Vivian Baltz
Parent of Former U.Va. Student
"Reflections of a Parent"
A personal perspective about the dangers of alcohol abuse
November 17, 2000

Vivian Baltz: Hello. I am here this afternoon to talk to you about my daughter, Leslie. I’m here because of the way that Leslie died. As you know, she died in an alcohol-related accident here at UVa three years ago this month. Her death forced the University to re-examine its attitude toward alcohol and to try to find new ways to address what, after 18 deaths in the 90’s, was clearly an issue that needed attention.

In thinking about what I might tell you -- and how I might tell you -- one of the things I remembered about the memorial service we had for Leslie was what her sister, Amy, laughingly said. Amy said that she and Leslie were always at their best when they were united against their parents. When their dad, dripping from a run, would come into the kitchen and try to engage them in idle conversation, when I used that tone – you know, that preachy tone that parents sometimes use – a simple look or roll of the eyes united them in ways that only siblings know. Well, I will try hard these next few minutes, not to use that tone, but I hope that you will listen to what I have to say, and give some thought to it later on. If what I say makes just one person do things differently, then this will have been worthwhile. I’ll probably never know, because if this makes a difference, it will be because something doesn’t happen.

In my wildest imaginings, and, as you all know, or if you don’t believe me, ask your parents – on occasion, every parent has some pretty crazy fears – in my wildest, I never envisioned I’d be addressing you this afternoon. And, to tell you the truth, Leslie’s dad and I pretty much thought we were home free from this type of concern. At 21, Leslie seemed well launched toward a future that, while unknown, she possessed all of the necessary skills to take on.

But our college campuses today are not just places of achievement and good times – for some, and even one is too many, they are turning deadly.

In some ways your college days are some of the happiest and freest you will ever know. For almost all of you, they represent your first real independence. The future is scary – but shiny and full of hope and the promise of adventures to come. You’re living life now with more confidence that you are indestructible than you ever will again. For many of your parents, seeing you off to college was a time of celebration, but it also can be a time of worry and concern. Will you be safe? Will you use good judgment? Would you drink and drive, or get in a car with a driver who’s been drinking? Would you drink too heavily or allow a friend to, and then leave that person alone to sleep it off? The good news is that fewer of you may be drinking, but those that are, are drinking more and at younger ages. And, the drinking isn’t just part of the party; for some it is the party. This kind of alcohol consumption is particularly worrisome. Consider:

• Teens who begin drinking before 15 are four times as likely to be alcoholics as those who begin at 21
• 31% of college freshmen said they were binge drinkers in high school
• Alcohol is a factor in 66% of all suicides
• Alcohol is a factor in 60% of all STD’s
• Alcohol is also a major factor in sexual abuse, adolescent drowning and unprotected sex
• 41% of all academic problems are alcohol related
• At one Ivy League campus, for example, on any given week-end, an average of ten students are treated for alcohol poisoning
• Heavy alcohol consumption may affect information recall
• Heavy alcohol consumption may lead to serious injury
• Heavy alcohol consumption may lead to death

This last is not just hyperbole. It happens. Just this month, it almost happened again to one of your classmates.

Leslie was a daughter, a granddaughter, a sister and a friend. She was 21 years old when she died. Just as you will be in the not too distant future. She was talented and accomplished, headed for graduating with honors at UVA the coming spring. The month before she died, at Convocation and the Academic Forum, Leslie was awarded 4^th year honors in Art History.

She had a sister, Amy, who loved her. Sometime, around the time Amy came here for her 1^st year at UVa and Leslie entered high school, Leslie and Amy progressed from being sisters to become best friends. Many of you probably have a sister, or brother. And so, when I talk with you today, I hope you will think about them. Siblings share special bonds. Part mystical, part biological, and partly the result of shared memories from growing up in the same household. Amy was three and a half years older than Leslie. They were as opposite as night and day. Amy’s tiny and curvy, Leslie was 5’9" and all legs.

And they were more than just physical opposites. They followed very different paths to academic success. Amy excelled in memorizing and spitting back exactly what teachers wanted. Leslie frustrated many teachers by never doing the exact assignment. Leslie loved the outdoors and camping; Amy once classified a curling iron and hair dryer as absolute necessities for a month long stay in a camp tent. Amy was sophisticated, Leslie was, well…not. But in all the important ways, they were alike, and the parts of them that were different filled in the blanks for one another. I never had a sister or brother, and I very much wanted for my children to be friends, to have the sense of someone who is always there for you, who loves you unconditionally. Amy and Leslie shared that. Now Amy is alone.

