Mother Shares Story of Life After Daughter Killed by Drunk Driver

WOODBINE — It’s a group that no one wants to belong to, ever. Membership in it is forged in unspeakable grief, its dues involve paying the ultimate sacrifice. And with the recent deaths of two teen-aged cousins who were killed while walking down Bayshore Road in Green Creek, yet two more families have now become members – those who have lost children to drunk drivers.
Jean Fazekas lost her 18-year-old daughter, Lisa, to a drunk driver April 7, 1991. Lisa, the youngest child in a family of four girls, was killed while she stood on the side of the road at the base of her parents’ driveway. Her mother shared the story of her daughter’s death, along with its aftermath.
“Lisa was everybody’s best friend,” said her mother. “She had boyfriends, but nothing serious. She was funny. She hated school. I used to call her the Queen of Skip,” said her mother smiling. “She was very bubbly.”
“She worked at Dionysus restaurant,” said her mother, telling the story of the night her daughter lost her life. “She was a waitress. She had come home and said to her father, ‘I’m going to Wawa.’”
Those words would be the last her father, Charlie, would ever hear her say. Fazekas said her daughter returned from her trip from the convenience store and had pulled into the driveway of her home. At that point a friend, who was driving by, noticed Lisa’s car and pulled over to the side of the road to chat. Lisa left her car in the driveway, stood on the passenger side of her friend’s vehicle between a fence and the car.
“He asked her if she wanted to go out and get something to eat,” said Fazekas. “She told him ‘I have to work the morning shift.’ He said she said to him, ‘Watch it! Watch it! Here comes a car!’ and she slammed the door and went to run. And that’s when she was killed.”
According to Fazekas, as her husband waited in the kitchen for his daughter’s return and later told her he thought he heard three gunshots. Instead of gunshots, the three bangs her husband heard were the sound of Lisa’s friend’s car being hit, Lisa being struck and then thrown against a fence.
“When my husband heard that, it was dark,” said Fazekas. “He ran outside and saw our daughter’s car in the driveway and saw another car across the street into a fence across the street.” The impact from the crash was so intense it pushed Lisa’s friend’s car across Washington Avenue into a fence on the other side of the road.
“He saw a break in the fence. He went running down and he tripped on her because it was dark. One of her friends was walking up the street from the opposite direction and before he tripped on her he yelled ‘Where’s Lisa? Where’s Lisa? I can’t find Lisa!’ And then he found her and she was on her back. When he turned her over her legs just flopped and he said we knew we were in trouble.”
Fazekas, who had been visiting a relative in Cumberland County, came home to find police, emergency workers and chaos in her front yard when she returned home.
“I had no idea until I came home and saw flashing lights in my driveway,” she said. “I had to move around my daughter’s car. A policeman came over and said my daughter had been involved in an accident.” The officer asked Fazekas if there was anyone who could drive her to the hospital since her husband was at the hospital with Lisa.
En route to the hospital, Fazekas said she asked the young woman who offered to drive her what had happened to her daughter. The young woman told the mother Lisa had been hit by a car and had a broken leg. “I’m thinking she’s going to the prom. She’ll be on crutches.”
Once at the hospital Fazekas said she asked her husband, “How is she?” “She’s not,” he replied.
“I remember hearing this screaming, this horrible screaming,” said Fazekas. “And I didn’t realize it was coming from me.”
The mother was taken to a room where she was allowed to view her daughter’s body. “They let me stay in with her for quite awhile,” said Fazekas. A nurse encouraged the mother to hold her daughter’s hand and talk to her. “Later on, that was healing for me,” recalled Fazekas.
Fazekas recalled the last time she saw her daughter alive. Lisa asked her mother if she could go out after work. “I said don’t forget, the clocks are going to change,” said Fazekas, her voice breaking. “I said you’re going to lose an hour because you’re springing ahead. Little did I know she would lose her life that night.”
Lisa’s funeral was held in her hometown of Piscataway. A memorial service followed in Cape May County. She was laid to rest with both her grandmothers. “And we will go with her,” said Fazekas.
