Smiths Station teens encourage each other with signs of affirmation after 2 student suicides
“You matter.”
“You are worthy of love.”
“Your mistakes do not define you.”
“Don’t give up.”
Whether you are one of the 5,000 residents of Smiths Station or a visitor to this east Alabama town in Lee County, you probably have seen one of the 100 roadside signs spreading those affirmations during the Christmas season.
A group of teens, along with Smiths Station Mayor Bubba Copeland, organized the “#SSnotOneMore” suicide prevention campaign after two Smiths Station High School killed themselves this year, one in February, the other in May.
One of the suicide victims was the best friend of Taylor Verbowski, a 2019 Smiths Station graduate.
“So it kind of hit close to home,” she said.
Verbowski helped conduct a movie night while interning in the mayor’s office this spring. Several teens approached her and the mayor, “telling us that we’ve got to do something, something’s got to happen, we want to help do something,” she said. “So we just kind of let them talk to us about it, and we just kind of went to work.”
Copeland met with about 10 teens at the school, and they created the campaign.
“The kids were really hurting, so we did a lot of prayer and a lot of thought, talking,” the mayor said. “We decided we were going to do our best to not have one more suicide in Smiths Station.”
Copeland emphasized this campaign is led by the teens.
“I wanted it to come from the bottom up,” the mayor said. “… It had to be something they wanted to do.”
Taylor Hasty, 17, a Smiths Station senior, said, “I really wanted to do something because I know a lot of people at our school that struggled with it. We had to have a lot of peer counseling and just a lot of people to talk to at school during the hard time.”
Those signs first appeared around town as the school year started in August. The group put them up in the middle of the night and created quite a buzz.
“The first morning they were up, it was really neat, because nobody knew who done it,” Copeland said. “Everybody wanted to know who done it.”
The #SSnotOneMore campaign has Facebook and Instagram pages.
“The first time we posted the picture, we had 3,000 likes on it and probably 200 comments,” Copeland said.
One survivor of the March 3 tornado wrote in a social media post, Copeland said, “Thank you so much for putting these out. You don’t realize how these signs have saved me.”
Some local businesses added the affirmations from the signs to their marquees.
“It was crazy to see how many adults felt that same way kids did,” said Verbowski, 18, now a freshman at Chattahoochee Valley Community College. “… Sometimes, even if you’re not that depressed or have suicidal thoughts, everyone has bad days. So just driving down the road and seeing a sign of affirmation, that helps people a lot.”
Copeland’s 18-year-old son, Carter, heard his father talking about the campaign. Carter, a senior at Glenwood, figured students and staff at his school also could benefit from the messages.
“We haven’t lost any lives, thank the Lord, but I said, ‘I think there’s people at my school that might struggle with that too,’” Carter said.
So he and a friend secretly put up some of the signs around the outside of the school and sticky notes with the same affirmations inside the school. He realized the impact was significant when he saw teachers put the sticky notes on their attendance rosters, schedules and clipboards.
“Being a teenager and knowing that your teachers and people that you look up to are being inspired by you is remarkable,” he said. “… Not only did it make me happy and gave me a sense of fulfillment, but it let me know that you’re not alone. You’ve got other people there that are suffering. You’ve got other people that are dealing with these same issues. It brings a whole different perspective.”
The signs stayed up for about a week in August. They reappeared during final exams this fall, then again during Christmas break.
“It was designed for the stressful times of the year,” Copeland said. “… When people see us put them out now, they’re honking the horn and waving and clapping.”
Copeland declined to disclose the cost or source of funding for the signs, but he said donations to the campaign can be made at city hall.
Many of the group’s students will graduate next spring, so Copeland has asked them to bring a younger friend to their next meeting to ensure the effort continues.
“It’s a movement now,” the mayor said. “. . . It can’t end. There’s still people hurting.”
From 2000–2016, the age-adjusted suicide rate in the United States increased 30%, from 10.4 to 13.5 per 100,000 population, according to a June 2018 report from the National Center for Health Statistics. Suicide was the 10th-leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2016. It was the second-leading cause of death among people ages 10 to 34 and the fourth-leading cause among people ages 35 to 54.
The phone number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, available 24/7, is 1-800-273-8255.
