Telegraph Journal Article

Crash Survivor Returning With Powerful Message

By Chuck Brown

Almost 12 years ago John Westhaver, then a teenager, escaped the burning wreckage of a crashed car, the lone survivor of a crash that killed three of his friends and left a community shocked, sad and sorry.

Now the St. Stephen man, who now lives in British Columbia, is on a mission to prevent tragedies like the one he lived through and continues to live with. He’s travelling to schools in Canada and the U.S. telling his story and hoping it gives kids the power and courage to speak up, to take responsibility, to slow down and stay sober. In May he’ll bring his presentation home to New Brunswick.

“I’m trying to empower them to make the right choices behind the wheel,” Mr. Westhaver said in a phone interview from his home in Victoria. “I’m trying to give them the strength and the courage to speak up and say, ‘You know what, you’re being a real idiot, let’s make some different choices here.’ ”

He said he knows how difficult it can be to take such a position.

“I know. I was there. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to speak up,” he said.

But the consequences of silence can be fatal.

The car Mr. Westhaver was travelling in back in 1994 was nearly unrecognizable after it left the road and crashed at a treacherous corner on Highway 3 at Andersonville, near St. Stephen.

Mr. Westhaver and his friends, James Zografos, Jason McKeeman and John Aaron Williams, were traveling home from McAdam, where they had gone to shoot some pool. The passengers had some beer, they were goofing around and joking, music blaring. The driver was sober, but speeding.

And in an instant three of them were dead and Mr. Westhaver was barely alive.

Mr. Westhaver says now that the crash was the result of bad decisions – the decision to get in the car with beer, to not ask the driver to slow down, to, basically, do what so many young people do when filled with joy and hormones and rebellion and freedom. It was one bad decision, Mr. Westhaver said, one risk that took three lives and marked another for good.

Mr. Westhaver was badly burned in the crash.

In those precious few moments after Mr. Westhaver escaped the flaming car, Annie Anderson, who lives near the infamous corner, helped Mr. Westhaver, cutting his clothes free and letting the night air hit his skin. When he got to the burn unit in Saint John, doctors said Mr. Westhaver likely wouldn’t live longer than 24 hours.

When it became clear Mr. Westhaver was a survivor, he was put in a coma to escape the pain of multiple surgeries. He woke up with no memory of how he got there.

In 2000, he moved to Victoria, B.C., following his brother, who is in the military. There he found a burn support group and, while undergoing occupational therapy, also found encouragement to tell his story in hopes it would have an impact on other young people.

He said he was inspired to start speaking publicly when his therapist told him she admired his attitude. She told Mr. Westhaver he has a gift, an ability to motivate, to show people what life can be like after surviving serious burns.

For Mr. Westhaver, it’s simple.

“I’m the same Johnny,” he said. “I’m a great guy, I know I am, and if you can’t see past the burns, that’s too bad.”

And he’s careful not to call himself a “victim.”

“If you see yourself as a victim, people are going to look at you as a victim,” he said.

“If you’re proud of who you are, you won’t let the burns bother you.”

In his public presentations, Mr. Westhaver speaks frankly about how he learned to live with his burns, about how his confidence developed.

“Am I going to have a girlfriend? Am I going to be loved again? I talk about that and people will respond to that,” he said.

He said his presentation is emotional, powerful and personal but he’s close enough to his teen years to remember that preaching to young people isn’t an effective way to send a message. His goal is to empower, to make kids feel like it’s OK to tell their friends when things are getting out of hand, when they should settle down in the car, when the driver needs to slow down.

And he wants them to think about him, for the voices in their heads to say, “I don’t want to end up like John.”

Mr. Westhaver learned public speaking through the Toastmasters organization and through simply doing it, getting up in front of people and telling his story. He has now developed a business he calls JMM Speaking, a tribute to his best friend, Jason Murray McKeeman.

Mr. Westhaver said he’s available to speak at other schools in New Brunswick while he’s in the area in May. He said he wants to get his story out as far and wide as he can.

For more information on Mr. Westhaver’s story, his presentations or to book or sponsor him, visit jmmspeaking.com or contact Mr. Westhaver at john@jmmspeaking.com

This article was taken from “The Tlegraph Journal” June 2006.