By Summer Crawford

news editor

@summercrawfordd

Since students walked into class the first day of kindergarten, Red Ribbon Week has been an important, celebrated event. Students have been taught to say no to drugs or to stand up to drugs because they are bad, but what most people do not know is the reason why Red Ribbon celebration started.

According to the Red Ribbon Campaign, this week long event was “started when drug traffickers in Mexico City murdered Kiki Camarena, an agent of the Drug Enforcement Agency, in 1985.” This started the tradition of showing Red Ribbons as a symbol of intolerance to drugs. Red Ribbon Week was then created as a campaign to promote drug free lives for students in schools around the nation.

On Friday, the annual Red Ribbon Kick-Off Breakfast was held at the Brookhaven Country Club, inviting students, teachers, school board members, police officers and many more to celebrate its 25 year anniversary. The event was celebrated with members from the communities of Farmers Branch, Coppell, Carrollton and Addison. Several guest speakers, including president of Brookhaven College, Dr. Thom Chesney, made appearances to stress the importance of living a drug free life.

“There is a reason [school board members and police officers] are all here, and it’s not for free breakfast,” Farmers Branch Police Department Chief Sid Fuller said. “They care about you and and they care about your future. We are going to need you to stay drug free and we are all here because we care about you.”

Nanette White Foght, president of the Farmers Branch Chamber of Commerce, recognized all of the elected officials and special guests who came to the breakfast. They are as follows: state representative Bennett Ratliff, City of Farmers Branch Mayor Bob Phelps and his first lady Dee, Farmers Branch City Council and Police Chief Sid Fuller, City of Coppell Mayor Karen Hunt and Coppell City Council, City Manager Clay Phillips and Police Chief Mac Tristan, City of Carrollton Police Chief Rex Redden, Carrollton Farmers Branch Independent School District superintendent Dr. Bobby Burns and School Board of Trustees, Coppell Independent School District assistant superintendent Brad Hunt and School Board of Trustees, Farmers Branch Chamber of Commerce chairman of the board Sonja Dodds, Coppell Chamber of Commerce president Kristi Valentine, Metrocrest Chamber of Commerce and the Red Ribbon Committee.

Chesney was the main guest speaker who gave a keynote presentation about a personal experience in his life regarding drugs. When first asked to speak at the event, he pondered what story he would share.

“As I got to hear Kiki’s story, it spoke to me in a way that said this is not going to be something where I can take any kind of story I have told before or any kind of message I have brought up before and recast it in new light. [Red Ribbon Kick-Off Breakfast] is more important than that and more significant,” Chesney said. “So I had to sit down with myself and think what could I do that would be the right message for our students that are here and also for the folks they look up to in this room?”

Chesney went on to speak to all attendees of the event about when he went off to college and met another man named Tom. He described how Tom became more involved with drugs, and how he instead kept saying no to drugs. In saying no to drugs, he lost certain things.

“I gave up a 50 state trip. Here’s the 50 state trip. I went to a formal dance and was asked to go upstairs and join others in a hotel room. When I went upstairs [into the room] the mirror had been taken off the wall laid out over the bed and someone was meticulously making lines of cocaine into an outline of the 50 states. And thank goodness the first words that came into my mind was ‘I’m out of here,’” Chesney said. “Maybe I lost some popularity. Maybe from time to time I could have been on the in crowd.

“I also lost sleep. Tom lost sleep because of the activities he was engaged in. I lost sleep because of the activities that he was engaged in. Ultimately, what did I lose by saying no? I lost a brother.”

But Chesney also gained much more from his insistence of saying no to drugs for 48 years.

“I gained more than an education. Over the course of the same four years I rallied with others to try to take some actions that could be sustainable for other students. [His undergraduate college] today has a shuttle that runs in the evenings from about 9 at night to 3 in the morning on and off campus to get students back and forth just in case they are not in a good state to drive,” Chesney said. “I developed the right kind of network just in the act of saying no and making the right choice, it opened up relationships with others who had done the same who could help me.

“My daughter who is 10 years old says, ‘Dad, you got your forever family.’ I may have lost a brother and I know where he is today, he’s not in a great place. I hope [my daughter] makes the leap through me and through her mom to make the right choice to stay drug free and to make it beyond that pathway for her forever family. Because if you love yourself, you will be drug free.”

After Chesney finished his presentation, Foght made the closing comments and wished everyone a nice, drug free life. All of the presenters hope that both students and adults learned something about living a healthy life.

“It is exceptionally important for students to understand that drug and alcohol abuse is something that is lifelong. It is not something that is a one time event that you can get away and erase,” Coppell Board of Trustees president Anthony Hill said. “It can follow you the rest of your life and it can change your life. So having DEA agents out and having guest speakers talk about what your life could become if you don’t go down that path is extremely important.”