Nov. 01--KINGSTON -- Each parent buried a son lost to drugs.
Each knows the pain. Each vowed to find a way to spare others the same loss.
"What we try to do is to educate our young people," said Doug Jackson, whose son Josh died 10 years ago of an overdose at age 19. "Children are not supposed to die before their parents. There's a sense of shame, a sense of failure. You've got a lot to deal with, but you can. You can do it slowly. You can get satisfaction by helping other people."
Jackson helped found the Roane County Anti-Drug Coalition after his son's death. He came together with Donna Forstrom and Cathy Day four years ago to organize the Positive Peer Pressure program in Roane County high schools. The program teaches about the dangers of drug abuse and offers alternatives to using drugs, with programs that range from sports to building floats for the local Christmas parade.
"It's in all of our families, whether we know it or not," said Forstrom, whose son Clayton Smith died at age 17 in 2003 from a fentanyl overdose. "It's the most helpless feeling in the world when you know your child is using drugs. You have a child who needs your help. As a parent, you're supposed to provide for their needs, and you can't. I had a feeling if it could happen to Clayton, it could happen to all kids."
Day knows the feeling. She taught Smith in math at Oliver Springs High School and attended his funeral, three years after her son, Tony Ormandy, died while using crack.
"Kids are more responsive when it's their peers telling them about a problem," Day said. "They think they know what they're doing. But if they can get with their friends and see they can have fun without being high, I think that reaches them."
All three parents saw the need for action in a county where overdoses outnumber all other accidental causes of death.
"From 2001-2007, we had 16 teenagers in Roane County who died of overdoses," Jackson said. "We had situations here where kids were snorting cocaine on their desks at school. We had kids carried out on stretchers from school for overdoses. There was a party in 2004 where three people died. We had the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program in school through the fifth grade, but after fifth grade there was no alcohol or drug education at all."
The parents believe their work made a difference. Roane County still loses lives every year, but not a teenager since 2007.
The parents wonder how long that streak will last.
Forstrom founded Clayton's Lesson, a nonprofit that works to educate parents as well as students and has held vigils in memory of overdose victims. She believes her son's example hasn't gone cold.
"I do sometimes feel like my story's getting old," Forstrom said. "But when I'm actually speaking to the kids, I don't get that feeling. I don't think they realize the consequences. They don't understand. Clayton certainly didn't. I would say as much as 75 percent of the hundred-plus students in that graduating class were using when Clayton died. Some stopped. Most went back to using and became addicts."
The parents know their battle won't get any easier as the years pass. They say they're prepared to press on.
They believe they owe their children at least that effort.
"Some families in our situation take the attitude that it's over and done with," Jackson said. "But I felt like if we put our heads in the sand, other people were going to do the same thing. We can all work together. Maybe it's just kids who want to get out of class, but if we explain the potential hazards, there's at least a chance more kids won't do that, as opposed to doing nothing."
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