What is PATT? Parents and Teens Together...

The 6th Annual JP Fun Run was a huge success. The pig roast, corn boil, and run was enjoyed by well over 100 people...the line to the food seemed to go on and on as everyone enjoyed some piggy with Roy's secret barbecue sauce. The support from so many people is something that continues to amaze.

Special thanks goes out to Jeff Eldridge for taking the pics, Roy Feltson and Bill Hope for staying up the night before to keep the piggy roasting, Joe Nowak for spinning the great tunes, Steve from Culver's Ice Cream, the Carol Stream Youth Council, Rosemary Borzym, Lynne, Phil, Toni, Nancy, Marela, Samantha Augustyn and family, and so many more. It's a pretty good feeling to see so many get up early, lift some gear, and then stick around for awhile lending a helping hand. It's about friendship, community, and honoring Jonathan and I think it's a pretty sweet way to spend a small part of your day.

Thanks also to GBN, Village of Carol Stream, and the Carol Stream Park District for the advertising on the electric signs, Blistex for all of the free lip balm...it went over big...Deputy Chief O'Brien, HB Fuller, Gilda Ross from School District 87, Tim McGrath and family....our first supporters from Glenbard South, and of course our families.....always there and always caring.

It's that time of year when PATT gets the opportunity to extend the message regarding underage drinking to many young people and their parents throughout the Chicagoland area. PATT participated in a presentation this past Thursday evening at York High School in an event sponsored by our friends from AAIM. The panel consisted of a doctor, a Police Chief, and 3 personal stories.

I often speak with parents who have lost loved ones and, at times, I also have worked with young people who have been the drunk driver of a vehicle whose accident has resulted in death. The public sharing of their message is part of their sentencing.

One of the personal stories I heard on Thursday night was from a 20 year year old girl who last Labor Day drove her car while drunk, wrecked the car, and cost her younger sister her life. She struggled to keep her composure, the tears flowed, and her breath came out in gulps and gasps. The story and her obvious pain touched me. I can't imagine the conflict going on inside of her.

Please remember that PATT is on Facebook as Parents and Teens Together and on Twitter as JPFunRun. We are up to 146 likes on Facebook and have 18 followers on Twitter....from humble beginnings.

The support from so many people is something that continues to amaze. Thanks for reading these words and thanks for your continued support.

Doug and Yvonne

"Excellence can be
obtained if you:
...care more than others
think is wise;
...risk more than others
think is safe;
...dream more than others
think is practical;
...expect more than others
think is possible."

Jonathan could best be described as a very happy kid. The first thing anyone ever remarked about was Jon's ready, engaging smile. Jon had an appetite for life. He was big as a boy, but didn't seem to mind and still had many friends.
As he grew Jon became even more gregarious, and in middle school wanted to play on the football team. The coach had to break the news that he was simply too overweight to have the needed agility.
I was there at Mom's house the day Jon began his metamorphosis; it was a family gathering. Jon's Dad announced that Jon had decided to make the football team. I watched Jon agonizing, picking at a salad but staring at all the goodies on Mom's kitchen table.
I saw Jon months later on my next visit. This time I was staring. Jon was completely transformed. On his own, with no nagging or coaching, this kid dragged himself out of bed (it was often still dark outside), and jogged before school, eventually adding ankle weights. He somehow planned his own diet changes,which a lot of adults can't manage.
Jon became slim and strong, made the team, and eventually started wrestling. At Glenbard High School in Carol Stream, IL, Jon's friends often found him already lifting weights at "The House of Pain" at school, and he was often the last to leave.
Jon had become such an interesting person; his actions helped a lot of us realize we could resolve even seemingly impossible situations. I was so looking forward to Jon's future: college, career, the man I glimpsed already was such a pleasure. Jan and his friends liked to get together and play poker; Jon taught himself how to manipulate a poker chip between his fingers like the pros he saw on TV. Always challenging himself.
Jon and his Dad were best friends, watching the Packers every week during football season, riding together to wrestling tournaments.
June 2005. Dinner at his friend Roy's, a carnival, his mom's cell phone in his pocket. Jon and Roy heard about a party a few blocks away. Details will never be completely clear: an adult not supervising a party, 16 year-olds with 20-somethings, a lapse in judgment, one mistake costing a very precious life.
The what-ifs can almost break a person, but Jon taught us better than that. Jon's parents launched PATT to help educate families about underage drinking.
Jon's class graduates this year.

By Erin Sauder, esauder@mysuburbanlife.com
Carol Stream Press

It's been almost five years since Yvonne and Doug Petit last heard their son's voice or saw his smile. They had planned to see him go to prom and watch him graduate and attend college.

Instead, they buried their 16-year-old son in 2005, after he died in an alcohol-related incident.

"It's not a good club to be in," Doug Petit said, about parents who have lost a child.

Jonathan attended an underage drinking party in June 2005 with about 50 other people.

