PROVO -- The license plate on the Chevrolet Suburban parked in Greg Ekeroth's driveway reads: GBE-1.
The 42-year-old Provo man chose to place his initials and the number 1 on the vanity plate to commemorate the first vehicle he bought after relearning to drive two years ago. He had to be cut out of the previous car he owned with jaws of life.Ekeroth, his wife and 3-year-old daughter were headed to the Ramses II exhibit at Brigham Young University from their Denver home in March 1986. Just 20 miles outside the city, an eastbound Ford Thunderbird came flying across I-70, slamming into the driver's side of Ekeroth's car.
The Thunderbird's 25-year-old driver died. His 17-year-old passenger was critically injured. Both had been on an all-night drug and drinking binge.
Rescuers at the scene figured Ekeroth was dead, too. The impact crushed the left side of his head, broke his neck in two places, shattered his pelvis, nearly tore off his left arm and damaged internal organs. Ekeroth's wife and daughter suffered minor injuries.
After emergency surgery at a Denver hospital, doctors told Larry and Shirley Ekeroth that their son had little chance of pulling out of a deep coma.
"We would not have recognized him if they hadn't taken us to the bed were he was. I mean to tell you he looked like something out of Mars," Shirley Ekeroth, 72, said. "They just didn't really give us any hope at all."
Blind, deaf and paralyzed was the prognosis for Greg Ekeroth, even if he did regain consciousness.
"I looked at him and said, 'Nope. That's not going to be the way it is,' " Shirley Ekeroth said, seated on the couch in her son's Provo condominium.
The Ekeroths stayed at their son's side day and night playing soft music and Book of Mormon tapes. "I really felt like if we weren't there, he would die," she said.
Two-and-a-half months later, Greg Ekeroth awoke. Shirley and Larry then guided him through a lengthy rehabilitation process in Colorado and Utah after Greg Ekeroth and his wife divorced.
Greg Ekeroth, an LDS seminary and institute teacher before the accident, and his mother, a widow since her husband died of pancreatic cancer in 1992, eventually settled in Provo. He has since earned a master's degree in recreation management at BYU, gotten remarried and learned to drive again.
Although Shirley Ekeroth says the story has a happy ending, her son isn't the same person he was prior to the accident. Gone is the driven man who once tried to teach himself to live on four hours' sleep so he wouldn't waste time in bed.
"I will never get past who he was and I long for that person everyday. You never get over it. You just learn to live with it," she said. "It's like my first son died, but another son came to take his place."
Greg Ekeroth doesn't remember anything six months prior to or after the accident. His mother filled in the gaps, and now Ekeroth tells his story to schoolchildren, college students and people convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Mother and son also spoke at a Provo Police Department-sponsored candlelight vigil Wednesday night called "Lights for Life."
Assistant Police Chief Craig Geslison said the idea is to remember those who have died or been injured because of drunken or drugged drivers.
Attention is often focused on the number of people killed in drunken driving accidents, and rightly so, Shirley Ekeroth said. But those who must live with debilitating injuries are sometimes overlooked.
"There are some things worse than death," said Jolene Martin, president of the Utah chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, herself of a victim of crash with an intoxicated driver.
Driving terrifies Martin to the point that she gets behind the wheel only when she absolutely must. She prefers riding with her teenage daughters.
The holiday season, she said, is particularly tough on people who have been injured or lost someone. "Many victims just want to go to sleep and wake up in January," Martin said.
Last year, 4,150 Utahns were involved in alcohol-related traffic accidents. Of that total, 1,649 suffered injuries and 48 died, according to the Intermountain Injury Control Research Center at the University of Utah. Fatalities occurred in about 20 percent of the wrecks in 1997, which is down slightly from the previous six years, according to the Utah Department of Public Safety.
"People think that just because the statistics are down this year, drunk driving has gone away. It hasn't," Martin said, adding MADD isn't against drinking but is against breaking the law.
Greg Ekeroth concludes speeches to young people in his slightly slurred delivery with this message: "Please don't drink. Please don't use drugs.
Please don't ride with a drunk or drugged driver. Please don't drink or use drugs and drive yourself. It's just not worth it."
The Chevy Suburban in Greg Ekeroth's driveway, the one with GBE-1 license plate, now belongs to his mother. He drives a Jeep. The vanity plate reads GE JE. The initials stand for Greg Ekeroth and Jan Ekeroth, his new wife. And his new life.