Head of MADD Tempers Group’s Image to Keep Message Alive

These are heady days for Escondido’s Norma Phillips--on stage with President Reagan, singing with Stevie Wonder, being dined at fancy French restaurants. But the price of admission was her son’s death at the hands of a drunk driver.

She vented her anger by forming the San Diego chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) in 1982. Today, she is MADD’s national president and by her estimate spends 80% of her time away from her luxurious home in Escondido, relentlessly campaigning everywhere she is invited--from pizza parlors in Toledo to the Rayburn House Office Building in the nation’s capital--that drinking and driving is unacceptable.

It has become her passion, totally consuming a woman whose life of luxury had not gone for want of diversion: a family garage filled with two Mercedes-Benzes, a Jaguar, a stretch limousine and a Rolls Royce; a ski boat docked at Lake Havasu; a super-size screen TV to watch her evening soap operas; her love for shopping, jewelry and chocolate, and doting on her French poodle, which has its own bedroom in her elegant, 5,200-square-foot custom-designed home nestled in two acres of avocado trees and decorated with the trappings of their world travels.

She has been spoiled rotten her entire life, Norma Phillips acknowledges, first by her parents and now by her husband of 20 years, Harold. She reasoned that the best way to respond after her son’s death was to throw not money (What’s money?), but virtually her every waking hour into MADD in his memory.

By her count, she flew 190,000 miles during 1986 on MADD business, and she’ll top 200,000 miles this year. And everywhere she goes, she tells not only the story of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, but of one mother grieving to this day over her son’s death.

During a 3 1/2-day visit to Washington recently, she attended three receptions, handed out public service awards, lobbied congressmen, was herself lobbied by bureaucrats for her support on their campaigns, shared a press conference with a senator, testified at a congressional hearing, participated in an all-day drunk-driving workshop and met with local MADD members.

After returning home for the weekend, she flew to San Francisco last Monday to serve on a panel at a national conference on juvenile justice, then returned home that night--only to leave the next day for a series of meetings at MADD’s national headquarters in Hurst, Tex.

This week, she’ll be munching pizza with teen-agers at an all-night party in Toledo before flying to Dallas to attend a convention of the National Assn. of Broadcasters to promote public service campaigns to stem drinking and driving during the upcoming prom and graduation season.

In April and May, she will be in Chicago, Las Vegas, Atlanta, San Francisco again and returning to Washington again. She’s weighing a request to visit a MADD chapter in Dublin, Ireland.

Everywhere she goes, Phillips, 49, projects MADD as the nation’s most successful organization in readjusting society’s attitude toward drinking and driving. It arguably is. But, reflecting its current leadership, MADD cuts a different image today than the one that fired up a nation to rebel against drinking drivers in the early 1980s.

It was MADD’s frenzied founder, Candy Lightner, who became a folk hero of sorts for her success in pricking society’s conscience about drinking and driving after her daughter was killed by a drunk driver in 1980.

There was no mystery to MADD’s magic in the media: here were mothers willing to go public with their grief over the loss of their children in a society where the marriage of booze and cars was punishable by a slap on the wrist. Enough was enough!

MADD grabbed the nation by its shoulders and shook some reason into it. Legislators made new laws, judges under scrutiny meted out tougher sentences, prosecutors were less willing to plea bargain, police departments got more money for increased drunk-driving enforcement, teen-agers were spoon-fed messages against drunk driving, and the victims of drunk drivers received counseling and support.

MADD’s board of directors and Lightner split in October, 1985. Lightner said she and MADD had together reached their peak and it was her time to bow out while on top. MADD’s directors said Lightner’s brand of zealous--and sometimes ungraceful--leadership had worn thin and the organization’s staff, finances and programs were beyond Lightner’s management expertise.

Rather than concede to Lightner’s request that she hold all top three MADD posts--president, chairman of the board and chief executive officer--the MADD board of directors, including Norma Phillips, offered Lightner only the job of president and chief spokesman. Lightner declined the contract, and instead became a MADD “consultant” on a contract that runs through October and pays her $7,000 a month--with a stipulation that she does not criticize the organization she founded.

With Lightner’s departure came concern among the ranks that the movement had lost its most zealous leader and was destined to become institutionalized and ineffective as MADD’s novelty wore off and its message became commonplace.

