A year ago, on a cold night in January, Kathy Allen crashed her Buick Park Avenue into a sign warning drivers to stay off the median and ended up in a ditch in the middle of a highway named for her husband’s late father. She was drunk, hopeless and alone.

It was a night she doesn’t clearly remember, but one she won’t forget. She failed three sobriety tests on the side of the J.R. Allen Expressway. She feared she was going to throw up in the back of a patrol car. She was booked into jail and put in a cell with dozens of other women. Around midnight, she was free on bond.

But was she really free?

For 12 months she carried guilt, shame and embarrassment, knowing she put herself at risk and could have endangered others. Meanwhile, she dealt with alcoholism and other ongoing medical issues.

Last week, in State Court, she pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and failure to maintain a lane. The legal process is coming to an end but she knows the personal side isn’t over.

“I can take the role of feeling violated or I can accept this and go on,” she says. “I chose to go on.”

This story can’t be told without relating it to an event that six years ago rocked the lives of Kathy and Gary Allen. Their son Zach, at the time a Columbus firefighter, was involved in a wreck on Macon Road while he was at the wheel of a city vehicle.

Cocaine was found in his system.

That Gary Allen is a longtime member of Columbus Council and the son of a former Columbus mayor turned the incident into front-page news. There were allegations of a cover-up but a five-month investigation cleared him of any involvement in his son’s case.

Gary dealt with the public fallout as a father and an elected official. Kathy, 55, dealt with the events that followed as a wife and mother in the privacy of their home.

“You don’t mess with someone’s children,” Kathy said. “That threw me into a severe depression “

She also faced other challenges. Since 2002 she had been under the care of doctors trying to identify the origin of her habitual seizures. She was prescribed a regular regimen of drugs as physicians looked for the right balance of medications.

There was also happiness in their lives. Zach got married and slowly evened out his life.

Their other son blessed them with a grandchild.

There was also pain.

But politics, not pain, led Kathy and Gary Allen to invite a reporter into their home last week.

It had been a year since her DUI and around the Government Center the inevitable whispers had begun.

After all, Gary Allen, on the council since 1992, is up for re-election this year.

The case had been meandering through the system and the insinuations were that the council member had been meddling in the case, slowing it down, hoping it would go away.

Gary Allen denies such actions.

Family members know. Friends and neighbors know. They talked about it with their pastor. But Allen says they’ve told few people outside their circle -- including his colleagues on council.

“There were very few people I could talk to without it appearing I was asking someone for a favor,” he says.

They’ve been busy dealing with her health. She has been under the care of a psychiatrist along with her regular doctor. She relied on her faith and her family.

So why talk now?

“I’d rather people know about it in this way rather than in a negative way,” she said.

Jan. 11, 2011, was a Monday. All afternoon she cared for her grandson. She thought she deserved to relax so she started drinking -- how much she isn’t sure. Then she made the horrible decision to drive to the grocery store and to Wal-Mart. With her was Lola, her small but high-spirited white dog.

It was close to 7 p.m. and she was traveling east on the J.R. Expressway. Near Flat Rock Road, she lost control. “I may have turned my head to look at Lola,” she says.

She hit the road sign and came to a stop in a ditch in the median. A witness stopped to help and must have called 911. He later told a police officer he smelled alcohol on her.

In his arrest report, the officer wrote that he tried to question Kathy but “she was incoherent and would not focus on my questions.”

EMS arrived and determined Kathy hadn’t been injured in the accident. After she told him she had not been drinking, the policeman conducted the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus Test, the Walk and Turn Test and the One-Legged Stand Test. His report indicates she wouldn’t listen and that she was unable to stand without support.

Police called her sister and asked her to come get the dog. She called Gary. When he arrived at the scene, they asked him to clean her belongings out of the car before it was towed. It was later declared a total loss.

Gary says no mention was made of who he was. Back home, he called attorney Richard Hagler, who recommended a bail bondsman. Police arrested Kathy and took her to the Medical Center. She voluntarily took a blood alcohol test and was taken to jail, where officers took her driver’s license.

On Jan. 14, 2011, -- without her being present -- her case was bound over to state court.

While the case meandered through the system, the Allens depended on her attorney for guidance. “We concentrated on getting her well,” Gary said.

Hagler says the time that is taken depends on the complexities of the case. He says any delay has been because of him and not the court and that he twice asked for postponements because of conflicts in other courts.

Solicitor Ben Richardson ran down the chronology of the case for a reporter, starting with arraignment on March 18, 2011. It was to be heard by Judge Andy Prather and Richardson said once a judge is given a case it isn’t reassigned. That also pushed the case further down the calendar.

Richardson said Gary Allen played no role in any decision.

Last Friday, Kathy Allen was among a list of guilty pleas in state court. She was fined $1,000 plus $501 in fees and additional costs. She was given one-year probation on the condition of 160 hours of community service. She was given mandated weekly alcohol counseling and was authorized to drive on a limited basis.

Prior to going to court, she attended a private DUI School.

With her husband sitting across from her, she recalled the events of the past year.

She said it has been hard but not as difficult as facing her son’s issues. “This embarrassed me. That broke my heart,” she said.

She knows it isn’t over, that people will talk and that politics can be rough but she’s adamant they’ll come through it. “Our love is stronger than any of this.”