Mayor Helps Kick Off MADD Transcontinental Walkathon

Mayor Tom Bradley led a celebrity procession through Central Los Angeles Saturday on the first leg of a transcontinental relay walkathon to dramatize support for Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

“You can have a good time without getting drunk and getting behind the wheel of a car. This is the message we want to deliver across America,” the mayor said in a brief address at City Hall before the beginning of the march.

Organizers of the event, including MADD founder Candy Lightner, were joined by actresses Jamie Lee Curtis and Kate Jackson and actor Henry Winkler in kickoff ceremonies for the 115-day, 4,205-mile walk, which is intended to end with a candlelight vigil Dec. 9--just before the beginning of national Drunk and Drugged Driving Awareness Week--at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

Cheering supporters followed Bradley, Lightner and the others for several blocks, but finally dropped out--as did the celebrities--when the first regularly assigned marchers took over.

Along the route, which was planned by the Walkers Club of America, MADD supporters will carry and pass along a scroll called the Declaration of Caring, which is to be signed by all participants, and a “photo carriage” in which MADD officials said they want to collect a million photographs of American families.

“We hope to present them to the President,” Lightner said.

March organizers also hope to raise money through pledges based on the number of miles walked by each participant. The funds will be contributed to MADD outreach programs, including youth education, safe-ride committees, speakers and a victims’ advocacy board.

Route of March

The first leg of the march is south from Los Angeles to San Diego, where the route turns east through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia and Virginia.

Founded five years ago after Lightner’s 13-year-old daughter was killed by a drunk driver, MADD now claims 350 chapters and nearly a million members.