Afterward the funeral life did not go back to normal for the Fazekas family.
“You walk around in shock for such a long time,” said Fazekas. “It doesn’t seem real.”
With the passage of a calendar year the family, which once embraced four beautiful daughters, was left with a gaping hole with Lisa’s death.
The grieving mother said during one point during the first year after her daughter’s death, she found herself in the kitchen not remembering how to make coffee in the coffeemaker. “I just couldn’t remember how to do it,” she recalled.
“The first year wasn’t as bad as the second,” said Fazekas. “All those firsts are hard and I missed her. But I was in that grieving process. When the second year came, the realization came in that she was not coming back.”
The summer after Lisa’s death, a man whose child had been killed by a drunk driver came to visit the family. “He came, knowing what we were going through,” said Fazekas. “He said he was moving to Oklahoma and wanted to come see us first to talk to us.”
That visit helped the family because the man knew what the family was going through. “No one who has never lost a child can say ‘I know how you feel,’ because they don’t.”
In addition to the visit, Fazekas’ second-eldest daughter, Robyn, became involved in a Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) in northern New Jersey.
“Everybody always forgets that other people are grieving,” said Fazekas. “Not just the mother.” She gave the example of one of her surviving daughters who kept a jar of tri-colored pasta on her kitchen counter for almost 20 years because the pasta was what remained in the box when Lisa and her sister cooked for the last time. “She couldn’t throw it out,” said their mother. “So she kept it in a jar.”
The trial of the driver who killed Lisa took place in the county court house June 1992. The 37-year-old woman, who lived several houses away from the Fazekas family, was sentenced to four years in jail. “In my innocence,” said Fazekas, “When they said four years, I thought it was four years.” Instead, the convicted drunk driver served less than a year in jail.
Recalling the trial Fazekas said, “They told me you don’t have to go for any of this.” Instead, Fazekas attended every court appearance related to her daughter’s case. Accompanying the mother was a victim advocate from the Atlantic County chapter of MADD.
According to Fazekas, even with the conviction of the woman who killed her daughter, she did not get closure. “There’s never closure,” she said. “Any sentence is not justifiable of what happened. A life was taken; their lives still go on. I am going to be missing a part of me for the rest of my life.”
During the trial Fazekas was able to present to the court an impact statement. In her statement she said she hoped the woman who killed her daughter would become a better person and a better mother, and she would be an asset to her community.
Fazekas, along with several other women who had lost loved ones to drunken driving, made the decision to bring a MADD chapter to Cape May County. Through her work through the local organization, she became a voice for those who had lost their voices to drunk driving. Her work took her to prisons, Intoxicated Drivers Resource Centers (IDRC), courts and speaking engagements.
“I always brought her picture,” said Fazekas. “And I passed it around for everybody to look at it.”
In speaking with prisoners, Fazekas said she would tell them, “I know when you get out of here the first thing you’re going to want to do is party and have a few drinks. And that’s okay. But you have to make up your mind about what you’re going to do before you start drinking. Don’t let this happen to another family because it ruins not only the immediate family, but it has a ripple effect.”
Fazekas volunteered as a member of MADD for 14 years. She left the organization after a shake-up at the state-level office. Cape May County no longer has a MADD chapter.
Although no longer a volunteer with MADD, Fazekas said if given the opportunity to speak with the families of the two girls who were killed July 31 on Bayshore Road, she would tell them people whom they don’t know are praying for them.
“They need to talk. To anybody who will listen,” said Fazekas. “They need to talk about their children. It’s going to be hard for them. One day you can look at their picture and look at it. Another day you can’t bear the pain of looking at the picture. It’s all normal. And it’s okay.”
“I would tell them you’re going to miss them so much, like a constant pain. I didn’t know grief was pain. It hurts in your heart,” she said as she touched her chest. “It hurts here.”
Fazekas spoke of the enormity of losing a child. “When a woman’s husband dies, she is a widow. When a man’s wife dies, he is a widower. When a parent dies, you are an orphan. When a child dies, there is no word for it because it is so unnatural.”