Crossroads

FINDING CROSSROAD OF THE CITY
Published on Tuesday, January 13, 1998
© 1998 The Arizona Republic
Byline: E.J. MONTINI, Republic Columnist

Phoenix is a right-angled town, laid out in a grid, dried, bleached and scattered over the desert like bones. It's easy to make out the framework, the skull and vertebrae, but there's no place to take a pulse, no beating center upon which to set a stethoscope.

It confuses people. They assume a place without a heart is a place without a soul, but it's not true.
The soul of the city is located at 75th Avenue and Osborn.
You can go there and see it.
It's anchored in a strip of sidewalk on the west side of the avenue. There's a small metal pole with a T-shaped bar across the top. Welded onto the T are three white metal crosses. Names, painted in black, run down the center shafts. They read ''Sherri,'' ''Tim,'' and ''Shona.'' Beneath them is a date, ''12-2-84.''
Commuters hurtling south on 75th toward the freeway may not notice the memorial. It's only about 2 1/2 feet off the ground, below window level of many cars. But it's there.
It's been there for 13 years, in one form or another. It would take the force of speeding car to move it, a force as powerful as the one that put it there.

THREE FRIENDS
At 5 a.m. on Dec. 2, 1984, 20-year-old Sherri Middleton was on her way home from a part-time job at a local Burger King. She was a secretary in a brokerage firm during the day. With her were her boyfriend, Tim Post, friend Shona Simpson and another girl.
As their truck reached the intersection, a drunken driver heading north on 75th Avenue slammed into them. Sherri, Tim and Shona died. The other girl was severely injured.
Not long afterward, Sherri's mother and father got the call every parent dreads.
''Even now,'' Joe Middleton told me, ''it doesn't seem real. But it was.''
Middleton is a minister and former Maricopa County sheriff's deputy. When the business of death was over, the funeral service and burial, he put up the crosses. He also purchased Sherri's crumpled truck and uses it to put on programs at local schools to warn of the dangers of drinking and driving.
''My wife and I just couldn't let it end with Sherri's death,'' he said. ''We had to use this tragedy to make her life meaningful. I guess this was the work God wanted us to do.''
Bureaucrats at City Hall had trouble with the crosses at first. But eventually they yielded to the three young souls, incorporating the memorial into the last remake of the intersection. It's just north of Trevor G. Browne High School. Just across the street from El Oso park.

JUST ONE WORTH IT
''Over the years, I figure we've spoken to about a million schoolchildren,'' Joe Middleton said. ''If we've kept just one of those children from doing what that drunk driver did, then it would have been worth it. And if, in the process, people are reminded of these three young lives that were cut short, all the better. That kind of loss is something we can't afford, not here, not anywhere. And it happens all too often.''
Shortly after midnight on Dec. 13 - one month ago today - a young man with a blood alcohol count of 0.23 percent slammed into the rear of a Jeep Cherokee stopped for a traffic light at an intersection in Chandler.
The Jeep burst into flames, instantly killing Aimee Ellis. She was 20 years old, like Sherri Middleton. Like Sherri, she will always be 20 years old.
Her mother, Bonnie Crutcher, got the call all parents dread.
''She was going to be a pilot,'' Bonnie told me from her home in Illinois. ''Aimee had so much to offer. She made wherever she was a better place. You were lucky to have her there.''
She's here still, of course, in the minds of friends and family who live in the area. Chandler is a desert town, like Phoenix, bleached and scattered over the desert like bones. Its heart can't quite be pinpointed, but it possesses a lovely, vibrant soul. There's no cross to mark the location but you can look for it anyway, near the intersection of Chandler Boulevard and I-10. Just beneath the traffic light.