The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
DRIVING HOME A MESSAGE
Upper Merion students make safety on the roads a priority Students wore ‘drunk goggles’ to simulate driving while impaired
UPPER MERION » More than 100 students at Upper Merion Area High School took a break from studying for their final exams and finishing up their end of the year projects to play Super Mario Kart, a driving-based videogame. There was an interesting twist to the game, however; students played while wearing “drunk driving” goggles or while receiving and sending text messages on their cell phones. The event was hosted by the Upper Merion Area Community Alliance for a Safer Tomorrow (CAST) and members of the Upper Merion Area High School Students Against Destructive Decisions Club (SADD) as part of Global Youth Traffic Safety Month.
“Since car accidents are the leading cause of death for teenagers, we felt it was important to highlight issues such as impaired and distracted driving,” explained Susan Shelton, Community Mobilizer for CAST.
According to the Center for Disease Control, approximately 1,500 teens die each year from drunk driving, and 1 in 3 teens has reported texting while driving. While wearing the “drunk driving” goggles, the students immediately crashed their videogame vehicles.
The students remarked that the goggles distorted their vision, and some even complained of feeling dizzy. Similarly, the students found it nearly impossible to steer the videogame vehicle and text at the same time since the videogame controller required two hands.
The students also had the opportunity to play BUCKLE UP BINGO. Unlike traditional Bingo, the students had to answer questions related to traffic safety and form the shape of a seat belt in order to win a prize. At the end of the day, members of CAST and SADD reinforced the safety message by standing in the parking lot holding signs that read, “BUCKLE UP,” and “Seat Belts Save Lives” as students left school. They also kept
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themselves down-ontheir-luck for any number of reasons.
“And the thing you learn, especially when you’ve been doing this as long as I have, bad things really do happen to good people,” Fryer says. “Bad luck doesn’t discriminate. It can happen to any of us.”
Fryer came to CNC’s modest headquarters at 107 E. Fourth Ave. as a part-time bookkeeper following several years in office jobs at this area’s Aamco Transmissions, Gino’s and Norristown Box Co. She left the latter because the firm was going out of business. But even as she acclimated to her new responsibilities in Conshohocken, Fryer was helping her former boss make the boxes needed to fill one final order and balancing the books for her brother-inlaw’s fledgling building company.
When NBC finally closed and her brother-inlaw’s business was up and running, she figured she was — happily — down to a single job. That’s about when she was asked to become cheerleading coach at Norristown Area High School. Cheering was something of a family tradition, she says, so she could hardly decline. Her late mother had been a cheerleader at the old Bridgeport High School. Fryer had followed in mom’s footsteps during her own years at NAHS during the early 1970s, and daughter Kelly was, at the time, a member of the NAHS squad (and would continue cheering at Temple University). Years later, granddaughter Chelsea would join the dynasty as a State All Stars cheerleader.
“I think, at this point, I finally have it down to one job, although as soon as I leave here at 1 o’clock, I hop on [Route] 422 and go babysit my grandchildren in Collegeville,” Fryer laughs.
Despite her quartercentury at CNC, Fryer’s enthusiasm for the agency’s mission hasn’t flagged. Sure, she allows, encountering misfortune on a regular basis can be draining, but her commitment to the work she and her handful of mostly volunteer helpers do day-in-andday-out is obvious.
“You hear one sad story after another,” she says. “People who are living in their cars … or worse. People who truly don’t have enough money to buy groceries or pay a heating bill. People who can’t afford to buy school supplies — or medicine for their kids. Sometimes, you just scratch your head and think, ‘How do you get to that place?’ But we don’t scrutinize or judge anyone … because sometimes life just knocks people down for no apparent reason.
“People are people, though, no matter what walk of life they come from … and the way I look at it, you treat everyone with dignity. I don’t treat a food pantry recipient any different from one of our volunteers. Everybody has a story, and sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is listen to their story.”
Although CNC can “always” use more volunteers, money is an even more confounding concern.
“Truthfully, our biggest need is financial — money — but we’re grateful for whatever people can do … or donate,” Fryer says. “The schools and churches and civic groups in the [Colonial School District) are wonderful. Groups like [Conshohocken-PlymouthWhitemarsh] people and groups.” Rotary, our CNC also operates an terrific board members in-house thrift shop, The who are so committed Well, at 107 E. Fourth to the work we do here, Ave. we honestly couldn’t survive Additional information without the support is available by calling we get from all of these 610-828-6595.