BY CHRISTINE WOLFF
The Cincinnati Enquirer
AMELIA -- Friends Thursday memorialized two 15-year-old boys, buddies since childhood who were killed together in a car accident, in separate but shared funerals.
The services had many mourners in common. Two hours apart at E.C. Nurre Funeral Home in Amelia, the funerals drew students from Amelia high and middle schools, who followed one body to the cemetery, then returned.
They were saying goodbye to Justin Smith and Steven Lowery, both of Clermont County's Union Township, who died Monday morning when the car they were riding in drove into the path of a school bus at Ohio 222 and Mount Holly Road.
The car's driver was Roy Lowery Jr., Steven's 17-year-old brother. Recovering from minor injuries, Roy attended his brother's funeral, his face showing the same pain as the teens surrounding him.
"I looked into his eyes and all I saw was emptiness. I told him it was an accident . . . " said Catrina Bockelman, 15, of Amelia, who had almost daily telephone conversations with Steven.
Catrina carried copies of drawings by Steven -- black-inked, detailed doodlings of a spider web, a cross and a snakelike demon. "He liked to draw. You could draw a "one,' and he could make a picture out of it," she said.
"He was always happy, never had a sad face on him."
Memories of Steven's many hairstyles made her smile briefly, from the black, spiked Mohawk he wore in his coffin to the one-strand-hanging-in-the-face and all-bald looks he'd tried before.
"He changed it every week," Catrina said.
Justin, too, loved to draw, creating three-dimensional artwork of custom cars.
Steven was a drummer.
Justin taught himself to play a beat-up guitar he'd brought home. "It was said of Justin he had a heart the size of Texas," said the Rev. Terry Pontious, with Mount Moriah United Methodist Church. "He was a very sensitive man," Rev. Pontious said. "He had a big wit, a way of making people laugh."
Thursday, the Clermont County prosecutor had not determined what charges will be filed against Roy, who police said failed to yield at the intersection.
Ohio Department of Transportation workers will erect four new signs next week aimed at better informing drivers of the need to pay attention at the intersection.
The intersection will continue to require drivers on Ohio 222 aiming for Mount Holly Road to yield to southbound traffic coming around the highway's sharp curve.