Leslie’s dad loved her. He found in Leslie someone who shared, at least in part, his wry, sardonic, more clear-eyed and less romanticized view of the world than that of the other females who inhabited his household. Her dad, who took up running fairly late in life, dreamed of running with Leslie. Leslie, who disdained all things athletic until the last year of her life, when she discovered that running would take off pounds and inches. During her junior year in college, she studied abroad in Italy. There, her love of art history was matched by her fondness for Italian food. As what fit from the wardrobe she took to Italy with her dwindled, she speculated in e-mails home about this unhappy turn of events. When I demurred over one particularly unlikely cause, I got a quick e-mail in return – "not nice to shoot down my maybe my bones have moved theory." The motivation to reverse the effects of pasta brought a new dedication to her exercise program. And her dad thought at last he may have found a running partner. After running the Boston Marathon, he gave her a shirt with the note, "I brought you a magic-marathon shirt. Wear it and you will have wings on your feet." After Leslie died, we discovered the note in a treasure box in her room. Her dad runs alone, and thinks about her.

Leslie was a friend. Many spoke movingly at her memorial service. She was not just funny, she was witty, and adventurous and energetic. In the words of one of them,…"the world was more brilliant when seen through her shining green eyes." As she got older, later in high school and at UVa, her circle widened and changed, but other than her sister, her two best friends were her oldest friends. They met in second grade. One was one of her roommates here at UVa, the other traveled with her in Europe her junior year. They knew her almost as well as we did. They know things about her that we probably still don’t know. They are devastated by Leslie’s death in ways that are incomprehensible until you are in their situation. Think about your friends. Maybe the person sitting next to you today. Do your part to keep them safe.

Sister, father’s daughter, friend, …my daughter. Leslie saw things differently than I did. I used to joke that everything that came out of her mouth was a surprise to me, but if I thought about it for awhile, I could see that her way was right too. She saw things through an artist’s eye, and she let me into a world I never would have known. As she grew up – and I grew older – she made me less judgmental, more open to other’s perspectives. My way of thinking isn’t the only way. Though I won’t pretend my broadmindedness was always so evident to Leslie. And boy, did we disagree about boys. She paraded through our house a collection of what to my mind were a series of the most unsuitable males. They were not every mother’s dream, I can assure you. But she was every mother’s dream of a daughter.

Now, think for a moment what it would be like to have someone you care for, someone important to you, someone you love, disappear from your life. I could be your mother. Leslie could be you. Leslie could be your friend, your sister or brother. Think what it would be like to lose that person. To never talk to them again. To never share something new with them. Think what it would be like to believe it could have been prevented. Think what it would be like to think that you could have prevented it.

In our family, there used to be four of us. Now there are three. And three seems so much smaller than four. I have spent the last two plus years slowly trying to accustom myself to this sad fact. Once, while looking for something in a drawer, I came across a card Leslie had sent me for Mother’s Day the spring before she died, during the semester she spent studying in Italy. I kept the card because it said all the things that a parent wants to hear, "…that I’d made her brave, that she knew she was loved…" What I had forgotten was the first sentence, for that is the one I had taken for granted. It said, "…it feels strange not to be there, I promise I’ll be home for Mother’s Day next year." But she was not.

In the moment Leslie died, my life split in half. There will always be the person I was, and the other person I am now. From that day forward, for me, for my family and for Leslie’s friends, even our happiest times will be our saddest, for Leslie is not here to share them. And the ordinary days as well. Do you know what it’s like to walk outside on a pretty spring day and feel, just for a moment, that sense of pleasure with life, that momentary feeling of, "ain’t life grand." I don’t believe I will fully know that feeling anymore. Simple pleasures, the small good things that make up a life, all are edged by sadness.

Please listen to me now. Too many people have told me what happened to Leslie could have happened to them. And while Leslie was 21, away at college, and of legal drinking age, the sad truth is that alcohol and alcohol abuse happen in high schools too. I didn’t come here today to say, "never drink." That is a decision for you to make. But also, don’t make the mistake of thinking that all social activities must involve alcohol. That you have to drink to be accepted. You need to understand the risks, the dangers, what can happen. Understand how alcohol affects your body, how the effects vary with everything from your height and weight to what you’ve eaten or whether you are tired. Understand that even after you stop drinking, the alcohol level continues to build in your body. Understand how quickly something can happen even when you think you’ve taken precautions. University hospital records tell many stories of the lucky ones who took dangerous risks but survived. Leslie was not so lucky. And it happens far more frequently than you think. You don’t have to drink and drive to put yourself at risk. There are other dangers – falling, choking -- and you may not die, but you may end up permanently impaired. It can be as simple as a momentary lapse of judgement – a bad decision that spirals out of control and leaves broken lives in its wake.

