Final Irony: Memorial Is a Mix-Up

The sign at the Orange Freeway overpass in memory of Jim Downing, the victim of a drunk driver, will remain in place, even though it was a bureaucratic mistake, a state official said Tuesday.

For three years, Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-La Habra) has tried to get a bill through the Legislature that would direct the California Department of Transportation to install the sign at the South Street overpass in Anaheim in memory of Downing, who was killed there by a drunk limousine driver more than three years ago.

Caltrans at first opposed the idea of using public funds for a private memorial. But last month Caltrans dropped its opposition when Johnson changed his bill to allow the cost to be paid by private donors. Immediately, Caltrans crews installed the sign, at a cost of about $100.

Bill Still in Committee

But it was then discovered that Johnson’s bill was still in the Senate Transportation Committee and had not been released for a final vote.

Les Spahn, Caltrans director of legislative affairs in Sacramento, said Tuesday that the Orange County office misunderstood the message from the capital.

“We have ambitious people down there,” Spahn said. “They thought that when we dropped our opposition to the bill, they could put up the sign.”

Regardless, the sign will stay, Spahn said.

Johnson’s administrative assistant, Susan Swatt, said the bill is not dead and could be considered when the Legislature returns to Sacramento in January.

“At this point we are not going to pursue it. But it will remain there in case there is some controversy or problem next year,” Swatt said.

That the memorial marker for Downing, 26, was erected only through a bureaucratic fluke was the ultimate irony. In the three years that Johnson pursued his bill, more than 1,000 letters in support had been written.

“Yes, it’s funny, especially when you consider that Caltrans removed one marker that had been put up by the family,” Swatt said.

On July 24, 1985, Downing’s mother, Mary Ann Downing of Arlington, Tex., and her son’s friends placed a three-foot white cross in concrete near the spot where he was killed. Nine hours later, the cross was removed by Caltrans workers because California law prohibits individuals from erecting markers alongside freeways.

The victim’s mother had done the same thing on the spot where another son had been killed in Texas by a drunk driver in 1983, just eight months before Downing was killed in Orange County.