SH: MOTHER, FRIENDS STRUGGLE WITH SENSELESS LOSS OF A SMART AND PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN
DT: 07/09/00
SE: Lifestyles
PG: M1
ED: Final
LE: Long
IL: Photo By Anne Raup
Anchorage Daily News
IL: Photo Courtesy By Wendy Withrow
BL: By Julia O'malley
Daily News Reporter
TY: Staff
LP: Jessie Withrow and her mother, Wendy, passed their time Monday in typical mother/daughter fashion: in the car, running errands. They signed Jessie up for membership in The Alaska Club and then went shopping for tank tops and sandals. When they parted ways that afternoon, Jessie was sitting at the dining-room table, sipping a cup of tea and reading a book.
''I stopped by, pulled her hair back and kissed her, and she gave me a sweet smile,'' Wendy said. Jessie told her mother she was going to Bear Tooth Theatrepub to see ''Mansfield Park'' that night and then to The Alaska Club in the Aurora Village Shopping Center to work out.
TX: At about 11:30 p.m., as Jessie rode her bike home along Minnesota Drive, a pickup piloted by an drunken driver hopped the curb and plowed into her, police say. The impact threw Jessie's bike about 75 yards; paramedics found a bicycle helmet nearby. Fourteen hours later, she died from internal bleeding at Providence Alaska Medical Center with her mother at her side. She never regained consciousness after the accident. The facts of Jessie's short life, reported in half a dozen news stories over the last week, are these: She was 20 years old. A lifelong honor student, she went to Bates College in Maine on a scholarship and planned to major in rhetoric and minor in computer science. She was an only child, raised alone by Wendy in a downtown house near 15th Avenue and I Street. She graduated in 1998 from Steller Secondary School, where she'd been involved in student mentoring, politics and yearbook. This summer, she was an intern at the Alaskan AIDS Assistance Association.
The essence of who Jessie was -- a writer, an actress, a singer, a seamstress, a cyberpunk, a nerd goddess full of wit and promise -- is difficult if not impossible to capture in writing. Her friends, teachers and family are left with memories and the task of comprehending the incomprehensible: how someone so engaged in her life and the world can be gone, vanished, because of coincidence and the recklessness of a stranger. In charging documents, driver Russell Carlson admitted to having drunk ''a half-rack of beer earlier.'' He had seven prior DWIs and was driving despite a suspended license.
Wendy Withrow, 52, said that she and her daughter were ''real friends,'' close in the way mothers and daughters become when it is only the two of them in the house -- and in the world. She will miss her daughter's company and the in-jokes they told, she said. ''Jessie didn't have a highly structured life like some kids. She basically had free time to pursue her own interests. She educated herself a lot, she read constantly and loved science fiction and fantasy. She was interested in politics. She was very much a feminist.''
In one photo Wendy found since her daughter's death, Jessie stands in front of a mountain near a glacier. She is wearing a favorite outfit: an old cardigan sweater and a long skirt that she made herself. The only thing missing is one or another science-fiction book that Jessie never left home without.
''(The picture) is so her. She's ethereal,'' Wendy said. Christina Talbott, Jessie's best friend, saw her for the last time after flying in from Juneau for a wedding at the Three Barons Renaissance Fair a few weeks ago. The women stayed up until 2 the night before the wedding, furiously sewing Talbott's dress on separate machines, singing and drinking cups of tea.
''Jessie was the bravest person. I did so many things I wouldn't have been brave enough to do without her. I've known her for a third of my life. I don't know who I would be without her,'' Talbott said.
Talbott and Jessie wrote many an e-mail to each other while Jessie was at Bates College. In one particularly vivid and haunting message, Jessie wrote with characteristic humor about a Bates student tradition in which people drink 24 beers in 24 hours. Instead of beer, Jessie had a glass of water an hour for 15 hours, then got bored and decided to go out into the snowy Maine night.
