Message from the President
To all my industry friends and colleagues,
Your past participation as sponsors or donors to the ATSS Foundation are greatly
appreciated and gratefully accepted. Our goal is to get the Foundation’s message
out to every ATSSA member to let them know the importance of the Foundation and
its programs to their businesses and jobs. We may have fallen short of that goal
in the past, but as President it is my intention to reinvigorate that message and
redouble our efforts to communicate it both inside and outside our industry and
association.
We all see the highway fatality statistics, and following a 7 year decline, they
rose 5% in 2012, to 36,200 traffic fatalities, which included over 700 work zone
deaths that year. Those numbers are more than just statistics. Each one of those
numbers represents a person who left behind parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and
friends who were devastated by their loss. Those victims will never walk their daughters
down the aisle, or meet their grandchildren. The tragedy of these lost lives is
unspeakable. Those that are lost in work zone accidents touch each of us personally
because they were part of our industry and by extension, our lives. The deaths of
those men, women and children break our hearts every time a work zone fatality becomes
public, even if we didn’t know them personally. They were a part of our collective
family, and each loss is heartbreaking.
Your gifts to the Foundation help provide scholarships to the children of those
deceased, or even permanently disabled workers. This year, the Foundation Board
elected to raise the amount of our scholarships so that their value is meaningful
to their recipients. I feel blessed to have met a number of those children in person,
and have spoken to even more of the recipients and applicants on the phone. In addition
to the emotional loss of their loved ones, they are often left with a financial
loss that potentially eliminates their hopes and dreams of a college degree. The
scholarships that the Foundation provides these surviving children are often desperately
needed in order for them to attend college. Without them, I have been told many
times, college might have been out of their reach. Your donations have made those
scholarships possible, and through them, the dreams of many of these children have
been realized.
ATSSA’s Toward Zero Deaths mantra is shared by all of us. It is important to remember
that the public awareness generated by the Foundation and its programs goes a long
way in motivating legislatures to support the safety initiatives so important to
our industry and the driving public as a whole.
We need to take care of our own, and all of these losses represent our industry.
Each is felt by all of us. What will your legacy be? Through your support of YOUR
Foundation, you can help ensure that its mission is fulfilled and that the Foundation
continues to do well by doing good.
Sincerely,
Sue Reiss
Foundation Board President