WAVY: Remarkable Women
YORKTOWN, Va. (WAVY) — Women like Tammy Gweedo McGee, a local mother who suffered an unimaginable loss, still grieves, but she uses her pain as a launching point to save lives.
“Oct. 26, 2019 I lost my only son, Conner, in a single car crash that was 100% preventable. Had I known the things I know now, back then, obviously we would have done what we could have to have prevented it, but the teen driver was unlicensed and underage. He had transferred to our school and was driving.
“So when somebody shows up driving, you make an assumption that they have a driver’s license, because parents would never let you drive without a driver’s license, but that was not the case for us. There was a homecoming night, and Conner was going to an after party, which we knew about. It was supervised, and it was one mile from the school, one short mile. This driver showed up, offered Conner a ride, and he hopped into the front seat, invited his friend to hop into the backseat, and who would have thought that a one-mile drive would wind up taking the lives of three young teenagers?
“He left the parking lot doing twice the legal speed limit in less than 500 yards. He reached 75 in a 35, ran off the road, hit a tree, flipped the car, and he killed all three of them. All three boys were gone in the blink of an eye, and it was 100% preventable. People saw this driver driving reckless. People, including adults, saw his reckless behavior. He had been posting and bragging on social media about how fast he drove, and he didn’t care whether you liked it or not. There were so many warning signs and so many ways that this could have been prevented,” Gweedo McGee said.
Conner Guido, known as Gweedo to his friends, is now forever 16. Since his death in Yorktown, his mother formed The Gweedo Memorial Foundation. She now lives to make sure others live.
“What do you do when your son is ripped from you? You do a lot of therapy, and then you come out fighting,” she said. “That’s what I did. I came out fighting, and it was to honor Conner, but to also keep another family from being us, because what most people don’t know is that driving is the number one killer of our teenagers, and it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Gweedo McGee works hard to tighten laws around irresponsible driving. Since Conner’s death, the Virginia General Assembly passed five pieces of legislation created by his mother.
“We passed three pieces of legislation last year,” she said. “Two of them were very similar, and what’s great about this piece of legislation is it holds people accountable that know someone’s driving unlicensed.
“And what’s great is it’s not just parents, because parents obviously sometimes are going to be more likely to know that their teenager is driving unlicensed, but in our case, there were bus drivers, there were teachers, there were adults who saw reckless driving behaviors, knew he was unlicensed, and nobody spoke up.
“So this piece of legislation says that if you know someone is driving unlicensed, and you allow that behavior to happen, and it causes a crash and results in death or injury, it’s a Class 1 misdemeanor with a $2,500 fine and a year in jail now in the Commonwealth. So we’re really excited about it. It took five years to get that piece of legislation, and had it been in place when my son was killed, we could have held the parents accountable who let this teen driver drive, but what’s important to remember is we’re not wanting to throw a bunch of people in jail. That’s not what we’re doing. We want them to know that this is out there, and it’s a deterrent.”
When WAVY.com spoke with Gweedo McGee, she was in Richmond preparing to testify before lawmakers on potential new legislation.
“What we do is focus on accountability and closing loopholes,” she said. So right now, we’re trying to increase the age limit for getting a driver’s license, and when I say that, what I mean is right now, if you’re 16, you have to do a driver’s test and you have to do a waiting period. If you wait until you’re 18, you only have to do one of those. That doesn’t make you any smarter.
“Just because you’re 18, you don’t know anything more, especially if you haven’t taken driver’s education. So, we’re working to change that here in the Commonwealth. We’re also working on a piece of legislation with DMV to make sure that our third-party driving schools are as tight as they can be. We want to make sure that we close the loopholes. We want to make sure that predators and those who have been convicted of DUI, DWI, failing to blow, we want to make sure they’re not behind the wheel of our teenagers while they’re teaching them to drive.
“We want to make sure that parents have education on driving schools. we want to make sure that parents know which driving schools have infractions against them and which ones don’t. So, it’s common sense and making sure that parents get lots of good information on DMV and driving schools here in the Commonwealth.
“Our third piece of legislation is to make sure that when a teenager hops into a vehicle to take their driver’s education, that there’s a placard in the car so that teenager knows that you are the one who is licensed and should be instructing them. We want to make sure that a family member isn’t filling in, because somebody didn’t show up to work today. We want to make sure that teens are safe in a vehicle when they’re taking driver’s education in the Commonwealth.”
As for her ultimate goal?
“Well, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could bring my son back? That would be the ultimate goal, but obviously I can’t do that,” she said. “So really, it’s about making sure that parents don’t wind up like me, that teenagers don’t wind up like Conner, because they have their lives to live, and we want everyone to arrive alive every time they’re behind the wheel. We know that if we all work together, we can accomplish that.
“Driving is something that everybody does, and it’s the most dangerous thing that you do every single day, but a lot of people don’t think about it like that. They don’t think that they’re driving a lethal weapon, but that’s really what it is, and so our goal is to keep other people safe and make sure they don’t wind up like us.”
When Gweedo McGee learned that she had been nominated as one of our Remarkable Women?
“It’s really strange, because I don’t think of myself as strong or powerful or any of those adjectives that might have been mentioned to get me to this point,” she said. “I just feel like I’m doing God’s work. I feel like what I’m doing is helping to protect other parents and other teenagers. So it’s overwhelming, because I don’t do it for recognition. I do it because it’s my life. It’s my baby, and I can’t bring him back, but every day I get to talk about it, I get to see his picture, and I get to work really hard making sure that other people don’t wind up like us.”
This mother said her son was a joy who everyone loved. Conner’s favorite sport was soccer, and she said he lit up every room when he entered, and he always found a way to make people laugh.
Gweedo McGee said if Conner were here today, he might be a little embarrassed by everything she is doing, but “he loved his mom. He wouldn’t want me to be in the pain that I’m in, but I think he would look back and go, ‘You know, mom, you’re doing it for all the right reasons and I’m really proud of you.'”