Conclusions and Lessons we learned:

After looking at this web page one possible conclusion is; a bunch of mistakes were made, a number of people didn't do their job, and a lot of people's intentions were misinterpreted. But the "Movie and Television Industry" and the agencies that investigate work related accidents really care and the system that is in place, although not perfect, did a great job.

Another viewpoint is that the Movie Industry cares only about making money and the actors are only pawns in the game. Safety is only considered important if it saves them money. The Industry is large and it doesn't want a bad name and other agencies either don't want to take it on, or look the other way because the Industry pumps a lot of money into the local economy.

Which conclusion do you think best describes what happened at the time of the accident and afterwards? Is the Movie and Television Industry big enough and powerful enough to buy people off, ruin a career, or wipe out anyone that is critical of them? Is safety or the appearance of safety more important to them? Were they interested in preventing further accidents or covering up the cause of the one that took our sons life? Are the organizations set up to investigate accidents and insure safe working conditions really doing their job or are they protecting the companies they are supposed to investigate? You decide for yourself but how would you feel if you child was killed and you were treated as we were treated.

As we dealt with the grief and loss of our son we have had the opportunity to reflect on how this tragedy has impacted our beliefs and what we have learned from this experience.

1. Don't expect the system to work as you think it will as you may find out too late that sometimes it doesn't work at all. The people and agencies that you need to help you when you are struggling dealing with the biggest tragedy of your life may not care or help you at all. It wasn't their child that was killed. It was our child.
2. Don't expect the law to be fair or even helpful. You may find that the laws actually prevent you from holding accountable the people responsible for your child's death.
3. When you have no money to hire legal advice and must work with an attorney on contingency then realize that they are entering into this as a business deal to make money not as a way of finding out what happened or to make people accountable. Your goals and their goals are different and you will achieve your goals only if it is a means to achieve theirs. You, the client, and your child, the victim, are only pawns in the legal game and not what is important. This does not make all lawyers bad people, but you will think so, unless you clearly understand and accept their motivation is not justice but money.
4. No one wants to be responsible and they will do what ever it takes to point the finger at someone else.
5. We taught our son that he had the right to follow his dreams and use his gifts. We taught him to be responsible for his actions and that people in positions of power had to follow laws and be accountable also. What, we found from this whole experience was that our son, who believed in himself and believed dreams could come true, was the only one that had to be accountable.
6. We were fortunate in that we were on good terms with our son and he knew we loved him and he in turn loved us. We like other parents and children did not always agree on everything but we never let those times over shadow the bond between us. He was no more perfect than we are but we loved him even with his imperfections. We found out how much we and other people loved him.

The pain of losing Ken has never gone away and it probably never will. The intensity of the grief doesn't diminish but frequency of uncontrollable sorrow does lessen with time. Writing this web page brought back a lot of intense grief and frustration but was in some ways healing and rewarding. If this web page impacts just one person in a positive way then the pain of writing it will be worth the effort. We, as you can tell, were and are extremely proud of our son and hope that his story will make a difference.

If you are a parent make sure you never lose an opportunity to tell your children you love them. As we found out tomorrow may never come so do it today.

We Love You Ken