Prom Promise warns students against impaired driving

HARPERSFIELD TOWNSHIP – The Safe Communities Prom Promise rally at SPIRE Academy on Friday, April 17, brought hundreds of local students together to pledge against underage drinking, drug use and distracted driving during prom season, with the event featuring a dramatic, staged car crash to demonstrate the dangers of impaired driving.
The Prom Promise is a student pledge to remain alcohol- and drug-free, avoid distracted/impaired driving and wear seatbelts during prom, supported by schools, MADD and insurance carriers to ensure a safe, memorable night. It was hosted by InSpire Traffic Safety and Ashtabula County Safe Communities.
Prom Promise showcased a number of speakers and first responders from across northeast Ohio, bringing in students from the Cardinal, Jefferson, Southington, Grand Valley, Pymatuning Valley, Conneaut, Geneva, Buckeye and Brookfield school districts, as well as students from SPIRE Academy and Christian Faith Academy in Ashtabula Township.
Len Barker, a former Major League Baseball pitcher who played from 1979-83 with the Cleveland Indians (now Guardians), warned the assembled students to take their pledge seriously.
“It takes one mistake to change the rest of your life,” he said.
He went on to say students should enjoy the season and not to “throw your life away.”
Brian Rosenburg, 34, an inpatient counselor at Glenbeigh, was the keynote speaker. He is a Jefferson Area High School graduate, a former class officer and high school football player who went on to study finance and accounting at the University of Toledo.
He said he’d gone to a similar event prior to his senior prom, but the message hadn’t sunk in, despite the stern warnings and the participation of student-led programs, such as DARE.
“My thought was, ‘It’s not going to happen to me,’” Rosenburg said.
His senior prom was not tragic, and he went on to study hard, travel and have fun on the weekends while he was an undergraduate. His grades earned him an internship with a major financial firm in Detroit, and an employment offer to start after the summer following his graduation.
On Friday, Feb. 14, 2014, Rosenburg went out drinking with some coworkers. The next thing he remembers is waking up the following Sunday in the hospital after spending days in a medically-induced coma.
Rosenburg had approached an intersection in Toledo at 60 miles per hour. He slammed into the rear of a stopped car being driven by Judith Crawford, 47, of Toledo. She died a month later from injuries she’d suffered in the crash.
“It all came crashing down,” Rosenburg said. “All these statistics (and) videos we show, became my reality.”
During his remarks, Rosenburg returned to a wish that he could sit down with his 18-year-old self and explain, “there’s more to that story, what follows the crash and news stories.”
Rosenburg served seven years in the Allen Oakwood Correctional Institution in Lima before being paroled. He found there were substantial barriers to reentering society and the workforce, given his felony conviction and a lifetime driver’s license suspension.
“I’m HR’s worst nightmare,” he said of his thoughts at the time.
One bad decision permanently affected Rosenburg’s life – and the lives of Judith Crawford’s family. Working in drug and alcohol treatment now, Rosenburg said Feb. 14, 2014, will haunt him for the rest of his life.
“It doesn’t matter how many school talks, or going back to grad school, or whatever it is in life that I achieve,” he said. “If you Google my name, the first thing that comes up are the news articles from the worst day of my life.”