Biographies, Bios of Parents of Teen Drivers - Drive to Live

BIOS

Chris Marvick (and Mike and Bryan)

Chris Marvick is a survivor, in more ways than one. She narrowly survived a horrendous accident, only to lose her two teenage sons, Bryan and Michael in a fatal crash just seven months later.See her story, "A Mom's Message" in the video short at the left.

Chris is a tireless campaigner for Teenage driver training, and has shared her heart wrenching story to High Schools and assemblies all over the Southern California area.

Her story, as well as tireless work ethic has been extremely motivating for me personally, as she has had to face each and every day of her life without her children. I cannot imagine the pain her and her husband Tom feel, and though it has been more than ten years, the pain still feels the same.

Dixie Thorp (and Jesse)
Dixie Thorp is yet another "Mom" that has touched me personally with her story. Her 16 year-old son Jesse was killed in a very simple low speed crash, just because he was not wearing his seat belt.

Since that horrific day, Dixie has campaigned to make a difference in the decisions that young drivers make. She produced a series of posters touting Seat Belt Safety with Jesse's picture, which can be spotted all over Selah Washington to this day. Dixie also helped me form a nonprofit foundation to help raise funds for real teenage driver's education, entitled * "Drive 2 Live," in which we gave presentations to High Schools all over Central and Eastern Washington state. We held driving classes using Law Enforcement agents as instructors, which were free of charge for the student, teaching important defensive-driving techniques such as *Off Road Recovery," upon which we received rave reviews from the students and parents of those fortunate enough to have attended.

Side note-
Within a couple of years, Jesse's younger sister had a classmate who was killed in a crash in the exact same location! The young driver's car ended up within one yard of a tree that was planted in Jesse's memory by students and friends from his High School. This corner is not exceptionally dangerous, but both drivers made the exact same mistake-they panicked during an "Off Road Recovery," which caused the crash. This is the number one cause of fatal crashes with teenage drivers.

* Due to politics and economics, progress became difficult, and this led to the unfortunate disbanding of Drive 2 Live.