The week before Vito died he was working out of town in Ithaca. He and his coworkers went down there to lay some tile. They stayed in a hotel all week and I really missed him. By the time he got home on Friday it was late and Scott and I had already gone to bed. Scott went downstairs to see him but I was tired and stayed in bed. On Saturday I got up at 5 am to go to work. Naturally Vito was still asleep and his door was shut. I was wishing I had gotten up the night before to visit with him.
I called home at lunch and Vito answered the phone. We talked for awhile. I told him his Dad had called for him. He told me about the job and how there were problems with mismatching tiles but otherwise the week had gone well. When I got home from work he'd already left the house. He left no word on where he was, or when he would be coming home. That was an issue we were working on. I was able to piece together the events of his last day by the accounts of others.
After lunch on Saturday he went over to his Dad's house and hung out with him for awhile. He left his Dad's and picked up his friend Jimmy and they went to Mojos for dinner. Afterwards the two of them went to their friend Tyrone's house and hung out there the rest of the evening.
Tyrone's Mom, Claudette, is very nice. After Vito died she brought over a plant and gave us an account of what the boys did that night. She was there, crocheting, as the boys played games, snacked, teased each other and laughed, a lot. She said she even joined in on the teasing when Vito used her bathroom and needed to spray, what seemed to be, a whole can of deodorizer.
About 1am Sunday morning Vito and Jimmy left to go home. Vito was driving his station wagon. It had rained all day so the roads were wet and the temperature had dropped to below freezing. He came to a curve in a section of the road that a family in the area told us is notoriously slippery. He lost control of the car and it apparently slid sideways. The car went on to the shoulder of the road and struck a tree on the drivers side.
At 4am that Sunday morning I was wide awake. I hadn't been sleeping well for months so it was nothing new. I went downstairs, looked out the window and, to my dismay, didn't see Vito's car in the driveway. I told myself he probably went to his Dad's house but I was still worried. I went back up to bed feeling very uneasy. At 4:10am I heard footsteps on the porch. I felt a wave of relief that Vito was finally home. Then I heard someone knock. Vito had house keys. Something was wrong. Scott and I threw on our housecoats, ran downstairs and opened the door. There was a Sheriff, 3 policeman and a Chaplain at our door. It was obvious what I was about to hear.
The Sheriff told us that speeding was not a factor in the crash. Vito's toxicology results came back negative for drugs and alcohol. It was just an accident. An accident on a stretch of rural highway notorious for accidents. A crash into a tree full of scars from previous crashes.
We placed a wooden cross bearing Vito's name in front of that tree to honor his memory. We hoped it would also serve as a warning to other drivers. Two years later it was splintered to pieces by another car crash. Luckily that driver survived.
According to the FHWA (Federal Highway Administration) rural highway fatalities exceed the national average of fatalities despite the fact that fewer actual miles are driven on them. In 2007 even though only 23 percent of the U.S. population lived in rural areas, rural fatal crashes accounted for 57% of all traffic fatalities. Local highway agencies often do not have the resources to address known safety problems on the roads they maintain.
