PARENTS AND TEENS URGED TO REMEMBER THAT ALCOHOL KILLS

Stephen L.  Marler died of a drug overdose.  That drug was not cocaine, not heroin, not crystal meth.

It was alcohol.

Marler drank a fifth of whiskey in a matter of 10 minutes.  Then he died.

He was 16.

"I made eight of his friends carry his casket," Marler's mother, Dorothy Enright, said.  "I wanted them to feel the burden of it."

We all feel that burden when death claims the young.  We parents do, more than most.

A police officer knocks, tells you he's sorry but your child is gone forever.  The dread lives with you always.  We know kids take risks.  Whatever it is you do, be careful, we tell them.  Come home safe.

Sometimes they don't come home at all.

Marler was a junior at Olathe North High School.  He wasn't perfect, but he had a good heart and was well liked.

Last month, while on spring break, he was invited to a party.  He and another co-worker finished their shifts at an Olathe pizza restaurant and drove to an apartment complex north of the river.

Their 21-year-old boss was host.

Kansas City police say about a dozen persons, most of them teen-agers, were drinking when Marler arrived at the apartment around 11:45 p.m.  March 14.

Around midnight, a fresh bottle of booze was produced.  And on a dare, witnesses told police, Marler vowed he could drink it all.

"He just poured the Southern Comfort in a big plastic cup," said Detective Andrew Dorothy.  "He drank the whole fifth."

That's an awful lot of alcohol for someone who's 5 feet 10 inches tall and 137 pounds.  Marler passed out and never woke up.  He was dead when police were called the next morning.  The autopsy put his blood alcohol level at .47, which is nearly five times the legal limit for intoxication in Missouri, six times the Kansas definition.

Last week, the Clay County attorney's office filed charges.  John M.  Miller, 21, is accused of furnishing liquor to a minor, a misdemeanor.

"What's sad is it was so preventable," Assistant Prosecutor Janet Sutton said of Marler's death.

Certainly it was that.  And that's what Marler's mother would like parents and their children to know at this time of year, when teen-agers tend to drink to excess even as some parents dismiss it as a rite of passage.

So Enright assigned her son's friends to be pallbearers so they would never forget what can happen when you drink too much.  And then she told me about Marler and how he died so the rest of us won't forget, either.

"I just think people need a better education," she said.  "According to the autopsy, he ingested ethanol.  It's a poison.

"With alcohol, I don't think they realize it kills."

Teens should know that if one of their friends passes out from drinking, they should call for help immediately.  Marler was tossed on a bed so he could sleep it off, which meant he had no chance at all.

Her advice to parents: Ask many questions before your children go out for the night.  Enright knew her son was going to that party.  She knew he planned to sleep over.

What she didn't know was that the party's host was an adult.  Had she only asked more questions, she said, that might have become clearer and Marler would not have been granted permission to go out that night.

That terrible night.  The night Marler drank too much.  And died.

To reach Mike Hendricks, call ( 816 ) 234-7708 or send e-mail to mhendricks@kcstar.com