Responding to tragedy with grace

It shouldn't have been an awful Sunday. The sun was out, it wasn't unbearable outside. For most, it was a lazy Sunday, as it should be before the rancor of the workweek returns.

Yet we were in the middle of gathering information on a truly awful story out of Dubuque County. Four teenagers - young men, all 14 and incoming freshmen at Western Dubuque High School - were tooling along on a rural road in one of those John Deere Gator utility vehicles when the driver of a pickup truck, according to investigators, missed a stop sign and plowed into them.

All four boys are dead.

It was gorgeous outside, one of those endless summer days that renews the soul. One of those days where, in rural Iowa, the cornstalks pierce the blue sky. True Americana.

The boys were out 'living the dream” of summer on an Iowa afternoon, their whole lives still in front of them. Boys trying to get the most out of these final, fleeting weeks before school starts back up. Then, just like that, they all were gone - a chance crash about three miles south of Highway 20 between Farley and Epworth. I think of the word spreading throughout those two towns about what happened. The families that will be devastated forever.

Families that will always have that hole in their hearts. Kids who will never get to grow up. Fall in love. Travel the world. Become a parent. Find their own path.

In the days following, people somberly drove by the crash site, creating memorials to these boys. All I can hope, not as a journalist but as a father is that, in their final moments on Saturday, a peace came over each of them.

The day after the crash, I went on a run to clear my head. As I crossed a busy intersection, a young girl (probably 11) was on a bicycle coming the other way. She looked both ways and was clear but did not watch for the car turning left. I yelled 'STOP!” before this car came dangerously close to hitting her. She stopped. So did the car.

That's how quickly it can happen.

I often say the news business has some of the elements of an ER in a hospital. We don't save lives, but we are witness to trauma and tragedy.

The goal, on a day like this, is to treat the news with grace and decorum. To respect the families of these young victims with compassion.

' Chris Earl is a news anchor at KCRG-TV 9. Comments: Chris.earl@kcrg.com.