Spotlight: Jan Meeker, 40th Anniversary Honoree
JAN MEEKER is this month’s honoree! Her ground-breaking work with Project Graduation has transformed high school graduations and saved lives. Let’s give her the recognition she deserves!
Prior to the late 1980s, when the legal drinking age was only 18, the traditional lei giving after a high school graduation included presenting graduates with flower lei as well as “liquor lei” made with individual servings of bottled liquor. It was not uncommon to see families at the graduation ceremonies on high school football fields with a cooler of booze as a way to celebrate. “What were we thinking?” says longtime MADD Hawaii Victims Services Specialist Theresa Paulette.
Thankfully, in October 1989, Jan was assigned to the state Department of Education Office as a Resource Teacher under a Federal Grant to start Project Graduation. This program is now widely accepted for teens on graduation night. Parents or guardians pay for their teen children to board buses with their overnight bags, where they’ll be dropped off at unknown secured locations for a fun-filled SAFE night of music, games, friends, and food. Most importantly, this means the culmination of their high school career is a night free from alcohol, drugs, or driving. Parents or guardians pick up their tired, but “safe” graduates the next morning.
After Jan graduated from the University of Hawaii Manoa in the 1970’s, she held various positions as an Education Officer with the Department of Education,, the Real Estate Commission, and the UH Vocational Education Office. In 1992, with the efforts of MADD Hawaii and MADD Hawaii Founder Carol McNamee and then legislator Mike McCartney, a bill was passed that established the Traffic Safety Program in the DOE’s Driver Education Program with Jan as the Resource Teacher.
Jan has received many well-deserved awards over the years, but the one she is most proud of is the Lokahi Award from the Hawaii JOTC program for providing over 20 years of support to their JROTC Leadership program with traffic safety speakers and activities for their cadets in 2015. With that award, she also received a Certificate of Patriotic Service from the Department of the Army for reaching thousands of their cadets over the 20 years. Jan’s father had spent 30 years in the army and she knows he would have been very proud of her!
In 1997, Hawaii was selected as one of six pilot states for MADD’s National Youth in Action (YIA) program to prevent underage drinking. MADD Hawaii and MADD National worked with the state DOE and Jan took the lead. She was committed, and the 54 teens she recruited knew she genuinely cared. Some of the other six chosen sites failed because of a lack of participation by the teens. Jan, however, recruited strong Hawaii youth traffic safety leaders who recruited their friends and Hawaii’s YIA took off, especially legislatively, with Zero Tolerance for drivers under the age of 21 and other laws. Jan shared that the “coalition concept” with the YIA, MADD Hawaii, and the Safe Community Program was the reason Hawaii’s YIA was successful.