Deadly Lesson He Was Young, He Was Wild And His Drunken Driving Put Three Of His Friends In The Morgue

Spring break. A condominium on Sanibel Island. Five students from Johnson & Wales University, fraternity brothers, throw back shots of liquor, round after round, and chase the shots with cold beer.

“We wanted to experience spring break like we had seen on MTV and the movies,” said Mark S. Sterner.

Just for kicks, they recorded the last night of spring break on videotape so that they could sit around watching it, years later, laughing about how crazy they were when they were young.

“I never sit around and watch the tape with my friends and laugh, though,” Sterner said.

He showed the tape yesterday to about 250 students at Johnson & Wales as part of the school’s Alcohol and Drug Awareness Week.

Nobody laughed. Nobody laughed when the guys mugged for the camera, bragged that they were going to go wild that night, they were going to rage. Nobody laughed when the rented Lincoln Town Car screamed down the two-lane highway into town. On tape, the guys howled with glee as the camera recorded the historic moment: the car hit 101 mph on the digital-display dashboard.

The guys stumbled their way into a Sanibel bar. They danced and sang off-key and, with the tiresome insistence of drunks, they assured one another that they were in the process of having a great time.

“We were going to show Sanibel Island a night it wouldn’t soon forget,” Sterner said.

The guys took off, headed for another watering hole. They were going to drink all night. It was their last night of spring break.

Fifteen minutes down the road, the car veered off the highway, flipped and flung all five friends from the car. Three died at the scene. Sterner, the driver, was one of the two who survived.

“When I woke up, everything was white. I couldn’t move,” he said. He saw his mother, father, sister and brother standing at the foot of his hospital bed. “I didn’t know where I was or what had happened. I was scared.”

Days later, the Sanibel Police arraigned him in the hospital. He was convicted of three counts of driving under the influence of alcohol, resulting in manslaughter. He served nearly three years in a Florida prison, and was released last November.

Sterner, 25, lives with his parents in Pennsylvania. He thinks about going back to college and finishing his degree. It won’t be at Johnson & Wales. The memories are too strong.

“The life I had before is over,” Sterner said. “It will never be the same. I had my resume done before that spring break. I can throw it away now.”< Though he makes a living selling insurance, his job for now, his crusade, as he puts it, consists of traveling to colleges and high schools to tell his story, an Ancient Mariner toting videotape and slide projector.

He wears Florida’s orange prison togs and speaks in a soft voice, just above a whisper. He has told his story, he says, to more than 50,000 people. Giving the speech never gets easier, he says. In fact, it gets harder each time.

“I don’t do this speech to ask for forgiveness,” he said. “I do it so maybe somebody will listen. Maybe I changed you, for a little while.”

When he arrived in town Wednesday night, Sterner drove around, looking at the places where he used to live and hang out. It was strange, he said. He wasn’t looking at the buildings. He was looking for his friends.