Roadside Crosses and Memorial Complexes in Texas

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   I don't know that I myself would have necessarily--like, in Oregon and
   California where we're from, you never see it. I don't know that we
   would've thought to do it if we hadn't lived in Texas, and it's something
   you see frequently. But I have to say that ... it was kind of nice just to
   drive by and see, just, that there was a memory of what had happened there,
   you know (Lamay 1997).

In addition, Shilah and her family bought a stock trailer, bearing a memorial plaque, for the Bowie High School chapter of Future Farmers of America (in which Heather had been very active) with donated memorial funds. She emphasised that both the trailer and the grave site meant more to the Lamay family than the roadside memorial.

Bowie students suffered the loss of another classmate just over a year later when the truck in which Heather Werchan was a passenger crashed into a tree after the driver, Heather's boyfriend, lost control of the vehicle on a four-lane divided road which runs in front of the school. The young man built and erected the cross, along with another of Heather's friends, soon after Heather's death in an Austin hospital. Heather's father, James, said:

   They [the young men] decided to put the cross up and it was, I guess it was
   probably about a week after the accident or after the funeral that they put
   it up. They decided to put it up. It was very, you know, the thought and
   having it there is really good. You know, because it is a reminder for two
   things, you know. Of Heather, of course, and the other is for people just
   to slow down and be more cautious, too, of people that are dying because of
   traffic accidents.

The cross is indeed a powerful and eye-catching reminder that a fatal accident took place there. At approximately 4.5 ft x 4.5 ft, the cross is the largest I have documented within city limits (Fig. 3).

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"Heather" is spelled out in large, pine green letters which hang across the horizontal piece. When I photographed the cross in December 1997, strands of silk sunflowers, black-eyed Susans, orange marigolds, autumn-coloured leaves and other greenery were intertwined about both pieces of the structure. A stuffed teddy bear, with a plastic-covered photograph of a young woman attached to its right foot with purple ribbon, sat on the horizontal near the transverse and a ring of purple silk miniature roses. Higher up and around the vertical, a visitor had placed a Bowie graduation tassel (in school colours of red and black). Sitting atop the vertical were five pennies. Green wooden letters also indicated Heather's middle and last initials on the bottom half of the vertical.

Although the cross still stands just east of Bowie High School, it is regularly repainted and redecorated by the young man and his mother, who also care for a miniature rose bush they planted nearby. Heather's father and mother routinely change the flowers at the base of the cross, and mow the grass around the memorial. James, said, "And I mow the grass, you know, on the other side of the tree and a pretty good ways back away from the cross toward Bowie. So I keep it looking nice and maintain it." The fact that James mows the median is extraordinary in that this kind of maintenance would generally be undertaken by city or county road crews. The Werchans have never been asked by any city official to move, or otherwise alter the memorial.