Make every day count..

[Steff]

'Your life can be altered in a split second'

Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY

Thu Nov 17, 8:02 AM ET

 

If Angie Gratzl could make kids understand one thing about the dangers of underage drinking, it's that bad things can happen to you.

 

She knows, because they happened to her son. Some 15 months ago, during move-in time last year at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, her son Jason, then 18, drank too much at a house party and fell from a second-floor balcony, where a friend told police he had gone to vomit.

 

 

He suffered serious head injuries. After being rushed to the emergency room, he spent about a year in hospitals and rehab centers, returning to his mom's home in Burlington, Wis., in September. There, he is undergoing continued therapy.

 

 

Jason Gratzl had planned to major in engineering. Today, his mom hopes he will someday be able to attend some type of school or get a job. He remembers nothing of the incident that changed his life.

 

 

Angie Gratzl isn't sure what she could have done differently. "They say you need to sit down and talk. I did, I sat down and talked and talked," she says. But, "students, including my own children, have told me that the 'speech' only works when children want to absorb what is presented to them."

 

 

At some point, she started writing about her experience. The result was later distributed at Jason's high school and posted on a UW website (pace.uhs.wisc.edu/gratzl .php).

 

 

Her message: "Make Jason's mistake serve as a reminder to you that anything can happen on any given day." She doubts most students will give her story a second thought.

 

 

"But if it impacts just one," she says, "that's what is important."