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| Roly Poly has great wraps. March 17, 2004 these tasty wraps saved my life. |
The Savannah St. Patrick's day cerebration is one of the largest in the country. The party scene during the festival are legendary and bring's a ton of tourists to town. The party scene on river street for Ellen and I was never to much of the story. After the first year kids came into the picture. The desire for the River Street crazies were limited. They were not completely eliminated, just limited. Reflection of the partying would be appropriate for a different blog.
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| St. Patrick's Day parade accident in Savannah in 2004 |
Even with the partying, the parade is the biggest draw. The grand marshal for the parade is elected a month before and is usually the lead story on the local news. The real estate on the parade route is premium. The historic squares on the fill up early. Sleeping overnight on the squares is prohibited. The day of the parade, people line up in the early morning and wait until 6:00 am when a horn is blown and people run, claim, and mark off spots for their friends and family Tents are set up and the parade does not even start for 4 more hours. I know some families that have done this for years.
In 2004, Our friends invited us to Wright Square. Ben was one month shy of being three years old. Ellen was pregnant with Brian. We had just started telling people that she was pregnant. In fact, that morning was the first time we told our friends. The spot we had in the square was a nice grassy area, but it was a little hard for Ben to view the parade due to some shrubs. Easy to view for a grown up, but not for a 2 year old. We were prepared. We brought Ben's wagon, and had a bag chair placed on top of it. It was secure enough, that we felt comfortable putting Ben in the chair if we were beside him. He enjoyed the floats and the bands and drummers. It was warm that day, and at times he would get tired of watching and just want to run around on the grassy square. In front of the shrub parade watchers 2-3 deep lined the parade route. So Ben had a great view over the shrubs, and over the folks that had seats on the other side of the shrub. The parade route was such that it was coming straight towards us and took a left to go around the square. It is a LOOONG parade. Four hours at least. It was a perfect sunny and warm day. The flowers were in bloom, the fountains dyed green, and the day was starting off perfect.
Two hours in, and we were hungry. We took our planned walk to Roly Poly. It was only a few blocks from Wright Square. Getting out of the sun and the crowd for a few minutes was a nice break. The plan was to get our wraps, and come and eat sitting in the grassy area.
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| 1996 Chrysler Sebring Ran thru the Crowd in 2004 Parade. Ran over chairs that we had been siting in. |
THE ACCIDENT:
The streets between the parade route and the Roly Poly were all closed to vehicles. Pedestrians only. When we were coming back to our spot with our wraps, Ben jumped on and off the curve. It was not a big deal. He was easily within reach of me and was not going to go anywhere. A stranger that was walking away from the parade route told me that I should be careful with him because a car just ran into the crowd. It took me some time to process that. I asked him to explain what he was talking about. He said that a car that was carrying people in the parade just run into the crowd. We noticed a somewhat mass exodus from the route at that time.
I told Ellen to watch Ben and I ran a little toward the route to see what happened. Police and medics had already arrived. A 1996 Chrysler Sebring Convertible was now parked in the grassy area where our friends had been sitting when we left. I was blocked from going to the sight itself, and first thing I did was look for our group of friends. Nowhere to be found.
I went back and found Ellen and Ben. I had told them what I saw. We walked back together and eventually one of our friends had found us and pulled us over to where they had all congregated after the accident. The only injury our friends had was a cut hand. Apparently they thought that someone was under the car, so a group of people were trying to lift it until they determined that nobody was in harms way. Our friend cut his hand in assisting in the rescue.
After a few minutes of watching the police and medics, the same friend that had the cut hand told me to look at a spot in the shrub a few feet from where the car had gone thru. It was the chair we had set up for Ben. The chair had been knocked away by the car and must have flown 4-5 feet and landed in a different part of the shrub.
No words can be typed to express the feeling that I felt when I recognized the chair. We had dodged a bullet, or better yet, a Sebring.
Thank God for the Roly Poly Tradition.
After a while, the parade was re routed and Ben wanted to see more of it. We found a side on the new route. Ben wanted to hear more drums and see more bands. We stayed way outside of the flow of the parade traffic the rest of the parade.
REFLECTION
Ambulances brought 10 people to the hospital. No fatalities. One injury that was pretty serious. The driver claimed that the accelerator to the vehicle stuck. Law suites were settled with the manufacturer and the driver.
The AJC had a picture of the Sebring on the front page of the paper. The accident made national news. It was also one of the top stories of 2004 according to WTOC news and is listed as part of the history of St. Patrick's Day in Savannah.
The car hit a drummer and went thru the crowd of people sitting in front of the shrubbery. In my mind, we would have had enough time to get Ben out of the way before it knocked the chair and the wagon that he was sitting on over. I often wonder if I would of froze in shock while it was happening had we been on Wright Square at the time. I will always wonder. We never had to find out.
In my job in Savannah, Wright Square was often a short cut for me to run errands or go out to lunch. I could never go thru the square again without the image of the Sebring. I went back to other St. Patrick's Day Parades after this incident, but we avoided Wright Square.
WTOC Story
http://www.wtoc.com/story/2745316/wtoc-this-year-saint-patricks-day-parade-accident
Savannah Morning News Story / Archive from 3/18/2004
http://savannahnow.com/stories/031804/LOC_stpwreck.shtml
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| Was a great grassy area to watch the parade until the accident in 2004. |
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| Wright Square in 2011. The car went straight thru the shrub. |
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