Professor BOB BEDNAR (Chairman, Communications Studies Department, Southwestern University): Most of them die in car accidents.The sites are there to mark the place where the person died and to warn others not to let it happen to them. It started as a Catholic tradition, but it's so diffused now -- it's no longer just a Catholic practice.
The cross is there because it's as universal a symbol as this culture has to mark death spots.
Roadside crosses have a couple of different origin points. Some of them started with Spanish settlement into the Southwest. Particularly in Catholic faith traditions, the cross is meant to signify the place where the soul left the body before it could be consecrated -- sudden deaths that were too quick to have a priest deliver the last rites.It becomes a kind of a portal where people can go and speak to the dead person. They come here and they leave things for the person.
A red WWJD -- What Would Jesus Do -- bracelet as well. This is something where people have come to visit and have left something that is really close to them and their body. It's been on their body, and they put it at the spot where this person died as a way of sharing something very personal.
They can set the terms of the memorial. They can say, "This is what I want to remember about my loved one, and this is how I want to remember it."
