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State gets serious about removing roadside shrines Staff and wire reports SALEM -- A 5-foot-tall cross on the side of Highway 22 once marked the spot where a car crash put Jeremy Haddock in a coma and killed two of his friends. "That place right there affects my life," said the 18-year-old. "It's always going to affect my life." Until recently, the Oregon Department of Transportation had been lax in enforcing the federal law prohibiting such roadside memorials. But now, in a move that has sparked debate inside the agency and out, ODOT says the displays are public distractions that must be removed. And so last month, road crews began pulling all memorials from the right-of-way along highways in the Salem-Woodburn area. The policy is in effect on all state highways. "It's a terrible job before us," said maintenance manager Jerry Erickson. "We've got a lot of people who are going to be unhappy." ODOT staff in Southern Oregon are taking a less aggressive approach, however. "We've always removed markers that are a hazard," said John Vial, the ODOT district manager in Medford. "Otherwise, it's strictly a maintenance issue." Like the cross erected last May as a reminder of Haddock's 16-year-old classmates Karin Klepfer and Cory Cain, people have built everything from concrete headstones to bird baths. "In the past, we just kind of let it go because there really weren't that many," said J.R. Torres, an ODOT maintenance worker. ``But lately, you see them everywhere. People are planting trees or shrubs near roads to remember loved ones lost in fatal accidents." In a quarterly report released Friday, ODOT said that the number of people killed on Oregon's roads through the first nine months of 1999 dropped 23 percent from last year, falling from 434 to 335 fatalities. However, in that same time, ODOT officials have watched memorials pop up more and more on state highways. Nobody knows for sure why the practice has taken root, but cultural geographers said it is not new or even uniquely American. Roadside shrines can be found throughout Europe, especially in the Mediterranean region, and are a fixture in Mexico. "It's a growing phenomenon" in the Northwest, Vial said. He estimated there could be up to 25 roadside memorials in Southern Oregon. State Police Lt. Gregg Hastings said he's never responded to an accident caused by a memorial. But ODOT said they won't take chances any longer. In the past, Erickson said, crews have allowed most of the memorials to stay, going out only sporadically to remove them. "Typically, they get put there, and we try to allow people the opportunity to grieve," Erickson said. "And if they keep it back from the highway, at the edge of the right-of-way, we've pretty much overlooked it." Transportation officials say that will soon change. "We look like bureaucrats without emotion when we take them down," said ODOT spokesman Pat Cooney. "But the problem is, they're a distraction." In the Rogue Valley, ODOT has generally tolerated memorials placed high up on embankments. Unless such markers prevent routine maintenance, no plans have been made to remove them. Although Haddock is angry he was not notified before his memorial was taken down, Erickson said they don't have time to track down the people connected to each roadside cross or headstone. But he said ODOT will keep the memorials it collects for 60 days, allowing people a chance to retrieve them. After that, they are trash. On Saturday, Haddock, who collected his cross from an ODOT warehouse, returned to the spot that haunts him on Highway 22. "I just believe that having it along the side of the road is most important because it tells people, 'Look, this is a dangerous highway,"' Haddock said as he hammered the cross into the ground once again, this time a little farther from the road. "There's only death on Highway 22." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA