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Mother's Loss Becomes Her Mission

Tribune photo by BILLY TOWNSEND

Karolyn Nunnallee shows a photo of Patty. Nunnallee has become a MADD leader and has campaigned for safer school buses.

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By BILLY TOWNSEND

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 14, 2008

FORT MEADE - By now, Karolyn Nunnallee has told the story thousands of times.

She has told it to reporters, to congressmen and to drunken drivers ordered to listen to her. She has told it as the national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. As of today, she has been telling it for 20 years.

Time has made it easier for her to describe what happened at 11 p.m. on May 14, 1988, along a rural stretch of highway in Carrollton, Ky. But it's still not easy to hear.

Surrounded by flames and smoke and panicked children, 10-year-old Patty Nunnallee became the youngest of 27 people - mostly children - to die in a school bus fire ignited by a head-on collision with a drunken driver.

It is still considered the worst DUI crash in American history, according to MADD.

The drunken driver, Larry Mahoney, traveled several miles in the wrong direction on Interstate 71 before he ran head-on into the 1977 school bus in use by a Fort Knox-area church for a youth outing. Patty sat near the front. Most of the other children were older. She'd come along for the trip to a Cincinnati amusement park because her best friend's mother was chaperoning an older sister.

At the time of the crash, Karolyn Nunnallee and her husband, Jim, then an Air Force officer, lived at Fort Knox, where he was stationed.

Although everyone survived the initial impact, it punctured the bus' fuel tank and jammed the exits. A cooler in the narrow central aisle further limited mobility. Many of the children and adults tripped over one another and were trapped in the fire as they tried to escape through the back. Only six of 67 people on board escaped injury.

Trapped near the front, Patty was unable to escape through the main door and unable to move to the back. She later was identified with dental records. Autopsies showed that Patty was the last person on the bus to die.

It confirmed the accounts of several witnesses.

"The last thing they heard," Nunnallee said, "was the voice of a child calling, 'Mommy, help me.'"

A Campaign In Her Honor

At first, Nunnallee, 57, fought dark depression.

"I couldn't even say her name without breaking down," she said. "I went through days of not wanting to move."

Nunnallee credits Patty, who now would be 30, with snapping her out of her misery. Patty had unusual focus for a 10-year-old, she said. She knew she wanted to be a lawyer, like two of her uncles, and attend the Air Force Academy and Harvard law school.

"I asked her why, and she said, 'Because I want to make a difference in the world,'" Nunnallee said.

A few weeks after the crash, Nunnallee decided Patty would want her to make a difference. So she began to attack drunken driving and fight for school bus safety with ferocity. She started a MADD chapter in New Mexico, where she, her husband and their other daughter moved after the crash. She stayed active when the family moved back to Polk County's Fort Meade, where her family lived for several generations.

At the same time, she and a co-plaintiff took the Ford Motor Co. to court over the safety of the school bus. The case was settled during trial for an undisclosed amount of money. A number of changes in bus design followed.

In 1998, Nunnallee became national president of MADD and worked hard to make 0.08 the legal blood-alcohol limit nationwide. Most states have adopted that standard.

Closer to home, she organized bi-monthly victim impact meetings for men and women accused of DUI in Polk County.

Moving Beyond The Tragedy

Mahoney, the drunken driver, survived the crash. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison and served about 11.

According to a 2003 article in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Mahoney, who was 34 at the time of the crash, was a model prisoner and sought treatment for alcoholism. After his release, he married and began a quiet life in remote Kentucky. He has declined to discuss the crash with any media source and has avoided trouble, according to media accounts.

Nunnallee has never spoken with him. She would have preferred that Mahoney remained in prison indefinitely. But worrying about that is a waste of time and energy, she said.

Should Mahoney ever want to speak with her, she'll listen. She has no interest, though, in finding or confronting him. "He can't bring back my daughter," she said.

Nunnallee said she will likely visit Patty's grave in Avon Park today. After 20 years, she says it would be illogical to dwell on the crash. It wouldn't bring Patty back, either. The smart 10-year-old wouldn't have wanted it that way.

Reporter Billy Townsend can be reached at (863) 284-1409 or wtownsend@tampatrib.com.

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