A Close-Up Look At People Who Matter : Loss Inspires Fight Against Drunk Driving

John Morga wasn’t even born when his grandfather was killed by a drunk driver in the Philippines decades ago, but the 19-year-old Panorama City resident didn’t escape the impact of the fatal crash.

Listening to his father’s stories about growing up with just one parent, Morga heard what it was like to lose a parent, to be raised, along with three brothers, by a mother forced to overcome tragedy and provide for her family.

“My dad told me how hard it was to get along without him,” Morga said. “He told me what a great person my grandfather was and it’s kind of sad not getting a chance to know him, not being able to meet him.”

Instilled with an understanding of the needless loss caused by drunk driving, Morga, himself a native of the Philippines, decided to help get the message across to others by entering the Mothers Against Drunk Driving poster contest.

In fact, he entered four of the last five years and this year was picked from among thousands of entrants as one of six national winners. For his effort, Morga won a $100 U. S. Savings Bond from the Los Angeles County chapter of MADD, and a $1,000 award from MADD’s national organization.

Morga will be honored tonight at the annual Senior Awards ceremony at Monroe High School in North Hills. Arlene Joye, president of LA/MADD, will present the local award to Morga.

Morga’s mother, Natividad, who works at UCLA, joined him on a trip to MADD’s national headquarters in Dallas last month to accept the $1,000. The teen-ager’s father, Jose, who works at a Burbank aerospace firm, remained at home with Morga’s two younger brothers.

Based on the theme “What a wonderful world it would be if drivers remained alcohol-free,” Morga’s winning poster uses watercolors and markers to depict the grisly scene of an accident caused by a drunk driver.

Focusing on one of the drivers at the scene, Morga employs a comic-strip style balloon to illustrate the driver’s daydream about how orderly things would be if everyone had been driving sober.

It was the second time Morga was honored for an entry in the MADD poster contest. In 1990, he won second place in a countywide event.

Morga, who has lived in the U.S. for six years and plans to major in mechanical engineering at UCLA in the fall, also won an essay contest sponsored by Sun Microsystems that earned him another $1,000.

Morga became interested in art as a seventh-grader, shortly after moving to the U.S.

“When I first came here, I won a Rapid Transit District poster contest,” he said. “In the Philippines, you do artwork for school and stuff, but they don’t really give you a chance to compete like they do here.”

How is he handling the spotlight?

“It feels great,” Morga said of the awards, attention and praise he has received. “It also makes me feel that I’m somehow doing something for the community.”

“He’s one of our outstanding seniors,” said Steven Kleinberg, a counselor at Monroe High. “He’s a 4.0 student, but he’s one of the nicest, most down-to-earth, considerate young people I’ve met in a long time. He’s just a great all-around young man.”

Morga has played on Monroe’s varsity tennis team for three years, but he chose to forgo sports as a junior because he didn’t want to jeopardize his academic standing.

With a proficiency in science and mathematics that rivals his ability as an artist, Morga’s biggest challenge seems to be deciding what he wants to do after getting out of college.

For now, he thinks he would eventually like to get into the medical field.

“Science is more of a challenge,” he said. “Art, to me, is more of a hobby.”

Nonetheless, Morga, who works part time at Burger King, says he wants to find a part-time job in the art field while he’s in college.

“I’d like to work for Disney or Warner Bros.,” he said.

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