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| Thanks, prayers for Kathy Cooper |
By: SUZANNE ROOK, Managing Editor
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Posted: Friday, June 5, 2009 9:04 pm
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It would be simplistic to say that life these days for Kathy Cooper is bittersweet.
For almost a decade the Northfield resident has expended nearly every ounce of energy working toward one goal. Fighting to toughen Minnesota’s seatbelt laws, she has struggled to push forward when there were days she wanted only to curl up somewhere and block out the painful reasons she took on this fight.
And while she’ll stand Tuesday on the steps of the state capitol and help announce an achievement she’s sweat and cried over, it won’t turn back time. It won’t bring back her beautiful daughter Meghan, 15, when she died just days after a June 1999 car accident.
It won’t repair her broken marriage or heal her younger daughter, Madilynn’s, wounds, some Cooper believes are due to her 10-year roller coaster-like journey and Cooper’s single-mindedness in pushing for changes in state law, doing everything possible to ensure other families don’t suffer as hers has.
Meghan, a student at Kenyon-Wanamingo High School, wasn’t wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash and was ejected from the car she was riding in. Three weeks later, Cooper woke suddenly, remembering what she considers a fateful conversation with her elder daughter.
On a trip in the car, Cooper caught Meghan riding without a seat belt. The two argued, she said, as Cooper insisted Meghan buckle up. “You’re so dumb,” Meghan told her mom, “It’s not even the law.”
Come Tuesday, the 10th anniversary of Meghan’s death, every passenger in every motor vehicle in Minnesota will be required to wear a seat belt. And police who previously couldn’t pull motorists over for seat belt violations only, can ticket offenders without finding another reason.
It wasn’t until after Meghan’s death that Cooper realized how lax Minnesota’s seat belt laws were. She believes that if the laws were different 10 years ago, Meghan would have obeyed the rules.
So Cooper took on the fight. And it cost her. After a decade, she is emotionally spent.
She’s thrilled beyond words that the work, the money, the personal visits to state legislators, the calls and letters, the waiting outside Senate chambers to testify, has paid off. But now that she’s reached her goal, she believes her reason for moving forward may be gone.
“I was driven to do it. I didn’t know how else to survive,” she said Wednesday.
“It’s what has kept me going. If I go to that other place,” she said, “and really think about what’s happened, it’s a horrible, horrible nightmare. Staying busy is how to survive.”
She plans to continue her work on the Mayor’s Task Force on Youth, Alcohol & Drug Abuse and hopes to help fight for stronger drunk driving laws, another cause of the crash that killed Meghan. And, she believes, she needs to atone to Madilynn, but isn’t sure how they can heal.
Kathy Cooper deserves our admiration, thanks and prayers. She not only held on to life with a white-knuckled grip, but pushed for change when others didn’t — or wouldn’t. Her persistence will save many, many lives.
Tuesday will be beyond distressing for Cooper, but also a “good, good day,” she told me, quickly adding a motherly reminder every driver and passenger must soon follow: “Please buckle up.”
—Reach Suzanne Rook at srook@northfieldnews.com or at 507-645-1113
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