But Phillips, noting that there is an alcohol-related traffic fatality nationwide every 23 minutes, argues that that MADD’s mission is validated with every crash (“Don’t call it an ‘accident’ because it’s not by accident that someone decides to drink and drive,” she says).

The challenge to Phillips--who at five feet tall once had to stand atop a senator’s briefcase to reach the television microphones at a press conference--is to keep the message fresh and stimulating, with equal doses of genuine passion and some tried-and-true cliches: “We won’t be out of business until the day when no one dies from an alcohol-related crash.”

So Phillips comes to Washington and beats her drum--not as noisily as Lightner but, some say, with a bit more rhythm and finesse.

For Norma Phillips’ family, the curse of drunk driving became a reality Nov. 29, 1981, when Dean, 24, her only son by a previous marriage, and his girlfriend, Laticia Crosthwaite, 20, left the Phillips home in Escondido after a Thanksgiving dinner feast to meet her family in the Anza Borrego State Desert for a weekend of off-road fun.

The couple joined three other cars for the caravan to the desert. Near Warner Springs in northern San Diego County, a man driving a Rolls-Royce crossed the center line of the highway and crashed head-on into Dean Phillips’ pick-up, compacting the cab to 12 inches.

Norma and Harold got the word by telephone at 1:30 a.m. To this day she harbors resentment against the coroner who, after notifying her of Dean’s death, asked in his very next breath for permission to embalm his body. It was all she could do to simply turn the phone over to Harold, mum.

The driver, Glenn M. Cox Jr., 46 at the time, was sentenced to two years in prison (“A year for each life he killed. Is that what life is worth?” Phillips asked), and was released a year later. Today, he lives in the San Diego area and, according to the terms of his probation, will not be allowed to drive a car until October, 1988.

Norma and Harold Phillips handled their anger differently; Harold to this day has difficulty discussing Dean’s death and was willing to simply donate money to MADD in his son’s memory. Norma, on the other hand, said she needed a way to vent her anger “and I said, let’s give me, not money.’ ”

The family held a meeting around the corporate board table--its business-like way of making significant family decisions.

Harold said, “I told Norma that if she was going to be a bear about it, she should be a grizzly. In our family, if we do anything, we do it right and we go all the way.”

So with the family’s blessing, Norma Phillips activated the San Diego chapter of MADD in an office of the family’s business in Escondido, where Harold runs his companies--one is a firm that manufactures precision measuring devices for high-tech industries, and the other is a swimming pool service company.

For several years, the office’s expenses were bankrolled by the Phillipses, and Norma split her time between MADD and the family business, which she served as a bookkeeper. But her four-hours-a-week devotion to MADD grew to two hours a day, to four hours a day and finally, she recalled, “I came to work one day and found a note from Harold. It said, ‘I love you, but you’re fired.’ He told me to spend all the time I needed to on MADD.”

So Norma Phillips, a Denver native who grew up as a teen-ager in San Diego and graduated from Escondido High School in 1956, became a full-time MADD volunteer with the family’s blessing and support.

Harold, an itinerant fruit picker as a youngster who became a self-made businessmen and who today settles for little less than perfection, became Norma’s coach by videotaping and then critiquing her practice speeches, and analyzing her media appearances for content and form.

She won immediate acceptance from the San Diego press, and quickly began making appearances throughout California. Lightner elevated her first as MADD’s California representative for legislative affairs, then to the national board of directors, where she chaired an executive committee overseeing national issues of concern to MADD.

So when Lightner and MADD had their falling out two years ago, all eyes fell on Norma Phillips.

But she did not act without first ducking out to a pay phone and calling Harold at home for his advice. He told her to accept the job.

She took to it like a duck to water, fellow MADD board members say. Unlike her predecessor, who had rankled some MADD members and politicians alike with her assertiveness and brusqueness, Phillips is smoother, more gracious and, according to those who work with her, presents a more sophisticated image on behalf of MADD.

Joan Corboy, who lives in Washington, recalls the time Phillips appeared at a press conference promoting the 21-year-old drinking age and being jeered by teen-agers standing in the back of the crowd.

“She was talking about losing her son and they were laughing and joking about it. I told her later that I was infuriated by them, but she didn’t lose her cool. She said, ‘Well, it’s our job to change their minds.’ She looks at people in terms of how maybe she can save their lives.”

