These days in this racket there are times when you wonder if what you are doing makes a difference.
OK, that's most of the time these days in the newspaper racket.
Then you get a voicemail like the one I got yesterday.
A longtime reader from Springfield wanted to talk to me about the editorial that appeared in the Thursday newspaper.
I wrote it in the wake of one of the most gut-wrenching stories we've covered in some time.
It involved the DUI accident that snuffed out the life of 45-year-old Deana Eckman. We interviewed her mother, who most graciously recounted the horror the family has been living since the Saturday night crash.
Police say the man who veered into the oncoming lane of traffic and slammed head-on into the car Eckman was riding in with her husband was under the influence.
It was not the first time for David Strowhouer. The Willistown man has been arrested five times in the last nine years. This makes six overall. This was the first time one of his incidents involved serious injury. That no doubt comes as little solace to the friends and family of Deana Eckman.
There was a common cry that went out once the details of Strowhouer's driving record emerged. How could this happen. Why was he free? How was it he was behind the wheel.
Strowhouer racked up four DUIs in Chester County and one in Delaware County before Saturday night's deadly accident. He did jail some jail time for each, although in the last incident, here in Delaware County, he was allowed to serve his jail time concurrently with time he received for a previous Chester County arrest, instead of consecutively.
At the time of the fatal accident Saturday night, Strowhouer was out on parole and driving with a suspended license.
The truth is you can suspend someone's license forever, but that won't stop them from getting behind the wheel.
But a new law that was passed recently will.
The editorial points out Strowhouer now likely will be the first person in Delaware County to be prosecuted under that law, which mandates a minimum seven years in jail for a person with multiple previous DUI arrests who is charged in a fatal DUI accident.
The caller had a story to tell me of his own grisly encounter with a DUI driver.
He was sitting at a red light in Springfield when he witnessed a man blow through a stop sign and slam into a woman's car. He rushed to the car and tried to perform CPR on the woman, who was bleeding profusely.
She did not make it.
The man who was driving the other car was charged with DUI.
He testified against the man at trial.
He said he still thinks about that instance every day.
Then he ended his call by thanking me for this editorial, and these final words:
"This repeat DUI on the street must end. I saw the consequences in terms of a dead woman. Enough said. Good editorial, Phil. Thank you for doing it."
Yeah, some days we make a difference.
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