Hope and a summer of healing for Baird in the wake of tragic loss

BAIRD, Texas — Grief at any age is difficult to navigate.

But when you’re a teenager coping with the loss of a peer, it can be especially hard to find your way through it.

That’s where the community here has found itself this month in the wake of the fatal loss of three teens in an early-morning collision May 5.

Layni Potter and Madi Buchanan, both 18, and 16-year-old Ryan Bilby died in the crash.

A 2009 Chevy Silverado pickup driven by Ashlie Haynes of Clyde struck the 2008 Kia Spectra they were riding in, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. The driver and another occupant of the Kia suffered minor injuries. Haynes was later arrested for DWI after her breath test showed a blood-alcohol concentration surpassing .08.

While the survivors wore seatbelts at the time of the accident, the three victims did not.

The impact of a loss like this resonates in all directions in a small town like Baird. Two days after the accident, families, friends and members of the community gathered at the intersection where it had occurred.

Treating the wound

David Avecedo, the pastor of First Baptist Church, held a microphone as he read a prayer on his phone behind a pickup. The loudspeaker in its bed carried his voice to the crowd of 150 or more surrounding the intersection at West Third Street and Payton Road.

“We gathered here, and the plan was to give them a chance to try to process some of this,” he said afterward. “To let their grief be real and let that pour out.”

In many ways, grief is like any other wound to the body prone to infection. It’s not enough to cover it up and think it will heal in time. It requires periodic cleaning to prevent festering.

It’s natural to avoid pain, and cleaning a wound is never painless. But the trade here is enduring a lesser amount of discomfort in the short term to avoid something larger down the line.

“The school and the Region 14 Education Service Center have been really great at providing counselors,” Avecedo said. “With summer coming up, you know, it's gonna be important because (the kids) are going to begin to kind of scatter.”

'A kid-by-kid basis'

Baird High School counselor Kortni Collins said they’ve got a wide variety of tools at their disposal to help any child who needs it.

“I tell the kids all the time, adults have a hard time processing this, and so we totally understand that they're having a hard time processing that,” she said. “I would say probably the biggest thing is we take it at a kid-by-kid basis.”

Dr. Tim Little, Baird ISD superintendent, said their biggest resource is their elementary school counselor and Collins.

“At the high school, we have roughly 150-160 kids. Ms. Collins knows every one of them by name,” Little said. “Being a small school, it gives our teachers, and especially our counselors, a chance to know all the kids."

Anger is a common reaction among those grieving.

Little said while he can't remember a fight on campus in four years, there had been a couple of recent incidents where residual anger was believed to be at the root of the conflict.

"We make sure that our principals are very knowledgeable about these things," he said. "We talk about what to look for, so when something's going sideways, they can pick up on it. That's a lot harder to do in a bigger school. We are blessed in that way.”

For Avecedo, the impact on the students was apparent by the silence within the hallways.

“School has been . . ., you know, it's eerie when kids are in the hallway between classes, and there's not a sound. It's really quiet,” he said. “That's when kids are trying to process something that, you know, they shouldn't have to.”

A holistic approach

Little agreed that early on, the atmosphere in the school was very much how Avecedo described it. Funerals and other memorial gatherings have served to assist with some closure. Time and honest conversations help as well.

“Region 14 was out here for two days providing support with their trauma crisis team. They were fantastic,” Little said. “We opened it up not just to our kids and our staff, but to the parents and any community members who needed counseling. A lot of them took advantage of it.”

There is a wealth of literature and a large selection of programs available to school administrators and teachers on how to weather a crisis of this kind.

Little said that training was invaluable.

“One thing I think is very important, you do need to take a holistic approach to things like this,” he said. “That would be my advice to a district going through this.”

He explained that means not just looking at your students, but communicating with your staff as well.

“We had meetings every morning to talk to the staff; ‘What are you guys feeling?,'” Little said.

Teachers needing time to heal were given that opportunity through paid leave and other support.

“So, you've got to look at the whole thing," he said. "You've got to look at your students, you've got to look at your staff, and you've got to look at the larger community, and how does it all fit together.”

Little emphasized the stress of the tragic event won’t end with the school year.

“This is not something you just handle for two days, put it in a box and say, 'Well done, mission accomplished,'” Little said. “It'll continue into the summer, and we'll have residuals of it even into the fall when we come back.”

The heart of the town

Support from the school won’t end with the school year, either.

“The school is the heart of the town, and most of our kids are up here in some capacity or another throughout most of the summer, so we never really lose touch with them,” Little said. “And like I say, being a small community, our counselors have really good relationships with most of the parents.”

Collins invited parents to use her counseling resources during the summer if needed, indicating she would be there all summer. Otherwise, she offered a bit of commonsense guidance.

“For parents, the most important thing is just to stay connected with their kid,” she said. “I've given some advice on limiting social media interactions in the last few weeks just because that can be something that kind of keeps (the loss) at the forefront and doesn't sometimes let us process in a healthy way.”

Part of the struggle with grief is trying to make sense of what happened, to look for an answer to the hardest question anyone can ask. But for Avecedo, that’s a fruitless pursuit.

If there is any kind of answer, he suggested turning to personal faith or simply focusing on the things that are important now and not on the past.

“What happened here was beyond control,” Avecedo said. “This is something that happened, and it doesn't make sense.

“We've got to understand it's never going to make sense.”

More: Missouri man indicted in wrong-way crash that killed Baird teen

This article originally appeared on Abilene Reporter-News: Hope and a summer of healing for Baird in the wake of tragic loss