Sometime that night he decided to go into a pond in Carol Stream. His body was found nearly four days later. An investigation revealed that Petit's blood alcohol content was 0.208, more than twice the legal limit for those 21 and older, according to the DuPage County State's Attorney's Office.

Three months after his death, the Petits sprang into action by forming Parents And Teens Together, dedicated to providing positive alternatives to underage drinking in the community.

"We knew right away we needed to do something, and the support from our family and the community was really touching," Doug Petit said.

Five years later, the nonprofit is steadily growing.
Learn more
For information about Parents And Teens Together, visit jpatt.org.

"We've never slowed down," Doug Petit said. "As a matter of fact, we add something each and every year."

For the past four years, Yvonne Petit has represented PATT at Carol Stream's annual Christmas Sharing program.

PATT's efforts include hosting alternative social events for local youth, providing financial support through scholarships, and coordinating a 5K Fun Run, led by Yvonne Petit in Jonathan's honor and held around his birthday in September.

Carol Stream resident Dalton Boland was a 2009 scholarship winner. The money he received from PATT helped to finance his current studies at Western Illinois University.

Though Jonathan was two years older than Boland in high school, the two wrestled on the same team.

"He was a great guy," Boland said. "It was terrible that he had to pass when he did. It really was an eye-opener about drinking at that young age."

Boland praises the PATT program.

"It's a great organization that is trying to open kids' eyes to staying away from drinking and other substances," he said. "Every time you drink or get drunk, you are risking serious consequences."

Doug Petit is a frequent guest speaker at area high schools through the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists program to alert students about the perils of underage drinking.

"We do this to honor our son," he said. "He was a good kid who made a mistake one night."

Doug Petit has been invited to be a part of the AAIM victim impact panel Wednesday, Feb. 17, at Glenbard West High School as part of Live Life Well Week. The panel will speak to physical education classes all day.

The Petits hope they can spare other parents the tragedy they have lived through.

"Not only do the parents lose, but the community loses," Doug Petit said. "This can happen to anybody who gets caught up with poor decisions and peer pressure."

The Petits do not plan on slowing down in their work anytime soon.

"You just keep pushing through," Doug Petit said. "You pick up your feet, and that's how you do it."
Copyright 2010 Carol Stream Press. Some rights reserved

1. No thanks.

2. I don't feel like
it-do you have
any soda?

3. Alcohol's NOT
my thing.

4. Are you talking
to me? FORGET it.

5. Why do you
keep pressuring
me when I've said
NO?

6. Back off!

May 19, 2009
By DAVID CONARD dconard@pioneerlocal.com

A girl in a formal black dress thrown halfway through a cracked windshield. A girl in a T-shirt with a purple face thrown from a moving car. A male driver with a bloody face failing a police sobriety test. The situation contained a sobering reality.

Lake Zurich High School administrators hope it's sobering, despite the fact its drunk driving crash simulation in the high school's parking lot wasn't real.

"We feel it's important for the kids to see the possibilities of what could happen if they drink and drive," Assistant Principal Ryan Rubenstein said. "Our purpose is more to open their eyes, get them to look at the global perspective."

A cast of students, members of the Lake Zurich Police Department, along with members of fire departments from Lake Zurich, Wauconda and Barrington simulated a two-vehicle fatal crash using donated vehicles.

A mostly-quiet audience of over 100 students watched a simulation of some classmates being cut from a vehicle by firefighters using vehicle extraction tools, put on stretchers, and in one case flown away by a Flight For Life helicopter.

Senior Katie Allen pretended to be ejected from a red station wagon.

"I really think it's a good (thing) to make people aware of what could happen," Allen said.

Senior Wade Self, who played the lead role in the school's spring musical, "Sweeney Todd," played a bleeding and intoxicated driver.

"There were people talking before, then once the demonstration started, you could hear a pin drop," Self said. "(They were) realizing what really happens during the experience.

Students had varying opinions of the demonstration, which took place a couple days before the prom.

"Obviously, it gives us new insight--what could actually happen," senior Luna Guo said. "I'm happy the city takes time to give us this demonstration."

"Another thing is they're not talking about actually drinking at prom," senior Aaron Kornick said. "It should be discussed that (drunk driving) it is only part of the problem. Other things are caused by drinking."

The students then listened in an assembly to two speakers from the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists, Shelly Anderson of Naperville and Doug Petit of Carol Stream. Both men lost children in alcohol-involved incidents.

"I had to tell (my wife) her little baby, her daughter was dead - not a pleasant conversation," said Anderson, whose 16-year-old daughter Jenni was killed by a drunk driver Oct. 17, 1997.

Petit told students his son Jonathan had drowned in a lake after consuming three times the legal limit of alcohol at a 2005 party hosted by a friend's parents.

"That's how it is in life: There is no two-minute warnings - disasters just happen, Petit said. "Parents have to be a little more aware of what's going on in their children's lives, and who they associate with."