Sometimes it’s not fun to be a journalist, to witness and report on things that are uncomfortable, if not ugly.
In the case with our story on page 1 about the sentencing of Gene Mayfield, it was “the saddest thing I’ve ever covered,” as reporter Sean Morgan put it when he returned to our office.
We’ve reported many sad stories during The New Era’s 90 years of covering Sweet Home. They come with the territory as your local newspaper, but there are times when we need do more than simply report them and move on. We can think about what lessons might be there for all of us. That’s particularly true in this case.
We don’t need to recount many details here. They’re in the story.
But what’s really uncomfortable is that, honestly, many of us could have been standing there in Gene Mayfield’s shoes, apologizing to a family whose husband, father and son died because, authorities have concluded, a cellphone was being used at the wrong time, in the wrong place.
We’re inundated with technology to the point that many of us are almost slaves to it. We easily find ourselves adrift without our cellphones – the texts, social media posts, streaming videos, games, the camera, the constant stimulation.
We depend on Siri or Alexa to tell us how to find that restaurant we want to try, provide music (or a little joke), our news and weather, our groceries, our alarm clock and a host of other conveniences, if not needs. That pet-like smart robot cleans our carpets, even when we’re not home.
It’s easy to just let go, to start letting a little device take over our lives, to assume control of us rather than we controlling it.
Most of us with any experience in this area have to admit we’re guilty of sneaking a look at our cellphone while we’re driving, of maybe sending a quick text.
After all, life is demanding, especially with all these conveniences.
Back to the courtroom and Gene Mayfield.
Mayfield, who said he can remember hardly any of what happened in the crash that killed Neil Nightingale, thanks to what his lawyer called “post-traumatic amnesia,” is a good guy, a caring, giving, self-sacrificing man, his family and friends told the court. The prosecutor himself acknowledged in court that Mayfield is not likely to ever return to court as a defendant.
But Mayfield made a mistake.
Authorities, spurred by the findings of investigators hired by the victim’s family, have pieced together a sequence of events that indicate Mayfield was trying to find the address of an individual he was supposed to pick up as he drove his company truck to work early on the fateful morning.
In doing so, apparently, he swerved out of his lane, leading to the horrific collision between his and Nightingale’s heavy trucks and the aftermath we’re contemplating now.
Our point here isn’t to rub all of this in. It’s not to make all of us feel guilty. It’s simply to note an unrelenting reality: that a seemingly small error in judgment, a slight bending of the rules, directly led to the death of an innocent man and a grim tragedy for two families.
Now Gene Mayfield, who sustained traumatic injuries himself, must spend more than a year in prison.
He’s lived through years of grief. Thanks to the realities of the legal system, he has carried the load of not communicating with the victim’s family – and additional burden for anyone who feels sorry about something. Guilt is a heavy burden.
As indicated by court testimony, his decision to consult his cellphone at the wrong time leaves a young boy who has no father, a widow, a father and mother who have lost a beloved son. Their lives have a hole that cannot be filled.
Laws passed in Salem won’t fix this. Any of us with the will to do so can do exactly what Gene Mayfield did, as we drive down the road.
And we could find ourselves in exactly the same place he is. That’s why, uncomfortable as it is, we need to reflect on this.