JMM Speaking

The Globe and Mail Article

Burn victim’s story a cautionary tale for students

SID TAFLER
Special to The Globe and Mail

Victoria — After they’ve seen the morgue and the body bags, after they’ve heard the gruesome stories from the paramedics and the trauma nurse, they get to meet John Westhaver.

Mr. Westhaver, horribly burned and disfigured in a car crash when he was 18, is the visual embodiment of a program called P.A.R.T.Y. (Prevent Alcohol and Risk-Related Trauma in Youth) designed to encourage high-school students to make the proper decisions to avoid injury or death.

Mr. Westhaver’s 30-minute talk and slide show, the final segment in the program delivered at Victoria General Hospital, is perhaps as graphic an example of the consequences of dangerous driving as any injury-prevention program can provide.

“This is what I used to look like.” He flashes a slide of a dark-haired teenage boy with a mischievous grin.

“And this is what I look like now,” and 60 pairs of Grade 10 eyes fix on his puffy, scarred face, one eye half closed, a mask-like flap of grafted white skin covering his right cheek.

Mr. Westhaver, now 31, was “a regular teenage guy who thought I was invincible,” drinking and playing pool with three of his friends on a Friday night near his hometown of St. Stephen, N.B., just six weeks before high-school graduation.

His buddy, James Zografos, 17, was the sober, designated driver at the wheel as the four young men drove home on that night in April of 1994. But the wild party atmosphere in the car – drinking beer, playing loud music, “goofing off” – encouraged the driver to accelerate to 140 km/h, defying a speed limit of 90 km/h.

He lost control on a curve and the car swerved into a ditch, rolled over several times and burst into flames.

Mr. Zografos was killed instantly, the two men in the back seat were burned to death. Mr. Westhaver managed to scramble out of the car with severe burns over 75 per cent of his body. “I was lucky,” he tells the students from Parkland Secondary in Sidney, B.C., but they look doubtful.

He spent a month in hospital in a coma and then woke up to the pain and trauma of his injuries and disfigurement and the shocking news that his three buddies were dead.

Then came the operations. Since the accident, he’s had more than 30 plastic and reconstructive operations to heal his wounds and to restore mobility and function to his neck and hands – he lost much of the movement and the fingertips of his right hand in the fire. He still has an operation a year, a pace he expects will continue for another 10 years.

One of his worst traumas came when he first saw his face in a mirror after the accident. “I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.”

But as he began to heal and become reintegrated into the community, an occupational therapist suggested he could help other people by telling the story of his accident and recovery.

So he launched his career as a public speaker, talking mostly to youth and injury-prevention groups. He speaks to up to 50 groups a year in Canada and the U.S., taking breaks from his regular job in a call centre.

In 2000, he followed a brother, who is in the military, to Victoria. Last year he married his wife, Brianna, 23, a legal secretary.

Today, although he still attracts stares and curious questions from young children, he has come to terms with the scars and uneven contours of his face. “I like the way I look, I look different, I’m okay with that,” he tells the students.

His message to young people is to make the right decisions about drugs and alcohol, about emotions, distractions, anything that can impair their driving, and about refusing to ride in a car driven by a drunk or dangerous driver.

“I’m not here to tell you what to do,” Mr. Westhaver tells his hushed audience. “I’m here to give you a heads-up about what can happen if you make the wrong decision.”

“It’s simple to make the right choice, but not always easy. But it’s a lot easier to speak up than to go through all the trauma and pain I’ve been through.”

But the message that seemed to remain with the students as they shuffled from the lecture hall is the image of Mr. Westhaver, rather than the words he spoke.

“You can preach the message over and over and it’s all ‘what-if,’ but seeing it makes a difference,” said Rod Keanie, 15.

Youth and motor vehicle accidents

On southern Vancouver Island, 3,300 students attend P.A.R.T.Y. annually, one of several programs delivered in British Columbia to encourage students to make safe choices to avoid injury and death caused by accidents.

The P.A.R.T.Y. program includes a peek into a crypt in the morgue, thankfully empty, a chat with paramedics about declaring victims dead at an accident scene and the decisions their parents are asked to make in the hospital – “Can you donate the organs? We could use a heart.”

The Insurance Corporation of B.C. says car crashes are the No. 1 killer and risk of injury to youth aged 13 to 21 in British Columbia.

Some statistics from ICBC for 2005:

38 per cent of all youth deaths in B.C. were caused by car crashes;

76 youths died in 70 car crashes;

About 9,700 young people were injured in 8,000 crashes;

27 per cent of drivers of all speed-related injuries or fatalities and 21 per cent of drivers in all alcohol-related injuries or fatalities were between 16 and 21.

This article was taken from “Globe and Mail” May 31, 2007.