Two moms share name and cause: Helping kids make good choices – Aurora Beacon-News
February 26, 2012
By Denise Crosby (dcrosby@stmedianetwork.com)
MWAH! troupe member Alex Oechsel, a sophomore at Benet Academy in Lisle, sings "Why" as she looks at a poster of Dylan Wagner, a Batavia High freshman who committed suicide in April of 2010.
photographer was Scott R. Harrington.
AURORA, IL — The two moms share the same first name. But they've got something else in common that they wish was not the case.
Both Donna Dwyer and Donna Wagner belong to an unofficial parent's club that wants no new members. Their teenage sons both died under different but horrific circumstances. And after years of struggling beneath their unique blankets of grief and guilt, the two moms are beginning to speak out in hopes of preventing others from experiencing the hell they've been through.
On Monday, Donna Dwyer and Donna Wagner will be part of a morning and afternoon show with the MWAH! Performing Arts Troupe at Timber Ridge Middle School in Plainfield. The 15-member MWAH! — an acronym for Messages Which Are Hopeful! — presents real-life drama combined with contemporary music and audience interaction that focuses on what's happening with today's youth and the choices they make.
Troupe members, who range in age from 11 to 21, attend schools that include Aurora, Naperville and Yorkville.
Donna Dwyer is the mother of 17-year-old Matthew Frank, who died in the 2007 Oswego crash that also killed four of his teenage friends. Dwyer believes middle school kids are in the age group that most need to know about choices and consequences, based not only on her son's death but her younger daughter's continuing struggles with marijuana use.
The program also will focus on the issue of bullying, including the recent suicide of 10-year-old Ashlynn Conner, following relentless name-calling by classmates in her elementary school in downstate Ridge Farm, south of Danville.
Included in this segment of the presentation will be advice from Donna Wagner, whose son Dylan, a freshman at Batavia High School, hanged himself in April 2010. Wagner and her husband Jim, after telling Dylan he could not go to the skate park because his grades were too low, came home from taking a walk to find a note from their son on the kitchen table and his body in the basement.
Six months later, Dylan's ex-girlfriend Quincee Miller — they'd broken up two weeks prior to his death — also committed suicide when she was a Batavia High sophomore.
Neither Donna — each struggling with their own sense of failure as parents — wants to be thrust into the spotlight. But they are joining a long list of other moms — including two who also share the same name: Karen Hanneman of Naperville, whose son Justin died of a heroin overdose; and Karen Dobner of Aurora, whose son Max died in a car crash after smoking synthetic marijuana — who have turned their grief into advocacy.
On Monday, Wagner's message is this: No matter how bad it is, there is help out there if you just ask. And if a friend confides in you about any dark thoughts, tell an adult and strongly encourage your classmate to seek help. Dylan, she said, showed no signs of depression; yet he'd confessed to two close buddies he was struggling — a fact she learned after he died.
The other Donna also has a message — based mostly on frustration. Her son's death was much more public because it involved a long trial that led to the DUI conviction of the driver, Sandra Vasquez. But the teens in that accident had also been drinking after they sneaked out of their homes to attend a party. And Dwyer — who moved to Channahon because she believes so little has changed in Oswego since the crash five years ago this month — brings a warning not just to kids but also to parents: Denial will only make a bad problem worse.
Her disappointments come from her struggles with her own daughter's two stints in rehab; and from the fact so few parents showed up for the drug and alcohol forum held in Oswego the day after at least 1,000 turned out for a similar event in Naperville.
How many lives have to be destroyed, she wonders, before people realize just how serious this issue is?
"I am only one person, but if someone else hears me, then we are two," said Dwyer. "Telling my story may not save anyone else's child, But I can at least help someone willing to listen."