Family Campaigns for Shrine to Memorialize Drunk-Driver Victims

The McInroy family’s vision is to establish a national shrine where people from across the nation could come to remember loved ones killed by drunk drivers.

Their proposal for the Victims of Drunken Drivers Memorial Wall at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Cypress, which has approved the plan and donated a site, will move ahead this week when the McInroys receive certification to establish a nonprofit foundation.

Ronald and Janice McInroy of Anaheim launched their campaign after the death last Dec. 20 of their daughter, Lori Ann McInroy Curler, 34. She was killed when her car was hit at an intersection by a man later convicted of drunk driving and sentenced to six years in prison.

Curler’s brother, Kevin McInroy, 39, said he and his parents wanted a memorial that would help other families in similar circumstances.

“It would be something like the Vietnam Memorial,” said McInroy, 39, of Portland, Ore. “People come to the Vietnam Memorial and bring teddy bears and photos and things like that, remembering their loved ones. This new wall would be like that and would have the names of people killed by drunk drivers.”

The McInroys have been working for the last year to establish the memorial wall, with encouragement from Forest Lawn. “I can’t think of anyone not touched in one way or another by a drunken driver,” said Darin Drabing, a Forest Lawn vice president.

The McInroys have been sending out letters requesting donations. “We’ve raised 10% to 20% of the $59,000 we need for the marble walls,” Ronald McInroy said Tuesday. “This week we’re getting papers certifying us as a nonprofit foundation.”

Since beginning their effort, the McInroys said, they have heard from people across the United States.

The foundation will ask people wishing to memorialize a victim of drunk driving to contribute $150 to inscribe that victim’s name on the wall.

Kevin McInroy said the names will be added as they are received, and a master book at Forest Lawn in Cypress will guide families to specific names. “We hope to start the wall by mid-1997,” he said.

Donations may be mailed to the Victims of Drunken Drivers Memorial Wall Foundation, 5761 E. La Palma Ave., Suite 190, Anaheim Hills, CA 92807.