NEW BRUNSWICK, Canada (AP) -- At 10 a.m., Nicholas Hayward calls his grandfather and waits for the pickup truck, lawnmower loaded in the back, to pull into the driveway.

Nicholas' destination is a roadside memorial along the TransCanada Highway in New Brunswick. Once a week, he and his grandfather unload the lawn mower and trim the grassy swath where a bus crash killed four middle school students from Newton, Mass.

It's a short, five-minute ride from the crash site to Nicholas' house.

"It was my idea," Nicholas, 11, told the Boston Sunday Globe. "Mine and Grampy's. I felt sad those kids died."

It was a simple enough reason why Nicholas decided to begin attending to the overgrown memorial to the four Newton students: "because no one else was doing it," he said.

"People stop to go there and look at it, and the grass was up to here," he said, and pointed to his knee.

Nicholas began tending the plot nearly two months after the April 27 accident that killed Stephen Glidden, 12, Kayla Rosenberg, 13, Gregory Chan, 13, and Melissa Leung, 14.

The four children were among 42 students from Oak Hill Middle School who were on their way to Nova Scotia for a music festival when the bus veered off the exit ramp and flipped on its side at an intersection in Sussex, N.B.

On the day of the accident, Nicholas was getting ready for school when the news crackled over the radio, and drove by the crash on his way to school.

As he absorbed the news that four children about his age had died, he realized that such an accident could have just as easily happened to him.

He was driving past the crash site later with his grandfather when he looked out and saw that the grass had nearly covered the makeshift memorial of teddy bears, crosses and a Star of David that marked the spot.

He told his grandfather that he wanted to cut the grass, and he hasn't missed a week since.

After he began mowing the site, he discovered in nearby high grass another memorial: four piles of slate rocks piled up, one atop the other, marking each lost child.

Just down the road, yet another memorial is taking shape -- this one a large rose-coloured piece of granite with an eternal flame and engraved with the names of the children and four doves. The people of Sussex will ship the memorial to Newton in the next few months.

Word of Nicholas' attention to the roadside memorial has spread. A recent article about his actions attracted praise from Sussex officials.

"I guess that kind of sensitivity comes natural to some people," said Sussex town manager Mike Cummings.

Nicholas shrugs off the attention he's getting, saying he "doesn't care for it."

What's stuck with him, however, are the letters and gifts he's received from the victim's families and other touched by the crash.

In a letter from Gregory Chan's family, Nicholas discovered he and Gregory had much in common -- their taste in music, and a huge collection of Beanie Babies.

"I have 225 Beanie Babies," Nicholas said. "Greg had 250."

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Mario G. Lafreniere aka Fergie.

http://www.onlink.net/~mgl

jnsigns@onlink.net
Chapleau, Ontario home of "The World's Largest Game Preserve"
Spring is upon us,in Shania Twain Country. Farewell snow,here comes the mosquito!

"I cut it twice and it's still too short!"

I know that spot very well.

As I drove Tractor/Trailer up and down that hill too many times.
It is a bad curve and in the winter it's worst then ever. (A full 90 degrees at the bottom of this mountain (Left or Right))

Even big rigs only travel at around 40-50 Kms to the bottom.

I am proud of this young man and his grandfather as people from the East Coast of Canada!

I have seen my far share of deaths on the road and none of it will ever leave your minds memory.

But it's nice to know that your life/death is still a memory in other's minds