Kaitlyn Duffy was only 4 years old when the New England Patriots won their first Super Bowl. Her family lived in Boston at the time but moved to Virginia shortly after the championship for her father’s new job.
Kaitlyn’s love of football and quarterback Tom Brady followed her to Chesapeake, where she regularly wore her #12 Brady jersey to school.
The Patriots won the Super Bowl again in 2004, 2005, 2015 and 2017, with Brady at the helm, giving Kaitlyn numerous times to tease the boys at school who gave her a hard time for her fandom.
New England would win again in 2019, but this time, the Patriots had one less fan cheering them on.
A drunk and drugged driver killed Kaitlyn on May 19, 2017, and severely injured her friend, Sabrina, who was a passenger in her car.
A varsity cheerleader and swimmer, Kaitlyn spent her final minutes alive doing backflips on the beaches of Sandbridge and having fun with friends on a senior skip day from Great Bridge High School.
Take a minute, make a plan
Kaitlyn’s mom, Tammy, through Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the NFL and other partners, is speaking up and asking anyone who plans to drink this Super Bowl Sunday to plan in advance for a safe ride home.
“The Super Bowl is the biggest party in America,” Tammy said. “In this day and age, it’s not like you have to call a taxi.”
Tammy said with Uber and other rideshare services there are often codes for a free or discounted ride home.
“Take a minute, make a plan,” she said. “That way when you’re intoxicated, you’ll already have that plan in place.
“It’s just not responsible to not plan ahead.”
There were 37 alcohol-fueled crashes in Virginia on Super Bowl Sunday last year, resulting in 11 injuries and one fatality, according to the Virginia State Police. Nationwide, impaired driving fatalities have risen 33 percent since 2019.
The “Take A Minute, Make A Plan” campaign aims to reach everyone that plans to drink during the Super Bowl with the message that taking one minute to plan a safe ride home could save countless lives.
If the drugged driver who killed Kaitlyn had made better decisions on that fateful day, her daughter would likely be with her, taking in the big game this weekend, even if the Patriots aren’t in it.
Tammy has fond Super Bowl memories with her family, including her daughter and son, Ryan. The Patriots were in Super Bowl after Super Bowl, and their home was often the place that parents and kids gathered to take in the big game.
Tammy told AFP that a typical Super Bowl Sunday had her in the kitchen cooking “for hours on end.”
She admits that her Super Bowl parties usually included alcohol for adults, but her guests always had a designated driver or spent the night at the family home.
Today, Super Bowl parties aren’t quite the same without Kaitlyn.
“She really would have made an impact in this world.”
The ‘girl ‘with a big, beautiful smile’
Kaitlyn’s prom dress had been altered and was hanging in the front hall on the day she died. It had just come back from the seamstress, and she never got to try it on, much less wear it.
She was buried in her cap and gown, her mom said, since she’d never get to walk across the stage to receive her diploma.
Kaitlyn had been accepted to Virginia Tech to major in pre-med biology. She chose Tech because she was impressed that students there volunteered, and the university’s motto was Ut Prosim (That I May Serve).
Kaitlyn was a voracious reader since she was 15 months old. She would sit in her Winnie the Pooh chair reading book after book, her mom said. She began reading the “Harry Potter” book series in the first grade.
She was very athletic and dabbled in a variety of sports over the years: soccer, step dancing, gymnastics, softball, basketball, swimming and eventually cheerleading.
On the day she was killed, Kaitlyn and her mom discussed completing paperwork to earn her Girl Scout Gold Award. She had spent more than 100 service hours educating teens and young girls on the dangers of tanning and the potential link to melanoma cancer.
The stories that poured in after Kaitlyn’s death made her mother even more proud of her gifted and kind daughter. One student, struggling with their sexuality, was being bullied in high school. Kids were throwing food at him and calling him vulgar names, he told her. But Kaitlyn, she sat down with him at the lunch table and told the bullies she’d beat them up if they didn’t leave this boy alone. A student with special needs also told Tammy that Kaitlyn watched over her and protected her during school.
“She was known as the girl with a big, beautiful smile,” her mom said. “In her 18 years of living, she lived more life than a lot of us, even myself.”
Two promises: Get justice and advocate for prevention
After Kaitlyn died, the dominoes kept falling. Tammy’s marriage of 25 years came to an end, and she struggled in an almost “catatonic state” to get through the days and nights. The criminal case against the drunk driver kept her in courtrooms for more than a year exacerbating the trauma from her daughter’s sudden death. The man who killed Kaitlyn, who was under the influence of drugs and alcohol in broad daylight, was sentenced to 47 years in prison.
Her son, Ryan, now 23, struggled in his own way. He started classes at James Madison University in 2020 during COVID until everything went online, and he became depressed. As if COVID wasn’t hard enough, he didn’t have his big sister around for advice because “she was gone.”
“He came home around Thanksgiving, and he never returned. He left all his belongings there. He never went back.”
Today, he’s in an apprenticeship program and taking classes at night.
“I’ve questioned my faith with God with what happened and why and all that kind of stuff, like any parent who loses a child probably does. I just don’t understand why her life had to end so short.”
Today, through her role as a MADD national ambassador, Tammy speaks at military bases and to community groups about the consequences of driving drunk.
“The day she was killed, I made her two promises. I’m going to get you the justice that you deserve, and the second thing I said was, I’m going to try to do whatever I could to prevent another family from having to go through this terrible thing that now I have been subjected to as a mother.”
In addition to advocating against drunk driving, she also encourages anyone who witnesses someone else driving erratically to report it. A witness said in court that her daughter’s killer had been weaving all over the road for miles, and no one called police.
Mom: Finding joy again wasn’t an easy road
Tammy has also managed to find happiness again something she never thought would be possible after learning of her daughter’s death.
“It’s taken almost eight years for me to finally start feeling it,” Tammy said. “I do have joy in my life now. It takes a long time to finally find joy again. There were some dark days.
“I certainly would love to have her here with me, and it’s painful every single day,” Tammy told AFP.
She’s watched Kaitlyn’s friends go to college and begin their adult lives.
“They’re all getting married, having babies. They’re all moving on in careers, buying houses, and we’ve been denied that. We’ve also been denied walking her down the aisle and shopping for wedding gowns with her.
“It’s not an easy road.”
When she talks on Navy bases throughout Hampton Roads or at drunk-driving conferences, she tries to equate the aftermath of a mom losing her daughter to throwing a rock into a pond.
“I always envision myself standing at a pond, a nice, calm body of water, and I throw a little pebble into that pond. That’s her death. When the little pebble lands, and then when all those rings from that move out further, further and further, that’s the disruption that drunk driving does. And in Kaitlyn’s case, it was impaired driving on both ends with drugs and alcohol.
“It just destroys things like a tsunami of the waves actually goes out … watching my son suffer, watching my husband suffer, her dad, my job being in jeopardy.”
Speaking to a group of service members in the Navy on Friday, she said, she told them to “think of your fellow human beings, and make a good choice.”
“I just always hope that I can reach one person, just one. Of course, the more the merrier. But if I can just reach one of you to make a good decision, then my job is done, and I’ve kept my promise to Kaitlyn.”
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Crystal Graham
