Thursday, January 27, 2000
Father directs grief into fighting drunken boating
Collision killed daughter, 2 others
BY JANE PRENDERGAST
The Cincinnati Enquirer
His briefcase overflows with information about people dying in boat wrecks: more than 800 killed across the country in 1998; an estimated 40 to 50 percent of the wrecks involved alcohol; a drunken boat driver is 10 times more likely to die than a sober one.
Also in the case is a picture of exactly why Jim Barnes uses those facts on his mission to spread a message against drinking and boating. It's a portrait of his beautiful daughter, Pam. Last summer, a boat wreck left her body floating in the Ohio River for two days.
Mr. Barnes, a retired widower from West Chester, recently founded the Tristate/Ohio River chapter of BADD, Boaters Against Drunk Driving. A boater himself for almost 40 years, Barnes says he wants to convince his fellow water enthusiasts that boating and alcohol can mix, just not boat-driving and alcohol.
He wants to do more than just raise awareness; he plans to push for mandatory boating safety courses, stricter drunken boating laws and more aggressive prosecution of accused drunken boaters.
“Right now, we're just in between crashes out there,” Mr. Barnes said. “Who's next?”
The Aug. 16 wreck killed Pam Martini, 32, her husband Scott Martini, 36, of Dearborn County, Ind. Their friend, Ken Middendorf, 36, of Cleves, also was killed.
Their Stingray Rally Sport sat in an idle zone near the Watertown Marina in Dayton when a speedboat hit it, spun it around, and hit it again. The driver of the speedboat, Brian Brunen of Cincinnati, faces manslaughter, assault and drunken-driving charges.
Mr. Barnes isn't self-righteous about his cause. He doesn't say don't take a sip. He knows others involved in the wreck, even his daughter, were drinking that night, too. He admits to having a drink himself on the water. Plenty of times. He just doesn't drive the boat afterward.
“All we're asking is that people be responsible,” he said. “It's that simple.”
Mr. Barnes started big with his new cause. He took his briefcase and conviction to the Sports, Travel and Boat Show that just finished in downtown Cincinnati. He plopped himself and his brochures and his pictures of dead people right down in the middle of boaters' heaven.
Boat show organizers welcomed the new activist and his booth. Budweiser, in fact, is a national sponsor of BADD, a group now working in 30 metropolitan areas across the United States.
But most local showgoers were less enthusiastic.
One man walked up to Mr. Barnes, right next to the picture of his dead daughter, and asked just what privilege was he going to try to take away next. Another man, with a big cup of beer in his hand, insisted that the fatal wreck had nothing to do with alcohol.
Mr. Barnes just shook his head. He left the show with about 40 new members. But with the thousands in attendance, he was hoping for more like 400.
His work already has drawn kudos from Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and others, including a Mason woman who lost her husband in a boat wreck seven years ago.
“Water tends to draw people — for fireworks, for concerts,” said Tishy Mason, whose husband, Mark Linkenfelter, was killed on the Ohio. “But mixing alcohol with that is such a bad idea. People need to understand that.”
BADD, MADD and other boating-safety proponents think their message may be starting to sink in with the more than 16 million recreational boaters in the United States.
Their evidence: A man in Florida, the nation's leading state for boating fatalities, was sentenced in November to 85 years in prison for killing six people in a boat wreck, the deadliest recreational boating accident in the state. It's the stiffest penalty anybody in the cause can remember.
National BADD, based in Deltona, Fla., recently started a project to monitor more than 300 drunken-boating cases across the country. Founder Jim Carlin hopes the tracking will lead to a comprehensive study of how such prosecutions are handled.
He hopes an unfortunate rash of 1999 high-profile water wrecks involving alcohol might finally focus attention on the problem. The most notable case involved the June death of a Louisiana man, Thomas Murdock. The man accused of killing him was not indicted. A push by BADD resulted in the Louisiana attorney general stepping in to prosecute.
In the local wreck, Mr. Brunen, if convicted, could stay in prison for decades. Mr. Barnes hopes for that, but is afraid it probably won't happen.
“People just don't take boating accidents as seriously,” he said. “We've got to change that.”
MADD officials support Mr. Barnes, have already been lobbying for drunken-boating laws and are happy for his extra help. They wrote a letter to assistant Campbell County commonwealth attorney Jack Porter, urging him to prosecute this case aggressively.
Said Andrea Rehkamp, executive director of MADD's Southwestern Ohio chapter, “A boat's a motor vehicle, too. And it can be just as lethal.”
FOR INFORMATION
• For more information on BADD's fight against drunken boating, email local organizer Jim Barnes at baddohioriver@aol.com or visit www.badd.org.
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