Dawn's dad keeps driving.

Byline: Bob Welch / The Register-Guard

HE'LL GET IN the car today and drive from Portland to Eugene like he's done every year at this time since 1984, two years after he lost her.

A small group will be gathered at the Eugene Water & Electric Board's Training Center - students and a sprinkling of proud parents. He'll be introduced as David Jordan, the man who puts up the prize money each year for the Lane County Chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving's annual essay contest. But he'd rather be known simply as Dawn's dad.

I was Sunday editor of The Bulletin in Bend when I heard the news 20 years ago this August: Dawn Jordan, the managing editor's 17-year-old daughter, had been killed by a drunken driver east of Oakridge on Highway 58.

I remember the haunting first line of a column David wrote about the incident: "My daughter is dead." And learning that she had once had a T-shirt that said, "My Heart Belongs to Daddy."

I remember how, two months later, David asked if I could edit a story for him. It was about an automobile accident and he couldn't read it. He left the office. He walked across the street, stood along the Deschutes River and contemplated drowning himself.

I remember how, two years later, he left the office for good. Quit the newspaper business. Moved to Portland with his wife, Jean, and their 4-year-old son, Joey. (David had been divorced from Dawn's mother, Jan, seven years before their daughter died.)

David left the paper, in part, because Dawn's death forced him to re-evaluate his life. He realized being a newspaper editor had never been his passion. He wanted to write novels. Coach Joey's baseball teams. And do something to keep Dawn's memory alive.

So he called the MADD office in Eugene and told them the story. How his daughter, the first girl to play on Mountain View High's otherwise all-boys soccer team, had been in a VW bus with her aunt and uncle, Bill and Mary Bromley of Eugene, headed west. They'd been camping and were taking Dawn to Valley River Center to do some back-to-school shopping.

She was stoked. It was all out there in front of her - shopping, her senior year, her entire life. But a Springfield man driving east on Highway 58 was about to change that. A man with a beer in his hand.

THE PICKUP driven by Eugene G. Russell, then 40, crossed the center line and rammed head-on into the van. Dawn was killed instantly. The Bromleys were seriously injured.

At the trial, the prosecuting attorney showed a photo of Dawn to a Eugene doctor who had found the girl pinned in the wreckage. It had been taken the evening of her junior prom. Did he recognize her? The doctor looked at the photo, handed it back and said softly, "She didn't look like that when I saw her."

Russell had a blood-alcohol content level of at least .15 percent. Under state law at the time, .10 percent or higher was considered intoxicated. Russell, who had a long history of drinking-and-driving arrests, had consumed at least 12 cans of beer, the prosecutor said.

He was found guilty of second-degree manslaughter and sentenced to the maximum punishment allowable by law: 10 years in prison. He served three years and 10 months before being released on parole in June 1987.

No amount of punishment would bring his daughter back, David told MADD. But what if he contributed money each year to a youth essay contest that would draw attention to the issue of drinking and driving? "It was apparent to me that guys like this weren't going to change," David said. "Our real hope is changing the mindset of the next generation."

A contest makes a young person contemplate the issue, he reasoned, particularly in the spring when proms and graduations sometimes bring together the potentially deadly combination of kids, cars and alcohol.

"You plant a seed in the person's mind so maybe, later, when they're about to get in a car after having a few drinks, they'll remember what they wrote when they were 15," David said. "Maybe they'll let someone else drive."

MADD gladly incorporated David's idea into its annual awards ceremony, when it recognizes students, businesses and individuals who have supported its mission.

For 19 straight years, on the Aug. 22 anniversary of Dawn's death, David has written a $1,000 check to MADD. Tonight marks the 19th straight time he'll tell her story.

"You can tell it doesn't get any easier for him," said Charlie Durrant, office manager at Lane County's MADD chapter. "But it moves me each time."

At times, heading to Eugene, David has thought: What's the use? Why bother? But he keeps on driving. For the girl whose heart still belongs to Daddy.

Tonight's event, open to the public, begins at 7 o'clock. Bob Welch can be reached by calling 338-2354 or by e-mail at [e-mail].