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MARKETPLACE Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Classifieds Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend June 2, 2004 Girl faces long road back from trauma Teenager Lily Bright is dealing with the trauma of seeing her friend fall to her death, and later her own frightening rescue from a narrow rock ledge By JOHN DARLING for the Mail Tribune ASHLAND — For four windy and cold hours on May 22, 13-year-old Lily Bright clung to a steep precipice on Fort Rock, terrified after just seeing her friend, Tracy Dewey, fall to her death. Lily’s mom, Jennifer Bright, got home and found an Ashland police card bearing the words "call us" tacked to the front door of their Ashland home. She called her husband, Casey Bright, at work and told him to come home. Until police arrived, the two were left to imagine their worst nightmares. "There’s only one reason police leave a card on your door and it’s never good," said Casey Bright. "As a father, it was five minutes of terror till I got home and learned she was alive." Using cell phones, police put the Brights in touch with rescuers, who told them Tracy was dead and Lily was trapped on the narrow rock ledge. Hikers below were shouting encouragement and safety directions. The first rescuer had rappelled down to hold onto Lily. The Brights leapt into their car and headed for Fort Rock in Central Oregon — "the longest 3½ hours of my life," said Casey. They arrived to find Lily at a remote fire station, safe in the care of Paul Dewey, who had just lost his daughter and was apologizing for placing Lily in danger. Advertisement Back home, a traumatized but unhurt Lily has been spending most of her time with her parents and older sister, Jessie, a high-schooler. "Jessie’s a tough cookie, not afraid to joke and bring her out" — playing video games, watching movies and sometimes just being quiet, Lily’s mom said. An occasional laugh echoes from her bedroom upstairs, as the sisters "hang" hour after hour. But, so far, Lily refuses to talk about what happened. "She will. It’s going to take time," said Lily’s mom. "When I try to bring it up by saying, ‘It must have been scary’ or ‘How brave you were,’ she just says ‘Leave me alone.’ "But she’s agreed she will talk about it or at least write it out. She has to get it out of her body — that’s the one thing all the grief counselors agree on." "It’s been horrible, real hard," said Jennifer Bright. "You see the loss at 13 of all the carefree innocence that kids feel. It seems so unfair. You feel anxious about how close you’ve come to losing a child, then you feel guilty for how your child lived and the other family’s child died, then you feel so horrible for her (Tracy) and her family." Worried by Lily’s seclusion and wanting to cheer her up, some 50 classmates covered her Scenic Avenue lawn with flowers Friday morning and wrote love notes to her on dozens of balloons. Lily, still sleeping, didn’t come out until they were gone. "That was the turning point," said Jennifer Bright. "She could barely talk before then. But with that, she just lightened and wasn’t so anxious and withdrawn." From there, Lily and her parents decided to engage the outside world in a brief but full-on way, attending Tracy’s Saturday afternoon memorial at the Dewey home, where Lily’s classmates — more than 100 of them — had been "waiting for a week just to give her a hug," Lily’s mom said. "It was real hard. It was very much about kids coming to grips with what happened," she said. "I told her this would be the hardest thing. She was hoping no one would ask her to tell the story. They didn’t. They just hugged her and hugged her and were bawling their eyes out. When we got home, it seemed a lot of stuff had lifted." Lily’s friend Ellie Kuenzel, 13, feels a sense of unreality about the death and its impact on Lily, but they all are handling it about the same way — "We miss her a lot and are just going to be there and support her and when she wants to talk, we want to listen." The next big step up is today’s Ashland Middle School memorial tree-planting and a soccer tournament. Lily’s decided to play. As for school, teachers have frequently e-mailed Lily and given "incredible support," freezing her grades at May 21, the day before the accident. If she returns to school, they assured, it will be for "social integration," not academics. Lily has suffered two traumas — witnessing Tracy’s death and then enduring the scary rescue in freezing winds, her father said. Lake County Deputy Sheriff Tom Roark pieced the accident together from Dan Spencer, a witness below, who talked Lily through that first half-hour alone, while other hikers tried CPR on Tracy. "Tracy was trying to climb down a ledge (off the normal trails)," Roark said, "She slipped and fell to another ledge 10 feet below, landing on her feet, but her momentum took her over and she fell 60 feet to the base of the rock." Lily "screamed hysterically," according to Spencer’s report. Roark, first on the scene, shouted directions for her to take refuge in a small niche just below. There she stayed, occasionally "poking her head out to talk to people" until the first paramedic got to her. He wrapped her in a thermal bag and tethered her to his body until another group of climbers from Deschutes County Search and Rescue arrived and pulled them up. "Dan (Spencer) kept her alive, as far as I’m concerned," said Lily’s mom. "He’d have her count backwards, he kept her talking. He made sure no one told her about Tracy till she was safe. Paul (Dewey) met her at the top and he was the one who told her about Tracy." As Lily heals, "(post traumatic stress) is going to be an issue," said her mom. "If it’s not engaged, it can come up later as anxiety or else the fear — she understandably might fear heights now — it can spread to other things and ruin her love of rafting and athletics. She’s already introspective, comfortable spending time alone and, if this (trauma) is buried, it could turn into not wanting to leave the house." The trauma to the parents is more difficult to map. "While we were driving and getting her home, we had a mission," said Casey Bright. "But when we woke up Sunday, it all hit us, a sense of helplessness and (being) overwhelmed. "We still don’t know how to make things all better. You can’t fix it. We’ve circled the wagons and it’s going to be a long road back." John Darling is a free-lance writer living in Ashland. 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