{"id":1117,"date":"2017-09-25T21:56:41","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T01:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=1117"},"modified":"2018-12-05T14:36:00","modified_gmt":"2018-12-05T19:36:00","slug":"turning-tragedy-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/turning-tragedy-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Turning tragedy into change"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Early in the morning of July 22, 2000, Ensign John Elliott, a recent graduate of the United States Naval Academic, was driving from Annapolis, Maryland, to his family\u2019s home in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, to celebrate his mother\u2019s birthday. He never made it.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, his parents, Bill and Muriel Elliott, were awakened by a knock on the door from police, who informed them their son had been killed in a head-on collision with a drunken driver. The other driver had been arrested earlier in the evening on DUI charges, then released to a friend, who allowed him to get behind the wheel again.<\/p>\n<aside>\n<header>John\u2019s Law<\/header>\n<p>The HERO Campaign championed what\u2019s now known as John\u2019s Law, a piece of New Jersey legislation passed in 2001 that gives police the authority to impound the cars of drunken drivers, and hold them for 12 hours.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cMy thought was if that friend had only driven his buddy home instead of putting him back behind the wheel, our son would be alive,\u201d says Bill. \u201cA designated driver would have been a hero to us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Looking to honor his son and make a difference, Bill formed the John R. Elliott HERO Campaign for Designated Drivers. The name\u2019s meaning is twofold, reflecting both the heroic potential of designated drivers and John\u2019s service as a peer advocate and counselor in the Naval Academy\u2019s Human Education Resource Officer (HERO) program, where he was honored as his graduating class\u2019 Outstanding HERO.<\/p>\n<p>The goal of the HERO Campaign is simple but ambitious: register one million designated drivers and make having a designated driver as automatic as wearing a seatbelt. Thanks to Bill Elliott\u2019s tireless work, numerous stakeholders and partners have joined the effort, putting the campaign well on its way to meeting that goal.<\/p>\n<p>One of Elliott\u2019s tactics has been to enlist bars and taverns to serve free soft drinks to designated drivers. This past summer, the campaign challenged 32 such establishments along the Jersey Shore to come up with nonalcoholic \u201cmocktails.\u201d Patrons voted on their favorite, from the Berry Sobertini to the No-hito. \u201cThe idea is that designated drivers don\u2019t have to be the odd man out, and they can still have fun and enjoy a great drink,\u201d says Elliott. \u201cThey\u2019re not party poopers. We like to say they\u2019re actually the life of the party.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The campaign also partners with police, accompanying them at DUI checkpoints and handing out t-shirts to thank designated drivers. A partnership with Uber provides discounts to those who sign the HERO pledge to be a designated driver. Additional partnerships with sports teams provide free soft drinks to designated drivers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is all designed to prevent families in the future from getting that knock on the door that we received, because you never get over it,\u201d says Elliott. \u201cYou never leave the memory of your child behind. It\u2019s impossible. But we think we have certainly made every effort to honor him in a way that is appropriate and reflects who he was as a person.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HERO Campaign chairman and CEO Bill Elliott \u201995M is working to end drunk driving tragedies. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":1119,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\"x\":52,\"y\":23}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[81],"class_list":["post-1117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-back","tag-alumni-profile"],"thumbnail":"<img width=\"200\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/09\/NV_8-21-17-0131-1-200x300.jpg\" class=\"lazyload wp-image-1119 wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" role=\"presentation\" style=\"object-position:52% 23%\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/09\/NV_8-21-17-0131-1-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/09\/NV_8-21-17-0131-1-768x1152.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/09\/NV_8-21-17-0131-1-683x1024.jpg 683w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/09\/NV_8-21-17-0131-1-1536x2304.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/09\/NV_8-21-17-0131-1-1400x2100.jpg 1400w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/09\/NV_8-21-17-0131-1-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/09\/NV_8-21-17-0131-1-828x1242.jpg 828w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/09\/NV_8-21-17-0131-1-360x540.jpg 360w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/09\/NV_8-21-17-0131-1-9x13.jpg 9w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/09\/NV_8-21-17-0131-1.jpg 1633w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/>","catString":"The Back","issue":"Fall 2017","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1120,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions\/1120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}