Phillips describes her job as “fighting the largest terrorist group in America.” She says speaking about Dean’s death is therapeutic for her. She is not an aggressive lobbyist and would just as soon stand back at a reception, but usually she is sought out by others.

She is embarrassed that local MADD members elevate her on a pedestal, and on this trip she asked a traveling companion whether she seems to have been affected by the notoriety. She says she hopes not “and if I am, Harold would change that the moment I walked in the front door.”

“We’re a family of over-achievers,” Harold said. “She can be any damn thing she sets out to be. She’ll do it right, and if she’s not up to par, I’ll let her know it. But this hasn’t gotten to her head because she hasn’t lost sight of how she got in this position. It was because our youngest son was killed.”

“By all rights, MADD’s life expectancy should have been four years. We should be dead by now, because these organizations come and go,” said Steve Lawrence, the executive director of MADD, heading a national staff of 33 persons and a budget of $9.5 million.

His assessment is shared by others.

Jim Burnett, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, watched from a distance as Norma Phillips mingled in the crowd at a reception of the National Assn. of Governors’ Highway Safety Representatives, in the Rayburn House Office Building.

(Ironically, the liquor from an open bar flowed freely, a fact that was not lost on Phillips. She and her husband are both teetotalers; she never developed a taste for liquor and chooses Coke with a twist of lemon--which she still hides when photographers are around for fear it may give a newspaper reader the wrong impression. Harold rebelled from liquor because his parents drank too much.

(But Norma Phillips is concerned that the public not misread MADD’s position on alcohol. “We’re not against drinking; we’re against drinking and driving,” she says constantly.)

Said Burnett, “What surprises me and a lot of the rest of us is that we thought we would have to move in a hurry (to take advantage of MADD’s initial publicity). The window of opportunity would go away after a few years.

“Well, it hasn’t, and now I don’t think it will,” Burnett said. “But the activists are different now. They’ve matured in their approach. Early on, it was ‘reaction, punishment and revenge.’ They weren’t all that sophisticated. They’ve become increasingly effective, without losing their energy.”

MADD’s strength, Burnett and others say, is that the organization’s credibility has increased over the years because of its ability to consistently maintain its narrowly defined focus, and because its grass-roots members have successfully lobbied for a host of legislative measures on the individual states’ levels. They are recognized as a power to contend with.

Chuck Hurley, a lobbyist for the National Safety Council said MADD has succeeded in making the transition from spark to fire. “In 1980, drunk driving was a new issue, a national outrage that cried out for action, and MADD seized the moment. The key to MADD now is in maintaining that effort for the long haul. They seem to be settling in for that.”

Lightner, cautious about criticizing MADD specifically, said the movement in general against drunk driving is dying and may not sustain itself for that long haul.

“There is no leadership in the overall movement, no activism,” Lightner said. “There’s no one yelling at governors and talking about the issue. They’ve all lost the passion, the motivation, the dedication. It has become a bureaucracy; we’ve become complacent. MADD has peaked.

“We had accomplished one of the major issues we set out for (a national 21 drinking age; those states which refuse must forfeit a portion of their federal highway funding). So now you don’t have anyone up there screaming and yelling anymore.”

Says Lightner of Phillips, “She’s a sweet person.”

Phillips is, by her own account, neither a screamer nor a yeller. There are better methods to accomplish MADD’s agenda, she says.

Phillips’ more understated presence may be paying off, said Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego), chairman of the Assembly’s public safety committee and who has dealt with both Phillips and Lightner.

“Norma is poised, dignified, credible and intelligent, which is distinguished from the chanting, hysterics and histrionics which characterizes so much of the testimony we get up here,” Stirling said.

“Candy was the rugged individualist willing to break some eggs if necessary. She was the point man. Now, it’s time for the sustainers to come along, and that’s a different type of person.”

Said Phillips, “You can make a grand entrance, but then you’ve got to sit down for dinner with your guests. We needed Candy to make the entrance because it took her style. But now we need to move on.”

Lightner succeeded in getting the nation’s attention and winning federal legislation, most notably the 21 drinking age, Phillips said. The task now is to secure state legislation, to promote education campaigns against drunk driving and to offer support to individual victims of drunk driving.

