Thirteen years on, flowers still tragic reminder

JONATHAN DOW
Twelve thousand vehicles cross Karamu Stream on State Highway 2 between Clive and Hastings each day. Sometimes the people in the cars notice the small white cross on the bridge railing.
The cross is covered in flowers, as it has been for 13 years.
Cyril and Bernadette Ormond and their sons young Cyril and Peter don't enjoy the drive to Karamu Stream. It brings on a gut feeling that Bernadette can't describe.
But they keep on going there. So do the extended family and friends.
They take fresh cut flowers from home, buy fabric ones in town and tie them to the cross.
Young Cyril put up the cross for his little brother, Haimoana, who was killed after the car he was a passenger in crashed off the bridge and landed upside down in Karamu Stream on October 10, 1992.
"I hate it," said Bernadette. "I look at that black, murky river." She has a cry, says a prayer.
Hai's roadside cross is one of many, but it stands out because it has been adorned with flowers for 13 years.
It may not be pleasant, but visiting the cross helps the family.
"There are so many crosses that people don't go back to. You never see flowers."
The authorities told young Cyril he wasn't really allowed to put up a cross, but they also said they knew that wasn't going to stop him.
"They reckon they're a distraction to drivers, said Bernadette. "In a way, yes. But it's also an eye opener - basically it says, slow down."
Haimoana, often called Hai, was 18 when he lost his life. He had left Napier Boys' High School after sixth form the previous year to become his father's "leading hand and head shepherd" (in his own words).
Out on the town in Hastings on Friday, October 9, Hai offered to drive home a mate of a mate that he had met that night.
But when the Mitsubishi Galant landed upside down in Karamu Stream, Hai was belted in the passengers seat.
Records show speed and alcohol were factors in the crash. The driver got out, told those first on the scene no-one else was in the car, and took off.
Hai ripped his finger nails out trying to escape the car. His family often think about what went on before this.
Tests found Hai was alcohol and drug free.
At 10am Saturday, police from Kotemaori rang the Ormonds (then farming in Putere) to say they were coming out to see them and would like the whole family to be there.
Hai's twin brother Peter had finished seventh form at Napier Boys' High the day before (Mum had dropped Hai in Napier when she drove down to pick Peter up from the hostel) and half-joking thought: "Oh no. What have I done? Is it the pile of unreturned text books?"
Bernadette thought police were coming to talk to them about the poachers they had had problems with. "We had no idea." The family borrowed a van and brought Hai home to Tuahuru Marae that day.
His funeral was huge. The Ormonds are a big, close family - Cyril is one of 20 - and there were pupils and teachers from pretty much every high school in Hawke's Bay present.
"One could imagine a twinkle in Hai's eye at the number of girls present," his obituary noted.
He is buried with his grandparents at Kaiuku Marae, on a cliff top over looking the sea on the eastern side of the Mahia Peninsula.
Peter remembers the first couple of years as being pretty tough.
He grew up real fast. On Friday he was an 18-year-old who had just finished three years in the 1st XV. All of a sudden he felt about 25 or 26.
And it wasn't just hard for him.
"It's hard seeing your mates not knowing what to say. His advice: "Talk to them about it, because it's not worth bottling it up."
Now 31 and a guard at Hawke's Bay Prison, Peter wonders what his twin would have been like. "Would he have had kids?"
He agrees with his Mum: Hai would have been a millionaire and working towards his dream of running the family farm at Mahia.
On the Friday before the holiday season Peter is standing on the bridge over Karamu Stream again and points out where other accidents have occurred on either side of the bridge. He doesn't really like it. The cars are going too fast and are too close to each other.
It makes him sad, but he makes a detour here every couple of weeks. Sometimes drivers slow or toot their horns, when he is standing there replacing the flowers.
Bernadette visits Hai's grave most Sundays, on birthdays (Hai was buried on her 39th birthday), Christmas and during the week.
It too is covered in flowers, but has a view more beautiful than the Karamu Stream.
Peter will light a smoke for Hai, stick it in the ground and have one himself.
The number of young people killed on Hawke's Bay roads has a lot of people shaking, and scratching, their heads. Peter, like many others, thinks raising the drinking and driving age is a good idea.
I didn't ask if anything good had come of Hai's death.
But Peter said, he, his cousins and friends think twice now about drinking and driving. And it has brought the Ormond family even closer.
There is a well-established rule in their family: Anyone can call - at any time of the day or night - for a sober driver.
There was a lesson to learn here, Bernadette said. A rule that Hai followed all but that one night: Don't get in a car with a drunk driver unless they first give you the keys. Ever.