Discovery

The time is 3:05 on a Tuesday in August. This is about the time of day on a Tuesday in May when I received the call from a Dane County deputy coroner. He identified himself as being at the Dane County Sheriff's department and he wanted to talk to me about my son Aaron. After I pulled over and parked, I discovered it was not a call I wanted to take. The details of that call still make my heart race, even as I write today. Not only did I hear every parent's nightmare, I heard callous speculation based on unconfirmed, and non-scientific opinion.

Our 14 year old son Patrick boldly spoke out to challenge the Dane County professionals. I will be forever impressed by, and grateful for Patrick's confidence and determination to discover facts in the midst of trash. The attorney we hired brought in Madison based Safety Engineer, Chuck Scalia to do the investigation. Chuck has years of experience analyzing this sort of crash data. He explained that the answers to speed questions are found in the known facts. A simple physics story problem is what the discovery comes down to. It is a fact based approach which an 8th grader knew would resolve rumors started by a Sheriff Lt.'s assumptions based on years of fuzzy images and science fiction retrieved from the archives of memory.

Aaron was never a fan of math. Terry Bradshaw's statement "2 plus 2? Don't know. Don't need it. Don't care." struck home with Aaron. Once he stopped laughing at the comment, he owned it. We did discover from a Universty of Wisconsin professor who volunteered to teach Logic to Aaron's class at Horizon High School, that Aaron loved the challenge of logic questions. He is remembered by the Professor for asking for harder questions and saying "This was great fun." As irony would have, events of Aaron's death would become more clear by use of logic and physics.

How much energy does it take for a moving vehicle weighing X to move a stationary Object weighing Y a distance of Z? The formula for Kinetic Energy is: KE=1/2mass x Velocity squared.
A quick explanation is found at http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/phys/Class/energy/u5l1c.html
Knowing Y and Z, and accessing crash test data and photos, Chuck determined the speed of Aaron's truck was within the legal limit for the posted county highway. The statements of the deputy coroner and Lt. were discovered to be far off base. The damage was done though. You don't stop a rumor. In Sunday mass one day as a young person, I heard the priest describe spreading a rumor as comparable to standing on top of the church and shaking all of the feathers out of a pillow case. To stop the damage of your error, you have to retrieve all of the feathers. An improbable task. That image stayed with me for decades. I suspect the words of the county employed persons will too. We've accepted an apology from the Dane County coroner. We would accept an apology if ever one was offered by the Sheriff.

A few weeks ago, we received a call from a kind lady in DeForest who invited us to see the work Aaron did on her yard on his own time. We were surprised to find out Aaron had volunteered to do this work. He repaired a retaining wall, rebuilt a flower garden, and a few more improvements without telling us. We've been blessed to hear other pleasant stories about Aaron from people who met him. We knew Aaron was a good soul, and he was not one to wave his own flag. He is remembered for standing up and taking responsibility. Aaron inspired his brother Patrick to question things that don't appear right. Patrick has found he can raise questions and be heard. We consider all of the discoveries since Aaron's days with us to be gifts from heaven.

Peace and gratitude with humility.

Tom