The week-end before Leslie died, she participated in the 4^th year 5K. She and her roommates ran it together. Leslie then came home for Thanksgiving. She went back to school for a party and the last big home game of the season. When she left that morning, I told her to be careful. "I will be," she said, giving me a tight hug and a quick "I love you," as she drove off with her friend. Leslie went to the party. At a friend’s house. There was punch, mixed with alcohol. She knew that. The punch masks, for awhile, the alcohol. She didn’t feel well. She stopped. She thought she was being responsible. She went across the street to a friend’s house to lie down. She assured her friends she was alright. At some point, Leslie wanted to go downstairs. No one knows exactly what happened next, if she tripped, got dizzy…she fell down the stairs. She wasn’t found until some hours later. It was too late. When our phone rang that evening, I thought for a moment it might be Leslie; her friend had left his coat at our house. Instead, an unknown man’s voice from University Hospital in Charlottesville told us, with controlled urgency, that we should come to the emergency room immediately. I will leave to your imaginations the terror of those next two hours, the drive to Charlottesville with that dread voice echoing through the beginning of any parent’s worst nightmare. An endless spaghetti of tubes and a respirator kept her body alive, but there was nothing to be done. We donated her organs. Leslie was a giving person. She wanted to do this. It said so on her driver’s license.

Variations on this story occur all the time. For most they are just a passing news item in the local paper, cause for someone to say, too bad, what a waste. For the family and friends, however, it is a loss that lasts forever; that changes lives forever. We’ve done a good job, I think, of getting out the message, "don’t drink and drive," although that too continues to be ignored by some, with tragic consequences. We need to go further. I know that Leslie thought that by going across the street and lying down she was doing the "responsible" thing. Everyone did what they thought was the responsible thing. But maybe one of the lessons to learn is that if you are having a party, have a buddy system – make sure someone isn’t drinking; if someone is drinking, don’t leave them alone. Think hard before you take a drink. Have you already had too many? Be aware. Be wary. Look at the risks your friends may take that they cannot see. You can choose not to drink.

But the reality is, some, perhaps many of you, will drink, are drinking already. But know this: when you choose to drink, you begin to lose the option to choose. These first years of freedom can be difficult at best. No one, no matter how assured they appear on the outside, is wholly comfortable with themselves. And you’re pulled in so many directions, by so many people. Parents, friends, teachers, strangers like me, all too willing to give you advice, to tell you how to live your lives, to pass on how we define success, what we view to be the secrets of success. Leslie, at 21, was just beginning to be the person she might have become. She was not the person she was at 16, or 18, or even 20. Who knows what she may have achieved. How many more lives she may have touched. What her children would have been like. All of those possibilities died with her. Learn from that. Don’t eliminate your opportunities by engaging in risky and, it must be said, for some of you, illegal behavior. Be careful with yourselves. Be careful with your friends. Be responsible.

I don’t want the legacy of Leslie to be just about the circumstances of how she died. The measure of a person is in how they choose to live their days, however many. Leslie lived her life to the fullest. Not in the wanton, irresponsible way of some who say, "you only live once, you’re only young once, you’ve got to do it all," and then use that as an excuse for out of control actions.

Leslie’s lifelong passion was art. When she was 11, for my birthday she made me a box of poems – one for each day of the month, 31 in all. In them are early glimpses of what she later would try to say with charcoals and oils. For Leslie’s memorial service, we made up a series of six postcards for people to take with them. Three of the postcards are Leslie’s poems; one is her first oil painting, one is from a series of her much loved charcoal sketches, and one is from a group she called her apartment series, the apartment in which she lived so happily at UVa.

We’ve encouraged people to use the cards to write notes to people in their lives that they care about. The cards are on a table at the rear of the room. Please help yourselves. Use them to tell someone that you care. Write a note to a friend, or to your Mom. Prop one up in a corner in your room. Use them to remind yourself to be careful, with alcohol, with yourselves, and with your friends and family.

I’d like to close with Leslie’s words, written so long ago. She called the poem, "Love Is A Circle."

In using the cards to tell your loved ones that you care, or to remind yourself of the fragility of life and the importance of the spirit with which it is lived, and the consequences of the decisions you make every day, the best of Leslie lives on.

Tomorrow morning is the 4^th year 5K. Leslie’s dad, her sister, her former roommates and friends and I all will participate. We do it to remember …and to remind. Leslie left behind a legacy of humor and honesty, of talent and accomplishment, of beauty, decency, kindness and a joy for life. In her art and in herself, the colors were rich and boldly drawn – no pastels for her. Everyone sitting in this room still has all those choices ahead of them. It is up to each of you to choose wisely. I hope you will.