Onetime scenes of tragedy now scenes of uncertainty

For weeks, the construction workers skirted the roadside memorial that marked the site of a fatal crash in Lakeville.

They tried to not disturb it. Some felt a spiritual connection, and others, empathy. It would have felt like moving a grave, the workers agreed. But the memorial stood in the path of a massive sewer line installation along Dodd Boulevard.

So the workers chopped down the woods around the white cross with "We love Cortney" painted in purple, the silk bouquets, the stuffed Snoopy dog signed with messages, and the pinwheel that spun in the wind. Reuben Mausolf of the general contractor, S.M. Hentges & Sons in Jordan, and the subcontractors who work with him, didn't know who Cortney was, only that there must have been a deadly accident there.

"We danced around it for two weeks," said Dennis Caron, an engineering inspector for the Metropolitan Council. "Really, no one knew what to do about it."

It's just one of countless roadside tributes that have sprung up in ever-greater numbers across the country. More and more, construction workers and county employees are trying to work around them, uncertain of the etiquette when encountering the tributes.

Caron and Mausolf were finally able to find out that the memorial was a tribute to Cortney Rohrenbach, 16, who died on May 10 last year, the day after her car crashed into a tree off Dodd Boulevard near 240th Street. After contacting her parents, who were grateful that the men had taken the time to care for the memorial, Caron and Mausolf put it in their construction trailer until the work is done.

"That's nice of them," Cortney's father, Colin Rohrenbach, said later.

He said he and his wife, Lynette, had puzzled over whether they should take down the memorial during the construction. "We go by there just about every day, and we didn't know what was going on," Colin Rohrenbach said.

Cortney had been ballerina, a pole vaulter and an honor student who was modest when she scored at the top of her class, her father said. On the day of the crash, he said, she left extra early for an accelerated class, then worked out in the afternoon. That evening, she pole vaulted at a track meet in Faribault.

After the meet, Cortney headed home alone from Lakeville South High School, where she was a straight-A student. Authorities surmise that at 11:30 p.m., just minutes from home, she fell asleep and crossed the oncoming lane. She drove 30 feet off the road and crashed into a tree.

The workers who arrived this spring knew none of that, nor even her last name. Still, the memorial became a topic during their weekly discussions.

There is, Caron said, no agency policy on what to do with memorials. And construction workers in general have no such policy, either, said Mike Weber, an on-site representative for the Metropolitan Council project.

"It's been sensitive for us for years," said Donna Lindberg, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, which has banned memorials on freeways and limits them to six months on state highways, contending they could cause more accidents.

Generally, there are no restrictions on local roads like Dodd Boulevard. Cortney's tribute didn't cause a hazard, but it did pitch the workers into a quandary. When they finally decided to reach out, Mausolf contacted the Eureka Township clerk to learn who put up the memorial. Mausolf had problems then getting through to the parents, so he sought the help of a town official's wife, who agreed to get a message to the Rohrenbachs.

"She made a phone call and got back to me that the people were thankful that we would call and ask," Mausolf said. "I'm sure for these people, it's a great loss, and I felt for me to follow through and respect that was part of the company's responsibility."

Mausolf and the other workers never wanted to pry into what had happened. They simply wanted, he said, to be "a good neighbor" to residents.

On Saturday, it will be a year to the day when Cortney died. In an interview, her father told of an extraordinary teen who, in the prime of life, had made it known that she would donate her organs.

Her heart went to an 18-year-old girl, her liver to a 15-year-old, lungs to a 35-year-old, kidney to a 53-year-old, and corneas to two more people. After she died, friends and relatives threw a benefit dance and silent auction for her family.

Since then, the site where she crashed has become a reminder not only of her, but of how others should drive with care.

Cortney's memorial -- and others throughout the country -- make "people realize how many deaths there are on the roadways," Caron said during a break on the job site.

Along Dodd Boulevard one recent morning, he and Mausolf discussed Cortney's roadside tribute. Up the road, they pointed out, there's a cross planted for another victim's memorial. And just beyond that, another.

Joy Powell • 952-882-9017