David Whitney -- Bee Washington Bureau Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Monday, August 19, 2002

WASHINGTON -- Nearly 3,000 miles from home, Tricia Kent and her twin sister, Jeanette Lehane, walked 26 miles through a hot, muggy night and into the dawn of a steamy Sunday to find peace and acceptance of the suicide a year ago of Kent's only child, 18-year-old son Chris.

The twins were among more than 2,250 who participated in the Out of the Darkness walk, the first of what promoters hope will be an annual event to bring discussion about suicide into the public conversation and raise money for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Kent had heard about the walk when she logged onto a Web site supporting the parents of children who had killed themselves shortly after Chris ran his 1968 Volkswagen Beetle into an oncoming gravel truck near Marysville on Aug. 8, 2001.

"Now that he has pushed me into this personal cause, I knew I had to do the walk," Kent said at the end of her journey Sunday morning, with the hot sun beginning to cast shadows behind the towering Washington Monument.

"I knew it would be closing the first horrible year without Chris," she said stone-faced, as if the pain of his violent death had long ago drained away her reservoir of tears.

Sporting T-shirts emblazoned with "No More Silence" and imprinted with favorite photographs of the handsome young man whose emotional troubles were deeper than anyone could have guessed, the two women, just like everyone else in the somber crowd, said they are haunted by thoughts of whether they could have done or said anything that would have made a difference.

As the weary, sweat-covered walkers headed past the Washington Monument at sunup, many openly sobbed as they fell into the arms of supporters and family members, all of whom were there because they knew someone who had killed themselves, or had tried to do so themselves.

Many carried signs or posters telling the story of a son or daughter, a mother or father, husband or wife who had succumbed to the secret chill of depression and pulled the trigger or swallowed some pills to end it all in one last act of desperation.

More than 29,000 people kill themselves every year, making suicide the 11th-leading cause of death in the United States. The suicide rate is highest among men, especially elderly men. But it is the second-leading cause of death among college students, and the problem grows worse by the day.

According to statistics compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Health Statistics, posted on the foundation's Web site, the suicide rate among young people 15 to 19 grew 14 percent between 1980 and 1996, but by 100 percent or more for children 10 to 14, and for African American men 15 to 19.

Organizers hope that friends and survivors will be the key to reversing the trend.

"You are ending the stigma and changing the attitudes about suicide that have gone on for too long," Robert Gebbia, the foundation's executive director, told the crowd at Sunday's closing ceremonies.

Kent, who works in accounting at a Sacramento law firm, and her schoolteacher sister raised more than $5,000 for the foundation walk. Joe Kent, Tricia's husband and Chris' father, ran support for the two women, who walked with other survivors they had gotten to know through the Web-based Parents of Survivors.

A year after Chris' death, the shattered family struggles to find meaning.

They knew something was troubling Chris, but counselors couldn't put a name or diagnosis to it, and Prozac, which he tried for a while, made him feel "too funny" to use it as part of any ongoing therapy, his mother said.

"It might not have been the drug he needed because they didn't know what he had," she said.

After Chris turned 18, the evidence mounted that his life was spinning out of control. On his birthday, he got a tattoo of an eye shedding a tear, telling his parents that he designed it himself, "because I never thought I would make it to 18."

Just two weeks after graduating from Center High School, Chris moved into a Marysville apartment with two friends and commuted to a job at the Sacramento International Airport. He began drinking heavily, his parents later learned, and his suicide occurred on the day he was supposed to have made a second court appearance on a drunken-driving charge.

His blood-alcohol level tested at .18, suggesting that he might have swerved into the path of the oncoming truck accidentally, were it not for the note he left behind. But his parents said they realize now that he was planning to check out a week earlier when, at a family gathering, he went around telling people individually little incidents involving them that were fond remembrances.

"We thought he looked so well then," Kent said. "But he was lying. He had already decided. He was saying goodbye to everyone."

The Kents said that if there's any good that can come from the heartache they've been through, it will be to help open a public dialogue about suicide so that the depressed and desperate can find a way to confront and tame the demons inside.

"If we start talking about this, maybe it will make other teenagers more comfortable talking about their problems," Kent said.

Among the walkers were Cody Harris, press secretary to Rep. Robert Matsui, D-Sacramento, and Harris' girlfriend, Katherine Orr.

"This is a cause that's incredibly important but that no one ever talks about," Harris said. "If walking 26 miles raises a few eyebrows, it is worth the effort."

More information about suicide and survivor-support services is available on the foundation's Web site at www.afsp.org.

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