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‘Just as energized as I was the first day’: Bereaved dad turned a personal tragedy into community outreach · Illinois Valley - Shaw Local

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  Speaker 1: Just as energized as I was the first day Bereave
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  Dad turned a personal tragedy into community outreach. Written by
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  Tom Collins, this article is being read by an automated
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  voice brought to you by Everlett. Joshua. John was still
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  grief stricken. His wife and children had been killed only
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  a few months earlier. When he was first asked to
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  speak in two thousand and nine. He was quite nervous
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  about recounting the tragedy. John swallowed hard, stood before a
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  group of high school students, and let it out. On
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  November six, two thousand and eight, a drunk driver collided
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  with his wife's car on Route forty seven and Gardner
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  rode south of Morris. The crash killed John's twenty seven
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  year old wife, Mandy, and their two children. Ryan was
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  not yet four, Caitlin was nine days short of her
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  first birthday. Jan had never done any public speaking before,
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  but Haw's lack of experience proved no option before his
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  test audience in Dwight. It was a terrible story, but
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  a powerful one, he held the room. I felt like
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  I got to introduce my family to people that had
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  never actually met them, Jan said, And I know it's
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  a big part of my healing process being able to
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  give something back and leave something behind. My family's not
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  physically here anymore, but I know that they've impacted so
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  many other people's lives, and after that, I was kind
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  of invigorated to do that more. Jan said, in the
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  middle of two thousand and nine, I started to get
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  asked to do some speaking at victim impact panels. Drunk
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  drivers are prosecuted and then heavily penalized when convicted. They
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  also are required to sit for presentations by men and
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  women who've lost loved ones in alcohol related crashes. Jan
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  eagerly joined a group of bereave speakers, and he's been
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  a regular in Grundy and LaSalle Counties. Kara McConville, victim
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  witness coordinator for the LaSalle County State's Attorney's Office, said
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  John has produced an electric reaction from participants, most of
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  whom are court ordered to attend and disinclined to listen.
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  People have to excuse themselves sometimes because it's such a
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  deeply moving story. McConville said. They have a visceral reaction
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  to him and will sometimes stick around afterwards to share
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  their own stories with him. His story resonates, in part
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  because the details were so shocking. The at fault driver
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  blew through a stop sign in broadsided Mandy and the
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  children at sixty eight miles per hour. The impact ejected
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  the kids out of their car seats and the vehicle.
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  The accident and ensuing court case made headlines across Illinois. Notably,
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  the driver has not yet completed her prison sentence. Anne
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  Marie Getz, now sixty, was sentenced to twenty four years
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  in prison for the fatal crash. She's scheduled for parole
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  in spring twenty twenty nine. Yan proved to be a
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  natural speaker, and with experience, he's learned how to reach
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  some of the harder cases. It's not uncommon for him
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  to walk into the room and find his court quarters
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  listeners with their arms folded gazing at the ceiling, quite
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  ready to tune him out. Far from getting frustrated, John
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  rises to the challenge, you just kind of develop a
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  calm because after you see that so much, you kind
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  of learned to see behind it, he said, a lot
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  of times I can kind of sense by looking at
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  the crowd who needs to hear it the most. I've
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  had some pretty humbling experiences where the roughest guy in
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  the room will come up to me after as everybody's
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  walking out, and he'll be the guy that's in tears.
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  He'll be the guy who wants to shake my hand.
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  I found that it's very important to connect to those
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  people and always ask them their names, and to let
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  them tell me a little bit about themselves. It's a
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  measure of his success that he's been contacted by listeners
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  years after the fact. He's been approached by adult men
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  and women who remembered John speaking at their high schools
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  and who still vividly recall his story. They've even named
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  their own kids after Ryan and Caitlin, he said,