February 15, 2023

Alyssa was 16, a junior in high school, and dual-enrolled in college courses. She was a good kid, who enjoyed simple pleasures – her favorite thing to do was to cuddle with her dogs on the couch, watch Netflix, and play on her phone. She had just started a new job at Sonic; it was only her 2nd shift there. The forecast was calling for a winter storm, so she left work early and was trying to get home before it hit. As she entered the last stretch of her 15-mile drive, she encountered something that even a seasoned driver would have struggled to know how to handle. While going 70 miles-per-hour on US-75, heading South, she encountered a driver heading North. He was in her lane. The details of the wreck are mostly unknown. What we do know is that the other driver hit Alyssa head-on. The last thing that Alyssa ever saw were his headlights, as they came at her at a combined 140 miles-per-hour. 

We had a suspicion that something wasn’t right when my wife received notification on her Life360 that Alyssa had “completed a trip.” Looking at where she “completed” her trip, my wife knew that something was wrong. Her panicked, and me being annoyed to have to go out after 9 pm on a cold night when I had to work in the morning, we headed to the location Life360 said Alyssa was at. As we rounded the last curve, we could see red and blue lights. Our hearts sank. As we neared the crash-scene, we saw Alyssa’s car in the median and an ambulance pull away. I jumped out, managed to get some words out, and was told that My Little Girl was in the ambulance going to Stormont Vail Trauma Center in Topeka. In the next hour, we would learn that our oldest child was physically alive, but brain-dead, and not expected to survive. Over the course of the next week, we would have family arrive from all over the country, make the decision to donate her organs, watch her take her last breath, and see Alyssa for the last time in a casket at her funeral. Not that I was giving it any thought at the time, but I could never have guessed that this was only the beginning of my journey. 

Do Something Else

Since the time that Alyssa was barely walking, I had been a truck driver. Being a truck driver had led my family to move from Michigan to Kansas in pursuit of a job that allowed me to be home more often – I just had to change where home was. After her death, I continued to be a truck driver, but now I was a truck driver who rarely drove … alone at least. I remained the primary trainer at the company I worked at. The next trainee that I had was a young man from Florida, who had moved to Kansas to be with his girlfriend. Malique and I spent several weeks together while I showed him the ropes. One afternoon, I was complaining about not wanting to drive a truck for the rest of my life. Eventually he looked at me and said something along the lines of “why don’t you stop complaining and sign up for classes and do something else?!” Struck by his bluntness, I did just that. Before I even began driving home that evening, I was registered for classes at Allen County Community College, pursuing the first leg of my journey: earning an Associate’s in sociology, a feat I accomplished this past May.

The plan I formulated over the next few weeks remains my plan now: to become a social worker, focusing on men’s therapy – the thing that I’ve added since then is an emphasis on grief counseling. I want to help men be as emotionally well as possible. I arrived at this plan by combining an earlier attempt at pursuing a college degree in social work with Alyssa’s plan to become a psychologist. The way I’ve framed it is that I am “carrying Alyssa’s baton.” Her passion for helping and advocating for others is what I admired about her the most. If the world was going to lose Alyssa, they were going to be stuck with me. 

“I’ve been thinking a lot the last couple days about what I’ve realized has become my life’s mission. A couple weeks ago, a friend told me something: ‘we die twice … when we take our last breath, and when our name is uttered for the last time.’ 

It is now my job to delay that last utterance for as long as I possibly can. It’s what sending her memorial cards to so many is about; the more people that know of her, the harder it is for the world to forget she was here. It’s a duty that brings me near tears every time I share her story. The world should weep for the loss of what she had to give. Obviously, she wasn’t perfect, but she was growing. She was maturing into such a force to be reckoned with. She was a fierce advocate for the marginalized in the small ways that she had an opportunity to be. She was also learning to be an advocate for herself. 

Now that she can no longer do that, I will gladly, proudly, and without hesitation or remorse, advocate for her for the rest of my life, in every arena that is necessary. She was truly finding herself. She was happy. She was in love. She was looking to the future, and taking care of the present to prepare for it. From the moment I first met her, she brought me to uncontrollable, unexplainable tears of joy. She still does. But now it’s tainted with sadness … uncontrollable, unexplainable sadness.” 

“Fuck, I miss her.”

~ Written as a Twitter thread on a restless night, 6 months after her death

Finding Meaning

With the goal of carrying Alyssa’s name, legacy, and memory as far as I possibly can, I continue my journey towards becoming a social worker. I have also found meaning in my work. 

Last February – 2 years to the day after Alyssa died – I began working at a school for kids with significant emotional and behavioral challenges; I have found a tiny bit of the meaning that I felt I had been missing for so many years as a truck driver. I also work with Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) as a peer support advocate and Victim Impact Panel (VIP) speaker, where I speak to individuals convicted of impaired driving, with the goal of convincing them to not continue that behavior. 

I’ll end the same way I end all of my speeches: with a plea for everyone that has even the slightest desire to be organ donor to share that desire with their families. Simply marking it on your license isn’t always enough. I don’t know what additional grief and trauma we were spared of by having to decide in the moment whether to allow Alyssa’s organs to be donated, but I’m grateful that we were spared. Alyssa’s gift of life saved at least 4 people. Her heart, liver, and kidneys were donated to 4 different people – two of them were teachers. 

Alyssa Marie Lee

8/29/2006 - 2/17/2023

To honor Alyssa and our classmate James please visit:

Mother's Against Drunk Driving

Donate Life America