by Wallace Winborne
Twenty-two years old and three sheets to the wind, Chris Sandy hopped into the driver’s seat of his car one night with a friend en route to a party. The destination was a friend’s house just down the road, a Conyers back-road he knew like the back of his hand. In a rush to make it to the party, Chris reached speeds in the high seventies, ultimately crossing the center line to pass a car. He did not notice that a car in the other lane was in the process of making a left turn. He smashed into their car, and they never knew what hit them.
Chris was later sentenced to 13 years of prison and 17 years of probation for 2 counts of vehicular manslaughter.
Today, Chris does not drive cars or go out to parties. Chris wakes up at 5 o’clock in the morning to the unforgiving voices of prison guards, living a militarily structured life in which he has no say. He does not spend evenings with his beautiful, loving girlfriend (they are now separated), or messing around with his buddies. Chris spends hours each day alone with his 62 year old murderer cellmate, and performing manual labor assigned to him by his superiors. Chris cannot choose the quality of his food, the quality of his healthcare, or the quality of anything in his life. Chris is a prisoner who lives with little more than the contents of a small safe box, and the ever haunting presence of the events of April 11th, 2001.
Last Thursday, a chain clad Chris was escorted into the Hendrix Chenault Theater by a Fulton county sheriff. The pain was visible as he gazed longingly into the crowd before his presentation; he sees in the audience a life that he once lived, a life with a bright future that he wishes he hadn’t lost. He now spends many of his days reliving the moment that sent his life spiraling out of control in front of schools, so that hopefully, the families of his listeners won’t suffer the same pain that his does.
Many in the Lovett audience were deeply affected by the presentation.
“I realized just how much one bad choice can haunt you for the rest of your life,” said sophomore Jackson Todd. “It was a powerful message.”
“I cried! It was so sad,” said Anne Carlson, who “couldn’t help but sympathize with him.”
“It was really sad, and I realized that it could happen to anybody,” said Carly Lide.
Teachers in the audience were equally moved, one to the point that she was not in a fit condition to teach.
“It was the most intense assembly I’ve ever been to with a group of students,” said English teacher Ann Swartz.
I know that until last Thursday, I had not been to an assembly which so thoroughly captivated the Lovett student audience.
“It’s important that the kids see such emotion,” said Lovett guidance counselor Mrs. Cooper Pribish, who has helped to organize this assembly each year. “When the kids are sitting there thinking that it could happen to them, they’re going to remember it.”
Chris shared with the sophomore class the lurid details of the crash and its consequences for the victims’ family and his own.
The emotion most commonly felt as the assembly ended on Thursday appeared to be sorrow, but I must say that I felt embarrassed more than anything else. The night before the assembly I remember whining and moping about homework and tests, and other insignificant matters. I lamented what I considered a day plagued by hardship, and compained that the next day things would be worse. I had not taken into account the basic freedoms that prisoners cannot enjoy. When I walked into the Williams Plaza after assembly that morning, I looked up into the beautiful blue sky and realized that I had things that I had taken for granted things that I had barely noticed before: beautiful things.
I hope never to understand the value of freedom the degree that Chris Sandy does.
An all too significant portion of the Lovett student body (and teenagers in general) spends their weekends in a similar fashion that Chris spent his: drinking carelessly and surely, driving cars in their inebriated states. I hope that the tragic story of the life of Chris Sandy can be an example to all of us, teaching us that our lives, our futures, could be the next claimed by this ghastly fate.
Perhaps, more importantly, it will teach us that our lives, our futures, are worth living.
