Roadside Crosses and Memorial Complexes in Texas

Folklore, April, 2000 by Holly Everett

[Figure 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

   IN LOVING MEMORY OF SARA JAYNE SOLTER BORN 10/20/61 & KILLED AT THIS
   LOCATION 8/14/81 BY A DRUNK DRIVER

The Heart of Texas MADD chapter chose to use the cross as an official symbol, Jennifer said, because "the cross would call attention to a death." Indeed, in Texas, roadside crosses are so commonplace, and knowledge of MADD so widespread, that although not all North American MADD chapters sponsor a roadside cross memorialisation programme, passers-by often associate all such roadside memorials with drunk driving incidents.

While MADD crosses are the only legally approved roadside memorials in the Austin district [3], they are in the minority of the Austin area's roadside shrines. For example, of the forty-four crosses included in my study, only three were MADD crosses. Moreover, not all alcohol-related accidents commemorated by roadside memorials include a MADD cross. Thus, other Austinites point to a perceived increase in fatal accidents in general as the reason behind the city's growing number of shrines.

Austin area high schools, in particular, have lost a number of students to automobile accidents in recent years. One informant told me that James Bowie High School, in south Austin, constructed a memorial park near the school because of the high number of deaths the school has suffered (Lamay 1997). Since 1992, six Bowie students have died from injuries sustained in five separate accidents. At least three of these students have been remembered with roadside memorials.

The memorial to Bowie students Heather Lamay and Lisa Wendenburg, erected by classmates on the evening of the young women's fatal accident in January 1996, originally consisted of two temporary crosses which stood on private property near the accident site until a cement cross replaced them. The memorial was constructed with the permission and cooperation of the property owners, whose backyard is bordered by the road on which the accident occurred. After erecting the cross, and painting it white, Heather and Lisa's friends bordered it with rocks placed in the shape of a heart. Heather's parents, Shilah and John Lamay, contributed a granite plaque, encasing a photograph of the women, to the memorial (Lamay 1997). Shilah and John later removed the cross and border, at the request of the TxDOT, to make way for a road-widening project planned for the four-lane road in south Austin. They attached the granite plaque to a nearby telephone pole. Before the Lamay family moved to another state in mid-1997, Shilah removed the plaque as well. Responsibility for any future memorialisation activity at the accident site was turned over to a family friend.

Although Shilah and her husband supported the teenagers' memorialisation efforts, Shilah stated that while the memorial at the accident site was extremely important to Heather and Lisa's friends, visiting Heather's grave site at the cemetery was more important to Shilah and her children (Fig. 2). In fact, Shilah was doubtful that she and her family would have chosen to erect a memorial at the accident site themselves, saying: