She takes out annual ad in effort to keep public focus on DWI.
View full sizeThe memoriam Bonnie Schwalm placed in The Post-Standard on September 10.Syracuse, NY - Bonnie Schwalm took out a newspaper ad this fall, as she does every year, to remind people that she lost her 4-year-old son because someone drank too much and drove.
She wants readers to know that David Schwalm, who died 33 years ago today, was killed along with his uncle and 4-year-old cousin. She hopes that knowledge will keep others from drinking and driving.
“If it saves one person’s life — no matter how hard it is to put it in the paper every year — it’s worth it,” said Schwalm of Baldwinsville.
She places the annual in memoriam to her three loved ones as a way to keep drunk driving on the public’s radar. As a former leader in a citizen’s movement against drunk driving, she knows heightened public awareness has led to stronger laws and better enforcement. Since her son’s death in 1977, driving while intoxicated arrests have increased. People found driving drunk with children aboard now face stiffer penalties. And the amount of consumed alcohol needed to be legally considered a drunk driver is lower.
Yet, Schwalm said the public cannot lower its guard. She points to the arrest last month of a man charged with driving drunk in a hit-and-run crash. Dean S. Tuszynski had already been convicted of eight felony DWIs.
David Schwalm“I just don’t understand,” she said.
Read more about Dean S. Tuszynski.
Schwalm’s crusade against drunk driving began Sept. 10, 1977. That was the day David took his first ride in a car without his parents. His uncle, Leonard T. Schwalm Jr. was driving his son, Michael and his nephew, David to a babysitter’s home when their car was struck by another car in Hannibal. Leonard, 29, and Michael, 4, died that day.
David was hospitalized for more than a month. He died Oct. 23, when his parents took him off a respirator three days shy of his fifth birthday.
The other driver, John E. Ware pleaded guilty to negligent homicide, assault and driving while intoxicated. Ware, then of Fulton, was sentenced to one year in the Oswego County Jail. His driver’s license was revoked for three years.
Ware was back on the road in 1982. He was charged with assault and drunk driving after an accident in Granby that injured another man. He was sentenced to serve weekends in the Oswego County Jail for a year. His license was permanently revoked.
Following the crash, Schwalm helped start the Remove Intoxicated Drivers organization in Oswego. Under Schwalm’s leadership, the group advocated for DWI victims and campaigned for tougher laws. In 2007, she spoke out when two repeat offenders were released from jail after an Oswego County judge found prosecutors didn't act quickly enough to bring the cases to trial.
In the three decades since her son’s death, Schwalm watched with keen interest as authorities became more aggressive in combating drunk driving. In 1977, it took a blood/alcohol content of .10 for a driver to be considered drunk. Today, it’s 0.08.
In 1977, authorities made 661 DWI arrests in Onondaga County. In 2009, there were 2,079 arrests, said Barry Weiss, the county STOP-DWI coordinator.
Leandra’s law, adopted in 2009, makes it a felony to drive drunk with a child in the vehicle. A later phase of Leandra’s law required convicted DWI offenders to install a device in their car. They must blow into the device before the car will start. The car will not start if they register a blood/alcohol content of 0.025 or higher, a little less than one-third of the legal limit.
“I wish that they had tried this years and years ago,” Schwalm said.
A reduction in alcohol-related fatalities have accompanied the increase in enforcement. In the 1970s, Onondaga County had 40 to 50 such fatalities a year, Weiss said. Now, the number averages about two to three, he said.
Schwalm believes enforcement has a way to go. She said Tuszynski’s presence on the road Sept. 1 illustrates more needs to be done.
“I’m just shocked that he hasn’t killed anybody,” she said.
Doing her part, Schwalm has run an in memoriam in The Post-Standard for the last 20 years. The 5.5” by 4.5” ad that ran last month featured photos of her son, brother-in-law and nephew.
“I don’t ever want people to forget my family,” she said. “I do get calls from people that have told me, they don’t get behind the wheel of a car because they look at David and Michael’s picture.”
Schwalm will mark the 33rd anniversary of her son’s death today by visiting his grave with her husand, David Sr. They may bring their children, Tammy, 31, and Jon David, 30. The children never met their older brother.
“Every day is just as hard as the next,” Schwalm said. “Even 33 years later. You are never the same person. Ever.”
