened date for the O’Bryan family. For on this night, their household was awakened by a dreadful call that changed their entire lives forever. At 10:30PM, the house phone rang and the patriarch of the family, Richard O’Bryan, leapt out of bed, answered, woke up his wife, Cheryl, and quickly got dressed.
Unable to fully comprehend what he heard on the other line, Richard and Cheryl alerted their second eldest daughter, Hollie (19), and told her to watch her younger sister, Leah (10).
Leah was awoken by the commotion, the scrambling, the confusion, and was moved into her parent’s bedroom by her dad. Half asleep, she still did not understand what was happening and went back to bed. Her parents did not want to scare her, so they kept what had happened to her oldest sister from her knowledge. Knowing that her older sister was in danger, Hollie rushed to the hospital after her parents and left her younger sister with a friend.
On the other end of the phone call was a Weymouth, Massachusetts police officer telling Mr. O’Bryan to get to South Shore Hospital as soon as he could because Jill O’Bryan(20), their oldest daughter, had been in a car accident.
Jill O’Bryan was hit head on by a drunk driver while sitting in the passenger seat of a friend’s car coming home from getting ice cream at Friendly’s on route 18 in Weymouth, Massachusetts.
Jill’s friend, the driver of the car, was rushed to the hospital, and thankfully taken home the next day with a broken leg and arm. Jill, on the other hand, was not.
Hollie described her feelings that night, “I was worried for my big sister and did not know or expect the injuries that were going to be told to us (their family members) once we got to the hospital. Once I actually saw her and realized how severe her injuries were, my worries instantly turned to a lot of anger.”
Did you know that every two minutes a drunk driving accident occurs in the United States?
The drunk driver, Thomas, was coming home from work at a local liquor store known as Rosie’s, in Abington, Massachusetts. Rosie’s was where Henry was giving away free wine samples, and took too many for himself on the job. A three time DUI (Driving while Under the Influence) offender, who should have had license revoked many times ago, proved that the Massachusetts State Laws dealing with drunk drivers needed to be tougher. The illegal limit is .08 and Henry was three times over the limit at .24.
Jill remembers little from that night and said, “I just remember smoke coming from the car and people stopped and tried to help me and my friend out of the car.”
Did you know that on average, a drunk driver has driven drunk 80 times before their first arrest?
A parent’s worst nightmare, Richard and Cheryl arrived on the scene of the accident because it just so happened that it was on the road they took to get to the hospital.
Richard commented on the moment he and his wife were driving by the accident scene, “I saw a sea of blue and red lights. It was horrific. We knew that the girls had been taken to the hospital, but something made us stop and my wife and I just had to look at the cars. I saw police pulling bottles of alcohol out of the man’s car and setting beer can after beer can on his roof. I was in a state of shock because at this point of time I did not realize they were in that bad of an accident and when I saw the cars it made it more real, more horrific.”
In the hospital, Jill’s medical record read her injuries: two broken feet, a shattered femur, a fractured pelvis, seven broken ribs, a punctured lung, a collapsed lung, a broken nose, and internal bleeding. Her chances of survival at this time were sadly limited.
Because of the impact and angle of the car, her right knee and foot were completely shattered. This caused her to have an external fixator (metal rods, almost like a cage, going through her leg to keep it together) in her leg to hold it all together, on top of having a breathing tube, and tubes in her chest.
Jill stated emotionally, “I remember waking up in the hospital bed with metal rods in my leg. I was confused and scared. My dad was there and he told me sort of what was going on.”
Describing how he felt while his oldest daughter was in the hospital, Richard said, “I was with Jill 24/7 for three months, in the hospital. I felt like I never slept, because I was so worried and focused on my daughter. I was her advocate and had to be there as her father and as someone who could physically and verbally fight for her. I was making sure I was communicating with everyone; the nurses, the doctors, everyone, to make sure she was getting the right care.”
Jill spent a total of 96 days in the hospital, has had over 27 surgeries and counting, including a full knee replacement, spent eight months wheelchair bound, missed a year of college, and racked up about a half a million dollars in medical bills.
This accident also resulted in Jill to lose her gall bladder, as she was not eating and was weighing in at about 90 pounds, infusion of her feet, and resulted in her having a long metal plate and screws in her leg and feet. Finally able to come home after a little over three months, she was not the same person she was when she left for ice cream months ago.
Richard and his brother, Rob O’Bryan, spent their Fourth of July weekend building a ramp so Jill could get in and out of her home easily while in a wheelchair. Once settled, Jill slept in a hospital bed in her living room with a curtain dividing the living room and the kitchen. She had to shower on the back deck with a hose, because she could not be carried upstairs to the bathroom because of her broken ribs, feet, and leg.