Virtually in every case, the job is best done at the chapter, not national, level of MADD, Phillips said. And she sees her primary job as one of finely tuned public relations, not noisy rabble rousing, in maintaining public interest in MADD’s overall agenda.

MADD activities vary from chapter to chapter and state to state, and may focus on court monitoring, public service announcements, classroom education on the facts of drinking and driving and how to deal with peer pressure, bartender intervention training, annual candlelight vigils in memory of drunk-driving victims, and grass-roots lobbying.

One of her roles, Phillips said, is to lend her national name to the local chapters at press conferences (there are nearly 400 local chapters). She estimated that since taking over the national presidency of MADD, she has been heard on 1,000 radio interviews and 500 television interviews, including two appearances each on the Today Show and Good Morning America.

Her collection of press clippings, she said, is thicker than the one generated by Lightner--an indicator, she said, that MADD has not lost its media appeal and has not been a shrinking violet under her presidency.

Because of MADD’s legislative successes and media visibility (“We’ve got 97% name identification. We’re right up there with Big Mac,” she said, joking), the organization’s support and endorsement is sought by politicians, lobbyists and other organizations who hope to attach themselves to MADD’s coattails on issues that go beyond simply the issue of drunk driving. The question, Phillips said, is where to draw the line on MADD’s involvement on peripheral issues.

On this particular trip to Washington, for instance, Phillips was courted by Hurley of the National Safety Council, who wanted MADD’s support in his campaign to retain the maximum 55 m.p.h. speed limit on the nation’s rural highways. MADD agreed to passively lend its name to a coalition of safety groups urging the retention of the speed law but declined to actively lobby for it.

“It’s off our specific focus,” Phillips said. “We can’t be spreading ourselves around too much--issues like 55 and seat belts--or we’ll lose our credibility on the specific issue we stand for. There are enough issues on drunk driving to keep us busy.”

Likewise, MADD has not supported another organization against drunk driving, the New York-based RID (Remove Intoxicated Drivers) in its campaign for television stations to broadcast counter-messages to beer and wine commercials.

“It’s sad they don’t join us on that because they’re a big, powerful force,” said RID founder Doris Aiken, whose organization has, in fact, been around longer than MADD but failed to receive the same media attention--partly, she acknowledges, because she herself is not a victim of drunk driving.

Again, Phillips responded, “We can’t support counter-liquor commercials because, you have to understand, we’re not against drinking per se; we’re opposed to drinking and driving .”

Assemblyman Stirling said he was relieved when MADD did not oppose one of his bills repealing an old state law which banned the use of liquor in candy, such as truffles. “When MADD didn’t get involved with that bill because they said it didn’t have anything to do with drinking and driving, my esteem for the organization went sky high,” Stirling said.

For its part, the liquor industry today offers less than unconditional support of MADD’s efforts, saying MADD harps too much on retribution against drunk drivers.

“A more balanced approach would be more effective in the long term--one that involves not just enforcement and prosecution, but treatment, rehabilitation and education,” said Lynne Strang, spokeswoman for the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.

She said the use of roadside sobriety checkpoints and bans on happy hours--measures supported by MADD--are unfair. “Of the 100 million people in this country who drink, only 10% are irresponsible drinkers. So why punish the majority for the action of the minority?” she said.

MADD counters that such safety measures are designed to protect the majority--including those who drink responsibly.

Whether or not MADD is opposed to drinking per se, Strang noted that the consumption of hard liquor in the United States has dropped 12.1% from 1980 to 1985, and she said the decrease is due at least in part to MADD’s efforts.

It’s not uncommon for MADD to find friends in important corners when lobbying for legislation. When Phillips met here with U.S. Rep. Bryon Dorgan (D-North Dakota), who is pushing for a national law banning open containers of alcohol in motor vehicles (only 17 states currently ban open containers) and set a 0.10 blood alcohol content level as the legal definition for being drunk, Dorgan noted that his own mother was killed by a drunk driver.

And when Phillips appeared before a House subcommittee discussing the lobbying efforts of nonprofit organizations such as MADD, U.S. Rep. Beryl Anthony (D-Arkansas) remarked, “I just wish you were around when I was in the courtroom as a prosecutor.”

Said Phillips, “Two out of every five people will be personally affected by a drunk driver in their lifetime. This is an issue that crosses all political and social lines and literally will touch every family at one time or another. How can our message get old?”