Remembering Hollie

If you ever find yourself over in “Old Marion,” behind Marion Marketplace and you turn off od Neely Street onto Henry Street, you’ll drive past two coves. One is Neely Cove. The other is Hollie Beth Cove. It used to be Henry Cove, but now it is named for a young girl who once lived there.

I know this because she was my sister.

Hollie Beth Hardin grew up in the same house there on Henry Cove that I did. It’s the house my parents still live in today. Just a few days before Christmas in 1996, she and her boyfriend were on their way home from Christmas shopping when he fell asleep at the wheel. She was also apparently asleep, and so very likely never felt a thing, but the SUV they were driving veered off the road less than a mile from the Marion exit on I-55 and flipped.

She was killed in the crash. She was just 16.

Hollie would be turning 40 years old today were she still with us, which is just insane. I can’t help but wonder what she would have made of her life. I hate that my kids have grown up without their Aunt Hollie around. I can see flashes of her in my own children, and I’m sure she and my daughter, who just turned 14, would have gotten along famously.

There’s a long holiday weekend coming up, and I bring this up now only because Hollie wasn’t wearing her seatbelt, and as you saw on the front page, the police will be out in force making sure you are.

Hollie was thrown from the SUV. Had she been buckled up, she might still be here, turning 40.

Buckle up. It’s the law and it might save your life.