Another sad day for Heavener

I should start this blog by saying I didn’t know Billy “Shane” Olen Davis of Heavener.

I did know his parents, Jason and Amy Davis, and they are both good people.

And I am sad to say I will never get the opportunity to meet the 17-year old. He was the latest in a long line of Heavener youth, taken way too early by accidents. Apparently Davis was either “surfing” in the back of a truck or trying to climb out the driver side window and into the back seat window.

Again, I don’t know which. But whatever happened, it was again a sad day for Heavener and its residents, which should be getting used to such accidents, but never will, of course.

This is at least the fifth young man who has died in Heavener over the last few years. There were two ATV accidents, a diving accident and others.

In each incident, the youth was a good guy with lots of friends. These weren’t your bad kids, the drug dealers or criminals who left us too early, but kids with plenty of good traits and a lifetime ahead of them to have a great life.

What can be done to prevent this? Nothing, really. You can’t take away all the fun activities or life will not be much fun. Who would have thought one of these boys would pick a bad spot to jump into a creek where so many others have gone before? Or one little mistake driving a four-wheeler would cause the ATV to hit a fence or tree?

Nobody would. Should we stop these activities? No, of course not. Surfing in the back of a truck? Yes, please do stop it before we lose somebody else. Hopefully if something good does come of this, other kids will no longer stand up in the back of a moving truck or try to climb from one window into another.

But kids will still do things like this and most will wake up the next morning. Lucky? Yes.

I was a kid once and liked to have fun. I still like to have fun. We never stood up in the back of a truck or had four wheelers when I was a kid. But we did dumb stuff.

We were lucky. But sometimes there are those who are not going to be fortunate. That is life. But again, hopefully others see what happened to their friends and will be a little more careful and will live to see middle age and eventually old age.

But once again the little town of Heavener is devastated and people are asking why this happened.

Hopefully, this will be the last accident. People should be talking about the football game Friday night or how their kid did on a spelling test. The only loss should be on the athletic field, not life. Instead, there is a dark cloud hanging over the town, one which will never produce the rain we need so badly.