''I jumped about trying to catch big fat snowflakes in my mouth and sang 'Hat Shaped Hat' and danced around, but doing those sorts of things alone is only interesting for so long, so I decided to go back to Clason (a campus building), where Adina was being even more silly than I, and had everyone convinced she was drunk (she wasn't), so we filled our coat pockets with cans of soda and ran about the quad playing in the snow and singing loudly and trying to get stopped by Liquor Control (we weren't),'' Jessie wrote. Talbott is getting married next summer. She will have Jessie listed in the program as her maid of honor.
When Chris Middleton, Jessie's good friend from Steller, first got to know her, they were eighth-graders. Middleton remembers when he had missed the bus and was crying.
''I felt like the whole world was totally out of control,'' he said. Jessie, who knew the bus schedules by heart, calmly helped him get on a People Mover a few blocks away. After that, they became fast, close friends. Middleton last saw Jessie just about a week ago. The pair sat outside the Federal Building and discussed science-fiction and role-playing games, their favorite topics. In the years they'd known each other, they dreamed up superhero characters and whole alternate worlds, like one Jessie came up with in which an entire society lived in the belly of the dinosaur. Middleton said he still remembered parts of poems Jessie wrote while they were at Steller -- a sardonic love verse about frog dissection and a poem about what it must have been like to be Iphigeneia, a young character in Greek mythology who was sacrificed for the good of her country.
Jessie wanted to go to Japan and teach English after graduation and then go to graduate school to become a professor. Ultimately, she wanted to come back to the University of Alaska Anchorage, her mother said. As part of a grant application to fund her internship at the Alaskan AIDS Assistance Association, Jessie wrote an essay about why she wanted to volunteer in Anchorage.
''The final and most important reasons I would like to work at AAAA is so that I can make a difference for the Anchorage community and spend my summer giving something back to the people and town that have given so much to me,'' she wrote.
When Carol LaLone, a friend of the Withrows, saw Jessie's picture in the paper on Wednesday, she thought it was because the young woman had won an award and was horrified to realize it was because Jessie had been killed.
''I can just see her there on the corner with her bike and her round glasses, just looking around, smiling at everyone. Then, poof, gone,'' LaLone said.
For contributions to the cost of funeral expenses and a memorial service for Jessie Withrow, checks (made out the Wendy Withrow) can be deposited at any National Bank of Alaska branch in Account No. 2101919966, or send them to: Jessie Withrow Memorial Fund, c/o Craciun and Associates, 742 K St., Anchorage, AK 99501.
CUTLINE: An impromptu memorial to Jessie Withrow at the accident site, near Minnesota Drive and Northern Lights Boulevard, includes flowers, a candle, a stuffed dog and a Renaissance-style head garland.
Family photos highlight Jessie's interests. Performing at local Renaissance fairs was always a part of her and her mother's life. Jessie spurned fashion trends but rose with confident aplomb to formal occasions like school dances.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
The Daily News invited some of the people Jessie Withrow worked with on the Perfect World youth pages of the paper to write about their memories of her and what her death means to them.
If ever there was a girl with moxie, it was Jessie Withrow. She was completely comfortable with who she was, and if you weren't, that was your problem.
Jessie was a year younger than me, but she must have reached intellectual maturity around age 6. I've never seen anybody who had their act together the way that girl did. If she told you she'd write something for Perfect World, not only did she follow through, she put all she had into it (and beat deadline, too). Jessie was blessed with the ability to assess an issue, form a solid opinion and then express the opinion in a persuasive and clever manner. Before our weekly meetings, a small group of dedicated staffers would show up early and hang out around the Perfect World desk, sitting on filing cabinets and borrowed chairs, telling stories about our weeks, playing with our assortment of promotional items and Happy Meal toys. Most Wednesdays, Jessie was there, joining in the banter, playing and bonding with the rest of the staff. She was comfortable enough with herself to be comfortable with the people around her, and she was pretty damn funny, too.
She was true to herself and her beliefs. When I was around Jessie, I was driven to be a better editor. She was what PW was all about, and the loss of her talent, intelligence and creativity is a tragedy.
