Candy Fantastic
VISUAL TRANSPORTATION SPECIALIST
AND
WORDSMITHERY MAGICIAN
For years I had a hole in my heart for Kevin, our classmate who lost his life in the accident. I dealt with a slew of emotions including wondering why he had to die when he had a happy home life, while I (who most certainly did not), got to live. It wasn't fair and I didn't know how to reconcile that.
In 2021, I took the plunge and contacted Kevin's mother to see if she'd be willing to meet. Thankfully, she said yes and we've become friends through this tragedy and able to talk about it and how it's impacted our lives.
One of the most frightening things I've gone through, the events of this day would begin to shape the rest of my life. We didn't get the psychological help we needed back then, unfortunately, so we were somewhat left to our own devices to figure out how to move on after the accident.
The people who responded were amazing. They had these Celestial Seasonings bears they handed out to some of us for comfort. I think I've since lost mine in a move, but I loved that bear. It was a reminder that everything would be okay.
There's no way to make sense of something like this, but over the past several years, I've learned to accept that and grow from it.
Rose Swenby worked for years to change the seatbelt laws on buses through her efforts with S.O.S.
