The Ohio Department of Transportation has erected signs on a stretch of Interstate 71 South in Warren County to indicate that a group has adopted that portion of road in memory of Leelah Alcorn, the transgender teenager who died of suicide there nearly a year ago.
Ohio, United States (24 November 2015) – Leelah Alcorn’s name now stands over the interchange of Interstate 71 South and Ohio Route 48 where the 17-year-old from Kings Mills ran out in front of a truck early in the morning of Dec. 28.
The State Highway Patrol says 17-year-old Leelah Alcorn left a handwritten note on her bed – “I’ve had enough” – and did an online search about runaway assistance and a Tumblr search for the word suicide before walking into the path of a tractor-trailer on Interstate 71 in suburban Cincinnati in late December.
Hours later, a note Alcorn wrote went live on the social media site Tumblr expressing anguish that her parents had put her into “Christian therapy” for gender identity issues. She wrote she wanted her death to mean something so that someone would “fix society.”
“Please don’t be sad, it’s for the better. The life I would’ve lived isn’t worth living in … because I’m transgender,” the note said. “I could go into detail explaining why I feel that way, but this note is probably going to be lengthy enough as it is. To put it simply, I feel like a girl trapped in a boy’s body, and I’ve felt that way ever since I was 4. I never knew there was a word for that feeling, nor was it possible for a boy to become a girl, so I never told anyone and I just continued to do traditionally ‘boyish’ things to try to fit in.”
In Leelah’s note, she explains that when she was 14, she first understood what transgender meant and “cried of happiness.”
“After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn’t make mistakes, that I am wrong. If you are reading this, parents, please don’t tell this to your kids,” the note says. “Even if you are Christian or are against transgender people don’t ever say that to someone, especially your kid. That won’t do anything but make them hate them self. That’s exactly what it did to me.”
“The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren’t treated the way I was, they’re treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights. Gender needs to be taught about in schools, the earlier the better. My death needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. … Fix society. Please.”
Leelah’s death prompted vigils, social media discussions, and online petitions supporting transgender people.
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Chris Fortin, 33, is a 2001 graduate of Kings High School and a graduate of the University of Cincinnati. He led the Adopt-A-Highway effort in Alcorn’s memory. For months after Alcorn’s death, he says he drove that portion of the interstate and watched a small homemade memorial sign for Alcorn go up and disintegrate through the winter.
“I took that entrance to 71 South all the time,” Fortin said. “After that first happened, someone put up one of those rickety garage-sale signs, and as I would drive by, I would see that the sign was halfway off, then 75 percent off, then it was off the frame, then the frame was gone. And I thought, ‘OK, we’re forgetting what happened.’ ”
“If she hadn’t written in her note, ‘I want my death to mean something,’ I wouldn’t have felt as strongly,” said Fortin. “I just felt like something needed to be permanent and from ODOT.”
Though he now lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he filed the paperwork in August with ODOT for the Adopt-A-Highway program. Fortin said he hopes to schedule the first cleanup for the area in January. “I have more people than I can count who are willing to help,” he said.
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