Sadly, the program about driving safely couldn’t have come at a better time than it did for seventh through twelfth grade students at Mt. Hermon School Monday.

Those who had not already heard learned that morning that a car full of Washington Parish students had crashed Saturday, leaving one teenager dead and others injured.

That surely heightened the impact of the message. But the powerful program, which included a fact-filled and compelling video, plus live components that at times featured brain-injured participants, didn’t need any help. The program sucked the students in and never let go.

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It offered them no time to daydream.

The video was grim without being gory. It showed actual footage of crashes and of victims, many young and attractive like themselves, before, during and after they incurred traumatic brain injury (TBI) and underwent surgery and rehabilitation.

The students stared silently, intently, leaning forward in their seats, riveted.

Principal Ruth Stoudenmier alternately watched the program and the students. She said she initially planned to have only her high school students see the show, but after she previewed parts of the DVD she also invited the junior high classes.

“I want to do anything I can to prevent their lives from being any different than they are now, from being anything but normal lives,” said Stoudenmier before the program started.

“I don’t normally stay for programs because I have things to do. But I won’t miss this. I have a teen-aged grandson. He’s 15. I wish they would do this at his school.”

When she welcomed the students, Stoudenmier alluded to the weekend wreck, “a senior that will not graduate, one student on life support, one in ICU.”

“This is a life saving assembly,” said Stoudenmier. “It should make an impact on the way you do things. Pay attention.”

That they did.

Beth Salcedo, a speech pathologist for traumatically brain-injured residents at the Neurological Rehabilitation Living Center in Covington, devised and produced the program with the assistance of NRLC’s Stacy Levesque.

“I was looking for something to give our TBI clients at NRLC, a purpose in life,” she said. “Most people take for granted the huge blessing of purpose. Purpose gives you something to move towards, to hope for. Without a purpose, without plans, without goals, life quickly becomes stagnant and depressing. I wanted them to feel like they were contributing to their world. What better way could they do that than to impact young people in a positive way by educating them and warning them about the things that halted their own dreams and plans?”

Many of the NRLC clients were injured as a result of traffic accidents, and many of those could have been prevented if they or whoever hit them had not been driving recklessly or under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

“Don’t drive badly,” Dr. Howard Katz advises in the video. “Don’t drive drunk. Slow down and be careful.”

Near the end of the program, after students had gotten facts, seen crashes, surgeries and rehab, and almost certainly made an emotional connection with the subject, the video was paused as more than a dozen men and women, wearing black T-shirts and jeans, entered, walking in a line, in intense silence, onto the floor below the screen, which the images were being projected.

A sign was pinned on each of their backs. Written in stark black letters on white cardboard were the labels that, for many, described who they were when their lives had changed forever because of their injuries. The signs said things like mechanic, nurse, secretary, beautician, automotive business director, college student and West Point valedictorian/U.S. pilot.

The NRLC clients and staff stood with their backs to the students, then, one at a time turned slowly around and held up other signs. These gave clues to post-injury conditions with terms like: word-finding problems, decreased body strength, memory problems, relationship problems and decreased productivity.

The students saw the result and reality of what they had seen on the video. The brain injured were standing up to be seen. It was something they could still do to help.

“They were thrilled,” Salcedo said Tuesday. “They still are. One resident mentioned the next upcoming program and said he can’t wait. That’s probably the first time he has said that in the 15 years since his injury.

Everyone one of them seemed truly fulfilled. Most of them have short term memory problems, so they keep asking about the students responses over and over again.”

The students were noticeably moved.

Shawn Williams, a handsome young man who was featured on the video and was also part of the sign line, spoke directly to them when the video was done.

He had rolled his truck while angry and talking on his cell phone.

He said he once loved the “Fast and Furious” movies, but does not now, not since he experienced a real crash.

When you get hurt like that, you have to “start all over” as if you were a baby again, he said. That includes being diapered.

“If you drive like that, it’s going to happen,” said Williams. “And it’s forever. The only one way to fix it is to not have the accident in the first place.”

You can hurt others, he said. And you can hurt yourself.

“My life will never be the same,” Williams had the students’ full attention. “My future will never be what it could have been. Live safely.”

The students erupted with cheers and applause.

Salcedo said she wanted her two sons, a junior and a senior at Covington High School, to “know how precious they are, and how quickly things can change forever,” so she created the program to get that point across.

“I want students to know how quickly life can change,” she said. “I want them to know that, to a huge degree, they control their future by the little decisions they make daily, like wearing a seatbelt, choosing a designated driver, or waiting to text until they’ve stopped driving.

“If one student makes a good decision that saves his or her future, my goal will have been accomplished.”

Stoudenmier feels the same. She encouraged the students to make the right choices, both behind the wheel and everywhere else in life.

She, too, spoke to them after the program.

“That was graphic,” said Stoudenmier. “But that’s how it is. We showed you because we care about you.”

Salcedo said she is already scheduled to take the program to other schools.

For additional information or to get on the list, call her at 373-4446.