‘Two calls in 20 months. It’s not right. It’s not fair,” Jeanne Batson says, shaking her head. “No one should have to go through that.”

Jeanne is usually no-nonsense tough, with military command in her voice. But her demeanor cracks as she relives the two U.S. Highway 95 accidents that maimed her family.

“I want to see them redo the whole road,” she says, looking across her Worley property to the two-lane country road that serves as the state’s north/ south highway. “My husband worries every time I leave. He bought me a car phone. That’s not the way to live.”

The first emergency call came in January 1994 to her home in Coeur d’Alene. Her husband, Bob, was driving to their ranch east of St. Maries. Just north of the Rockford Bay turnoff, a woman’s car slid on ice and smacked into Bob’s three-quarter ton pick-up. He veered but there was no shoulder on the narrow highway.

An air-bag saved the woman. The impact pulled Bob’s thumbs out of their sockets and caused $12,000 in damage to his truck.

That same day, Jeanne called buyers who had expressed interest in her house and told them it was theirs. The family moved just south of Worley to reduce Bob’s commute and sent her daughter, Sandy, to school in Spokane via U.S. Highway 195.

Three weeks ago, the second emergency call came. Sandy, who’s 16, had left minutes earlier in her tiny Geo for Worley, just three miles north.

She had just come out of a blind curve at full speed - 55 miles per hour - when a woman pulled her car out of the Peace Pipe Smoke Shop’s driveway in front of Sandy.

When Jeanne arrived, emergency workers were trying to revive her bloodied daughter.

“It’s the scariest thing in your entire life seeing them hurt and knowing there’s nothing you can do,” Jeanne says. “I wanted to kick the car, the highway, the old lady driving - and I’ve never hit anyone in my life.”

Insurance will replace Sandy’s wrecked car. Plastic surgery will erase most of the windshield wounds on her forehead. Her bruised knees and black eyes will heal.

But her family is permanently scarred. Jeanne trembles each time one of them leaves home.

She’s called the Idaho Transportation Department and wants to help North Idaho chambers of commerce find a way to pay the estimated $300 million for the improvements. She’s sending a picture of her battered daughter to the governor.

“I don’t know how much we can take,” Jeanne says, squeezing her hands into fists. “It’s just a matter of time until we lose one of us.”

Adoption wanted

The kids at Anchor House’s Project (youth empowerment site) in Coeur d’Alene aren’t Eagle Scouts. Most are in the special school because public schools kicked them out. The non-profit program keeps these kids off the streets.

Director Paula Neils read about Kinko’s adopting Winton Elementary and decided Project needs an adoptive business, too. Paula’s school teaches 20 teens and doesn’t need much - a ream of computer paper, a newspaper subscription, copies now and then.

She also needs help building a new classroom. She has most of the materials. Students will supply the labor, but the project needs a few experts. Call Paula at 667-3340.

There must be a better way

At Lake City High’s open house this year, parents were asked to follow their children’s schedules.

I have two daughters and a foreign exchange son in three different grades at the school. My husband was out of town. What a dilemma. It filled me with sympathy for single parents who scramble all the time.

How have schools tied your family in knots? Double shifts? Weekend detention? Conflicting sports? Gripe to Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene, ID, 83814; fax to 765-7149; or call 765-7128.

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