I met Alan Brown a month or so after he buried his son. We were standing outside Cartersville High School for the first of what would become 11 memorials to Joshua Brown. I was there for a quick photo for the local newspaper. Brown was there to hug every single friend of Joshua's who showed up to plant the tree.

We talked for a moment, and then he was back to hugging and wiping away tears. Joshua died on July 9, 2003, six days after he lost control of his car during a storm and hit a tree. He was not the first, nor the last teen in Bartow County to die in a car wreck. A few weeks after the memorial, Brown showed up at the newspaper with folders stuffed with brochures and a plan. "I'm going to put driving simulators in every high school so this doesn't happen again," he had said. That was three years ago.

Today, the Joshua Brown Foundation has driving simulators in Cartersville High School, and a recent law named after Joshua is funding simulators for every other high school in Georgia. Even as Brown and the foundation push to make sure no other teenager dies behind the wheel, the thoughts of his son never slip far below the surface. "There's not a day that goes by that I don't have a breakdown," Brown said. "Every day."

Heart to Heart

I caught Brown on a good day to talk about the foundation. "I'm running wide open today," he said. "What do you need?"

I imagine he was like this before July 1, 2003, when he was called and told to get to the hospital. Earlier that afternoon, father and son had talked. Before they hung up, Joshua had a few final words for his dad. "He said, 'Dad, I love you.' Something told me I'd never hear him say that again."

A few hours later, Joshua was driving home in the rain and hydroplaned off of U.S. Hwy 41 on what is called "Dead Man's Hill." The car struck a tree, leaving Joshua with fatal injuries.

After the wreck, Brown blamed himself. He had taught his son how to drive. "I have to live with that," Brown said. "I feel like I'm in hell."

Joshua's Law

After that meeting at the newspaper, Brown and I talked nearly every week. The foundation was coming together and moving forward, but the simulators cost more than $10,000 each. Being the businessman he is, Brown put in as much of his own money as he could and then began looking elsewhere for funds.

"We're doing it," he would say and list off the most recent accomplishments for the foundation. His voice was always a mixture of happiness and despair. "I'm happy we're doing so much," Brown said, adding, "but I hate that it took me losing Josh for it to happen."

Occasionally Brown would call to talk about other things, but mostly he called every time a teenager died or was injured in a car wreck. There was a hint of regret in his voice, like he could have done something sooner to prevent another tragedy.

In 2005, the Georgia General Assembly passed Joshua’s Law, a bill that would fund driver’s education in Georgia. The bill requires teenagers to go through a certified training program to get their license at 16 and attached a 5 percent fee on all traffic violations to fund driver’s education in Georgia. The funds will be distributed through the Georgia Driver's Education Commission, a committee set up through the bill.

The bill is framed with a photograph of Joshua in his parent's bedroom. "It was just unbelievable," Brown said. "We had 46 senators sign it. I just can't believe it." Georgia State Senator Preston Smith (R-Rome) first met with Brown to help draw up the bill. At the signing of the bill, 300 empty chairs, each one draped with a graduation cap and gown, were set up to symbolize the 300 teenagers who die every year in Georgia in car wrecks.

"These are kids who will never graduate, never see another sunset, never have children," Smith said. "We are losing our best natural resources, and it needs to stop.”

All in the Family

One moment, he’s smiling and talking about the foundation. The next, he is talking about his son and his voice drops to just above a whisper. Josh spent a lot of time with his family, perhaps more so than other kids his age, setting aside one weekend night to be with his parents. "How many kids would tell a pretty girl, 'I'll take you out Saturday, but Friday belongs to my parents!'”

There are stories that stick between a father and a son.  Once, Brown pulled me aside to chat about some of the mischief he and Joshua gotten into one summer.  It's the kind of story that Joshua would have told friends in college or joked about with his father in later years.  "He may be gone," Brown said, "but I will always be his dad."

While Brown is the head of the foundation, his wife LuGina is his lighthouse, directing him through the rough patches and guiding him gently forward.

"I let him do the talking and step out of the way," LuGina said. "But I'm always there for him. I'm his support." As Joshua's mother, she too feels responsible for what happened. LuGina said she was looking to find a respectable driver's education course for her son the night before he was killed. "Like so many other parents, she knew Josh needed driver's education, but she figured she had time to find it.

"We were asleep," she said. "So may parents are asleep. We need to wake them up. This shouldn't happen ever again."

The Future of the Foundation

There is one word Brown always uses when it comes to the Joshua Brown Foundation and the goals of the organization, and that’s integrity. As the chairman of the foundation, he makes sure nothing is done that would tarnish his son's name or the foundation’s expectations.

“We're all about integrity. I've never made a penny off this," Brown said. "When I travel, I don't take expenses. I don't want anyone to ever be able to come up to me and say I made money off of Josh."

Students at Joshua's former high school now take a driver's education course that exceeds all the requirements, The simulators present every possible situation, including snow, fog, rain and different amounts of traffic. To start the simulator, students must first buckle their seatbelts. The three monitors give students a realistic view from the driver's seat, complete with side and rear view mirrors.  "It's amazing," Brown said.

But it's not just the simulators that are changing the way driver's education is being taught. Brown wants new textbooks for students as well. One school in South Georgia was using a book from the 1950s.

"Driving has changed a lot since 1950," Brown said. "The book explained starting a car by pulling out the choke. When was the last time you saw a choke on a car?"

The foundation is now aligned with the Center for Disease Control and the National Academy of Sciences, and a teen driving research center has been set up at Kennesaw State University. With so many partners and so much support, Brown said it's only a matter of time before the foundation takes its program of redefining teen driving safety to a national audience. As we sat in his living room, Brown couldn’t keep from smiling as he counted on his hands the new opportunities available. “There so much going on,” he said. “Some of it I can’t even talk about, but we are so excited.”

Eventually, talk returned once again to Joshua. After all, he is the reason for the foundation. Brown said he knows Joshua is looking down and proud of what has been accomplished in his name. “I’m sure he loves it,” Brown said. “He would be so happy to have his name on this.” Upstairs is the last Father’s day gift he received from his son. It is a small box containing three glass angels. “I asked him who they were,” Brown said. “He told me two were his grandparents watching over me. But he didn’t know who the other one was. Now we know.”