PORT ANGELES — On Friday, five years after helmetless 14-year-old Frank Russo died while skateboarding at Port Angeles Skate Park, efforts moved forward to build a monument that honors the teenager and urges skateboarders to wear helmets.
Frank, who would have graduated Friday from Port Angeles High School, constantly wore his helmet, often even to the store, his mother, Lisa Laidlaw of Port Angeles, said last week.
For some unknown reason, on June 16, 2006, he didn’t.
The initial account of the mishap — according to friends, he had loaned the helmet to someone — wasn’t true, Laidlaw said.
Head unprotected, Frank was skateboarding from one concrete bowl to another at the park on Race Street when he hit his head, suffered seizures and fell into a coma.
He died the following day, leaving behind his mom and two brothers, Zach Armstrong, now 17, and Robert Taylor, 25.
“I’m having a rough day,” Laidlaw, 46, said Friday.
All day, she made trips with family members and friends to Frank’s grave at Ocean View Cemetery, where she placed flowers and cleaned up the site.
“I call it cleaning his room,” Laidlaw said.
Others Friday also remembered the Stevens Middle School seventh-grader known to friends as Frank the Tank, a kid who wanted to become a professional skateboarder when he grew up.
Monument plans
Doc Reiss of the Port Angeles Nor’wester Rotary Club, who helped spearhead construction of the skate park at 300 S. Race St., met Friday with fellow Rotarian and engineer Steve Zenovic to finalize plans for the monument.
It will be erected in the western corner of the skateboard park just outside the fenced skateboarding area.
Footings will be poured July 5, and the $3,800 monument will completed by the end of that month, Reiss said.
“This is something we’ve wanted to do and wanted to do, and now we’re getting it done,” he said.
The narrow, 6½-foot-tall rectangular memorial will include a plaque.
On one side, it will review the history of the park, built in 2005 by the Rotary Club.
To build it, the club raised $385,000 in contributions — part of that will be used for the monument — from merchants, civic groups and individuals.
On the other side will be a tribute written by Frank’s grandfather, Ken Laidlaw, and uncle, Jeff Mauger, both of Port Angeles.
“It is the hope and prayer of Frankie’s family and friends that his death will remind and encourage his friends, peers and skateboarders everywhere to wear safety equipment, especially a helmet, when enjoying this sport,” it will say.
A giant reminder of that reminder will shelter Frank’s memorial and other skateboarders when it rains — a helmet 9 feet by 6 feet wide atop a 13-foot-tall frame that will become a signature feature of Erickson Park, already bejeweled by the Dream Playground.
Brainchild of sculptor
The brainchild of Port Angeles sculptor Bob Stokes is still in the planning stages.
But Stokes plans to get together with Reiss this week to get moving on it now that he knows the monument is a go, Stokes said.
Stokes would build the steel frame. He’s talked to skateboard manufacturers about donating skateboard blanks that would be painted by skateboarders and attached to the frame to form the helmet.
“Then you walk inside the helmet and look up and see art by skateboarders,” Stokes said.
“It would be like a little cathedral.”
The shelter also would provide a “subliminal” reminder for skateboarders to wear helmets, he added.
Of 42 skateboarding fatalities in the United States that year, Frank’s was the only death while skateboarding in a skate park, according to www.skatepark.org.
The city-owned skate park includes a posted suggestion for skateboarders to wear safety gear.
Use of helmets
After Frank died, Ken Laidlaw helped lead an effort to pass a city ordinance requiring skateboarders at the park to wear helmets.
It failed.
“There’s no way with our staffing models or with the parks department’s to ensure people consistently wear helmets in the skate park, even if we did require it,” said Port Angeles Police Chief Terry Gallagher.
Gallagher added that there has not been a significant increase in the number of skateboarding accidents since Frank’s death.
Nor has there been an increase that he’s noticed in the use of helmets.
But the city of Port Angeles “took on a responsibility” by allowing the park on city property, Lisa Laidlaw said.
“Why not put on the full responsibility and have some safety for those kids?” she said.
“I don’t think it’s out of their reach to do that. Skating is seasonal — it’s only spring and summer.”
Lisa Laidlaw understands how tough it is to get some skateboarders to wear helmets.
‘No control’
When children are out of sight, parents “have no control,” she said.
“Frank had a choice, and he didn’t wear it that day, but with Frankie, there wasn’t a whole lot of preaching behind it because he just did, he wore it,” she said.
“That’s what was so shocking about the whole incident. It was so out of character for him not to wear it.”
Lisa Laidlaw’s ultimate wish would be that “parents would learn from Frankie’s passing,” she said.
“You could talk to your kids until you’re blue in the face, but just keep on ’em and use Frank’s story as a reminder; that doesn’t bother me in the least,” she said.
“Use our experience as a family and what happened as a lesson for their children.
“Don’t forget, because it’s a possibility.
“It can happen. It did.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
