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City restricts roadside memorials

Impromptu tributes can become traffic hazards, Largo officials say. Families can request a standardized marker.

By SHANNON TAN
Published March 13, 2005

LARGO - She drove by the wooden cross every day. Seeing the spot where her son was last alive made her feel at peace.

The cross was painted white and set in concrete. Friends and family had pinned notes to it and placed a ceramic dove and flowers at its foot. At Christmas, they hung lights on the cross, sang carols and lit candles.

Several residents complained about the music, so Teresa Carter-Lane and Roger Lane, her husband, had to mourn in silence. After complaints about obstructing traffic, they stopped going.

One day, the cross was no longer there.

Largo Deputy Police Chief John Carroll removed the memorial in January and asked a police chaplain and an officer to deliver it to their Clearwater home. The memorial now sits in the family's back yard.

Carter-Lane doesn't understand why they had to remove the tribute to her son. Anthony Carter was 19 when he was killed in the Oct. 14, 2003 accident.

"You don't know what it's like to lose a kid," she said with tears in her eyes.

Until recently, the Largo Police Department has had a hands-off policy when it comes to roadside memorials, which are becoming more popular in Largo. Traffic fatalities are steadily increasing in the city, which saw seven fatalities in 2001, 10 in 2002, 13 in 2003 and 16 deaths in 2004.

But officials say problems arise when groups of grieving friends or family gather at the site, or drivers slow down to look at the memorial. And people often leave behind flowers and other items that, after time, could become an eyesore.

"It was turning into a shrine," said Curtis Holmes, who lives near the site of Anthony Carter's fatal accident on Belcher Road, near Kent Avenue. "They had planted flowers on the right-of-way. Folks would go light candles and leave them lit."

City officials recently decided to address the debate over the roadside tributes. Last month, police began allowing only standardized memorials.

Now, family members can request a marker if the person was killed on a city street. Impromptu roadside memorials will be removed and police will ask family members if they want the standardized marker. The policy is similar to the Florida Department of Transportation's.

"What we're trying to do is be very sensitive to the needs of a grieving family," said Carroll.

The marker is a white circle mounted on a pole with the words, "Drive Safely in Memory," followed by the victim's name.

The police department's Victim's Assistance Office will coordinate the manufacture and installation of the marker, which costs $20 to $50 to make. After six months, the memorial markers will be taken down and given to the family.

Several local governments have used the state Department of Transportation's policy to form their own, said spokeswoman Kris Carson. FDOT started using the lollipop-like markers in 1998 to memorialize traffic victims and promote highway safety.

There are 41 such markers installed along state roads in Pinellas County and 114 in Hillsborough County. Markers can stay up for at least one year.

Pinellas County requires a permit before anything is placed in a right-of-way, said Winston Needham, traffic engineering division manager. But that does not necessarily mean that all memorials will be removed.

"It gets sticky," Needham said. "I don't know if you put a balloon by the (road)side, if the county would say it violates the code."

Hillsborough County erects free markers at the request of family members, as long as adjacent property owners do not object. Fewer than 35 markers have been put up, said Steve Valdez, county public information manager. They stay up for a year.

A jumble of policies regulate roadside memorials in other states.

Wisconsin allows friends and family of victims to adopt a 2-mile-long highway segment near the crash site in memory of the deceased. California will erect "Please Don't Drink and Drive" signs for victims of alcohol or drug-related accidents for $1,000. Wyoming held a statewide contest to determine the design of its standardized memorial - a dove flying over a broken heart.

While Mothers Against Drunk Driving used to place white crosses at fatality sites in Florida, some say such religious memorials do not belong on public roadways.

Five years ago, critics of such memorials in Oregon posted signs bearing black crosses with a red slash through them - some with the Satanic mark "666," according to the Associated Press. The Legislature was debating whether to declare the religious memorials legal at the time. The Oregon Department of Transportation decided to ban all roadside memorials as traffic hazards.

But public acknowledgement of a person's death, through roadside memorials, helps the grieving process, said University of South Florida's Dr. Mary Jean Etten, an expert in death and dying.

A sudden death is especially traumatic, especially that of a child. "The shadow of that death follows them through their lives," says Etten. Uniform markers don't allow people to commemorate a person individually.

After Anthony Carter's death, family members paid a star registry to name some stars in the sky after him. They keep a candle burning on the memorial table in their home. Carter's stepfather, Lane, got a tattoo of a broken heart.

"Some people may say I wear his death on my shoulders," Lane says.

Still, they feel connected to the place where Carter was killed.

His mother plans on asking Largo to put a city-approved marker at the site.

For now, she drives by the spot every morning and evening. Then she toots her horn.

Shannon Tan can be reached at shtan@sptimes.com or 445-4174.

[Last modified March 13, 2005, 00:22:15]