No-Nonsense Slide Show Hits Home

When Barbara Babb began her presentation, speaking into a microphone in a drafty gym at the University of San Diego High School, she had to raise her voice to be heard over the chatter of hundreds of rowdy students.

By the end of her half-hour talk, the only sounds in the cavernous gym were the patter of rain on the ceiling far above--and Babb’s no-nonsense narration. As slide after slide flashed on a movie screen, she described the mangled cars and broken bodies she had encountered in alcohol-related crashes.

“DRT,” said Babb, a nurse for a St. Louis helicopter ambulance service, as she clicked the projector to a truly gruesome scene. The screen showed two bloodied teen-age boys in what had been a shiny red sports car. “It means ‘Dead Right There.’ Oooh, I hate that phrase.”

Babb’s visit to San Diego was sponsored by a local alcohol distributor and a national beer maker, a signal that it’s not just the courts or outraged victims or parents who are concerned about the effects of teen-age drinking. The alcohol industry itself has come aboard.

“We are now in a very pro-active posture,” said Tom Palmtag, general manager of Coast Distributing Co., which brought Babb west last week to speak to assemblies at University of San Diego High and Patrick Henry High.

“This is not something that’s going to go away, either, this commitment,” Palmtag said. “We as an industry have to address this concern that a lot of people have over the misuse of our product.”

Unlike the courts, which reach drinking drivers after an arrest or accident, a program like Babb’s aims to impress teen-agers before trouble occurs.

But, mirroring the approach of an innovative San Diego Juvenile Court program for first-time DUI offenders, Babb does not deliver a stern lecture about the evils of drinking and driving. Her approach, she said, is simply to present the slides and talk about her experiences.

“This is about choices,” she told the University of San Diego High assembly. “This is about decisions. Those words you’re so sick of hearing.

“You’ve got one life, people. Be real, real careful with it.”

Since 1985, Babb has delivered her program to more than 600 schools. She talked last year at Patrick Henry High and was invited back. This year she added University of San Diego High to her schedule, part of a 10-city tour sponsored by Anheuser-Busch and local wholesalers such as Coast Distributing.

The crash that got her into the speech business, Babb said, took place a few days before Christmas, 1984. Rescue crews, including Babb, found the body of a dead teen-age girl slumped in a car.

There were so many pieces of windshield glass embedded in the girl’s face that it made her skin glitter in the street light, Babb said. The girl was nearly decapitated. “And I had to get on top of this lady’s body and push it out of the car,” she said.

Her talks, delivered at first to St. Louis-area schools, have since taken her around the country.

The slides included a picture of a crash that paralyzed a popular quarterback. There was the car that ran into a flatbed truck. A bloody guard rail and a steering wheel bent backward from the impact of a crash. Before-and-after photos of a girl left in a vegetative state by an accident.

“I thought it was excellent,” said Mark Brentnall, 17, a senior at University of San Diego High. “It really hit home. It was so graphic. So real.

“You hear a lot of stuff, but it always seems so watered down. But this is it. It’s the real thing.”