-- Maia Nolan, 1997 East High graduate
Jessie and I went to junior and senior high school together at Steller. Our extracurricular activities overlapped. From the hours spent in the school yearbook office, in the newsroom for Perfect World and in school, I can tell you the following:
Jessie had the qualities an ordinary person would build a list of New Year's resolutions around. She was kind and considerate. She worked hard, knew how to have a good time, had an amazingly strong sense of self, and was almost always smiling. She earned a scholarship to college and made the dean's list. She had drive. She was active in her community and creative. She was not afraid to voice her opinion and not afraid to hear other points of view. She was patient and willing to help out. And while most of us make those resolutions so we can feel better about ourselves or get a job or claim some superiority, she did them seemingly with no ulterior motive. It made her happy to help, to make a difference, to affect someone's life. Well, you did, Jessie. As devastating a loss as this is, the fact that you touched so many of us is at least some comfort. We were lucky to know you.
-- Peter Feldman, 1998 Steller graduate
On a sunny evening last week, I walked into a downtown pizza place to buy food for my starving younger brother. As I stepped inside the mostly empty restaurant, I noticed two familiar faces at a nearby table. The guy and girl were people I had graduated with two years ago; they were playing cards and laughing. I smiled, noticing how they seemed to look pretty much the way I remembered them, and I thought it was nice they had remained close friends after high school. I waved and said hi. Although my graduating class was under 50 people and I knew these two well, I was hesitant to interrupt their private party.
That girl was Jessie Withrow.
When I learned of her death, her laughing face in the pizza parlor was the first thing I thought of. She could not know she would die in less than a week. Her loss is painful to me. It's painful to lose a classmate, painful to be denied a wonderful writer who undoubtedly would have done something special with her talents, but most painful because her death was so needless. And so random; it could have been me, or anyone who was hit by that truck.
I am too shocked to try to hypothesize some philosophical explanation for this tragedy. I still can't believe that the vibrant human being I saw last week is not present, is now a girl I used to know. A girl who is dead. No matter the reality that statement implies, the way I will remember Jessie is the way I saw her last: happy and full of life.
-- Bridget O'Connell, 1998 Steller graduate
HERE ARE EXCERPTS FROM STORIES JESSIE WITHROW WROTE FOR PERFECT WORLD ON DEMONIZING TEENS
Maybe I'm just too young to remember past elections, but it seems to me that teenagers have been more of an issue this year than ever before. Presidential candidates promised to ''stop youth crime,'' ''fix our schools'' and ''get kids off drugs.'' But as much as politicians say they're trying to help teenagers like me, a lot of the time it feels like they're just trying to get elected at my expense.
Don't get me wrong. Gang violence, shootings and other teen crimes frighten me as much as anyone. I'd be glad if there were less drug use and pregnancies among people my age. But I don't like candidates who go beyond addressing these problems and start attacking young people. Politicians talk about the bad things teenagers do so often that people start thinking bad things are all teenagers do. ...
It's a minority of teenagers who commit crimes, and laws like the youth curfew and proposed truancy ordinance punish all teenagers for the transgressions of a few. Politicians would never do that to adults.
-- ''Politicians lump teens into one category,'' Nov. 7, 1996
ON THE SCI-FI CYBERWORLD
I once lived a contented and unwired life. I amused myself with simple pleasures like Rice Krispy treats and ''The Simpsons.'' That was before a friend introduced me to the world of St. Jude and R.U. Sirius' ''Cyberpunk Handbook: The Real Cyberpunk Fakebook.'' That piece of literature spurred me to venture out into the vast and tangled web of cyberspace. ...
I've actually become more of a cyberyuppie than a cyberpunk -- what Jude and Sirius dismiss as a ''netcrawler.'' And since my aversion to technicolor hair and industrial rock appears to be here to stay, I'm beginning to think I'd be better off going home and reading some more nice cyberpunk novels.
-- ''Cyberpunk Handbook'' review, Jan. 2, 1997
ON POETRY
I've loved poetry ever since kindergarten, when I memorized ''Jabberwocky'' for my school talent show. In the 11 years since, I've read and devoured countless scores of poems of every color, flavor and rhyme scheme imaginable and even tried my hand at writing a few. None of my verses has been quite as ''frabjous'' as Lewis Carroll's, but I hope (and what aspiring poet doesn't) that a few of them may have the beginnings of ''beamishness'' in them.
-- ''Poets parade their power,'' April 17, 1997
