WWW arkcity.net

By FOSS FARRAR
Traveler Staff Writer

Last Thursday, Jo Carolyn Chambers was distributing flyers about a grief workshop aimed at Arkansas City families who recently had lost loved ones when she learned that her daughter Jenna had been critically injured in a traffic accident.

"You just never know when life's unexpected things are going to happen," Chambers said today.

Chambers and her husband Steve, the pastor of Central Christian Church, have helped other families in the church deal with three deaths resulting from a traffic accident last month.

Now they are being supported by the Arkansas City community and others from throughout the country in their grief over their daughter's death.

Jenna Carroll Chambers, 17, died Sunday at Via Christi Medical Center -- St. Francis Campus, in Wichita. She had been injured Thursday in a one-car accident. The car she was driving overturned in a ditch, and she was thrown from the vehicle.

Jenna's parents were at the hospital in Wichita on Sunday morning when they heard the news that doctors couldn't save their daughter, Jenna Carroll.

"Our church has suffered so much, and this tragedy shows the power of the community's support," Jo Carolyn Chambers said. "After we learned that (medical workers) couldn't control the brain swelling, we called the church people."

By the time Central Christian services started on Sunday, the congregation was aware that Jenna wasn't likely to survive, she said.

It was more bad news for church members, who were still grieving the deaths of three others killed in a two-car traffic accident on June 25.

Those who died were Colt Beane, 19; Tyler Merz, 20; and Jim Milliron, 76.

"My daughter was so full of joy and so full of life," Chambers said. "She was very active in school, worked both at Arby's and the Sirloin Stockade."

"She loved life, she loved her basketball, she loved people, and first and foremost she loved her God."

Chambers said the outpouring of love for her family from the Central Christian community has been tremendous.

"My sister-in-law brought a sack Sunday night with a paper chain," she said. "Everyone who had been to our church Sunday wrote a note to our family and to our Jenna. We have a paper prayer chain 40 to 50 feet long."

High school students who attend Central Christian also sent out e-mails to friends and relatives throughout the country asking for prayers for Jenna.

These activities and others show that people in Arkansas City support one another, especially in times of sorrow and grief, Chambers said.

"I can't tell you how awesome it is in our community that the people care about each other," she said.

"I know we talk about the things we don't like in our community. but until you've been through something like this you don't realize the support that's out there."

Chambers is a social worker for Harry Hynes Memorial Hospice, which is based in Wichita.

She helped arrange a grief workshop entitled "Seeking Meaning in Tragedy and Loss." It will be held from 3 to 4:30 p.m. and again from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Wright Room of the Brown Center at Cowley County Community College.

The workshop is hosted by the Arkansas City Ministerial Alliance. The presenter will be Tom Welk, director of professional education of the hospice.