This accident affected Jill physically, mentally and emotionally, but it also became a ripple effect for her entire family. Her father, Richard, had to leave his job of twenty plus years to take care of his daughter, which resulted in his wife picking up more hours at work, leaving his middle child, Hollie, to take on a parenting role and help his youngest daughter, Leah, who also had take on a new role and mature at a very young age.
Leah said, “I was young, but I vividly remember the night we got the call. I was confused, scared, shocked, I was a lot of things. That summer I was not like a regular ten year old. I went to visit my sister in the hospital every single day in Boston, and when she came home I helped bathe her, move her from the car, to the wheelchair, to her bed and do other things. It was a learning experience for myself, hard to see my sister in that shape, and hard to see my parents and other sister go through so much. I felt like I grew up fast that summer.”
Because of this accident, the O’Bryans were more informed about an issue that has been around for years, drunk driving. People say you do not truly understand something until it happens to you or a loved one. Jill’s accident headlined in a local newspaper because it was an issue that needed to be heard and while she was suffering in the hospital, the man who did this to her was out roaming free, because he refused a breathalyzer and the authorities let him go.
Did you know that on average, every 53 minutes someone is killed in a drunk driving accident in the United States?
Seeing the article in the newspaper, Ron Bersani, from Marshfield, Massachusetts contacted the O’Bryan family and told them his story. Bersani’s granddaughter, Melanie Powell, was hit and killed by a drunk driver at just the age of thirteen, crossing the street coming from a birthday party, in the middle of the day by a repeat offender. She died on the way to the hospital. Greatly affected by this tragic accident, the Powell’s and Bersani decided to lobby at the Massachusetts State House to try and pass a bill in Melanie’s name into a law, to toughen drunk driving laws, especially laws for repeat offenders.
^ Melanie Powell
Did you know that each day, people drive drunk almost 300,000 times, but less than 4,000 people who do so get arrested for it.
Jill and her family decided to take action and joined Bersani and the Powell’s, along with other family’s who were affected by drunk driving accidents, to help make Melanie’s Bill become Melanie’s Law. All coming together at a hearing at the state house, everyone told their story. The bill went to former Massachusetts State Governor Mitt Romney and he denied it, not because he did not like it, but because he believed that the bill could be stronger than what was presented in front of him.
After adjustments had been made to the bill, on October 28th, 2005 Melanie’s Bill was signed and became Melanie’s Law. A victory for all the families who came together to pass the bill, it was something they were all proud of.
Melanie’s Law’s main purpose is to toughen the laws for “Repeat OUI Offenders.” It results in automatic loss of license for refusal of the breathalyzer, an increased loss of license period with each conviction, and implements the rule that repeat offenders must have an interlock ignition device installed in their car after each conviction. The time period is longer depending upon how many prior OUI’s the drunk driver may have. The goal of the device is to protect the public and the driver. This technology has proven to be the best deterrent to date in keeping repeat offenders from repeating again.
Richard O’Bryan stated, “I believe that Melanie’s law is not about punishing the drunk drivers, it is there to save lives. Theirs and others.”
Once implemented, Melanie’s Law enforced about over ten thousand ignition interlock devices and over time it has stopped the habitual drunk drivers from drunk driving again because of it. It is truly making a difference in the state of Massachusetts.
Finishing college in 2008 after taking a year off due to the accident, Jill graduated with a degree from Suffolk University and is now a radiation therapist at Newton-Wesley Hospital. Over a decade has passed since the accident and Jill is now a new mother with a four-month-old baby girl named Mckenzie, and is happily married, residing in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Still feeling pain from her accident, she never will forget what she went through because it made her a stronger individual because she never gave up.
As for Thomas, the drunk driver, he only received two years behind bars because the accident he caused occurred before Melanie’s Law was implemented.
And the O’Bryan’s, overcoming this tragic event in their lives, they look back on June 8, 2005 as a date of fright, heartache and struggle, but they also see it as the beginning of something bigger than themselves. Being a part of the process to help pass Melanie’s Bill into law and save lives is truly a great accomplishment and they are all proud to have helped make it a reality.
Jill was faced with an extreme hardship at such a young age. She could have given up and let go, but she was determined to not let what happened to her change the person she was and her life. She persevered, kept going and proved to be a strong individual and chose to help pass a state law that is now saving lives.
Jill said, “I just realized I had two choices, to either give up and feel sorry for myself or to work hard at rehabilitating myself and take my life back from the man that took it from me.”
My oldest sister Jill, she chose the second one.
*The drunk driver's name was changed in the making of this article for privacy.
