Roadside Crosses and Memorial Complexes in Texas

Folklore, April, 2000 by Holly Everett

As posited by George Monger, many Austin residents--including both those directly connected to a roadside cross and unrelated passers-by--view such memorials as powerful warnings about the danger of automobile travel in general, and about treacherous intersections, curves or other road conditions in particular. Shilah Lamay, Jennifer Solter and James Werchan all stated that if the memorials to their children result in just one person driving more cautiously, they are certainly worth the effort to construct and maintain them. As Monger also notes, however, the primary function of many roadside memorials is simply to "visit and mark the site of a tragedy" (Monger 1997, 114). Moreover, for some of those whom I interviewed, the accident site was the last place where their loved one was conscious, and thus really "alive," regardless of the place of clinical death.

Susan Crane's son Nathan was fatally injured in 1991 when the car in which he was a passenger veered off a road in north central Austin and struck a tree. The driver of the vehicle, Tammy Franklin, and another passenger, Jeffrey Suggs, were also killed. Although Nathan actually died in the hospital a few days after the accident, Susan feels drawn to memorialise him at the accident site, more so than anywhere else, because that is where she believes his spirit was last on earth. Tammy died on impact when her car struck the tree. Thus, her mother, Margie, views the accident site as the place where "everything ended and began," and concentrates her decoration of the site on the tree, which is still scarred from the crash. Susan and Margie took responsibility for a memorial at the accident site initiated by the teenagers' classmates at Hyde Park Baptist High School, and have redecorated the site together in the past.

The small wooden crosses which the teens constructed and erected in memory of all three accident victims were twice pulled up, the other remembrances indiscriminately scattered nearby, by unknown parties. After the second instance, Susan and her partner, an ironworker, set a wrought iron cross in a cement base at the site. The cross is further secured by iron hooks which extend, from its base, through the cement block. Susan repaints the cross from time to time.

Susan arranges her visits seasonally. When I spoke with her in January 1998, she was preparing to replace all the flowers with some winter blooms, after which she would replace those with an arrangement for Valentine's Day. In the event that Susan plans to be out of town at the time that the flowers need to be changed, she makes arrangements for someone to take new flowers to the site for her. Every time she changes the flowers at the site, she also changes them at Nathan's grave site. [4] Although Margie was very reluctant to visit the accident site at first, she now goes there, usually with her husband, at certain times each year--on the anniversary of the accident, Tammy's birthday, Easter Sunday and Christmas Day. While she visits the cemetery more often, she emphasised that the roadside cross is extremely important to her, and that she and Susan "would do everything they could" to keep some kind of memorial at the accident site, as they "would always want a reminder to people to be careful" and it has become an integral part of preserving Tammy's memory. [5]