Mr. Wheeler listens to victim statements during his sentencing hearing.

A Glen St. Mary man was sentenced to 15 years in prison this week for his part in a drunk driving accident on U.S. 90 that killed two Sanderson men more than two years ago.

Christopher Wayne Wheeler, 37, was at the wheel of a 1994 Jeep Cherokee that ran the stop sign at the Smokey Road intersection and collided with the Ford Explorer driven by Ardris D. Paige, 43, a part-time basketball coach on his way home from practice at the Baker High the evening of November 16.

Mr. Paige and passenger Christopher V. Jefferson, 20, a former Wildcat athlete who played in a scrimmage game that night, were ejected in the crash and died. Two players on the basketball team, Delano Lee Paige, 19, and Marquis Paige, 17, were injured.

Members of victims’ family expressed their grief during a tear-filled sentencing the morning of March 19. Many members of both the victims’ and defendant’s families were present and comforted one another after the hearing before Circuit Judge Mark M. Moseley.

“If you were in his [Christopher Jefferson] presence, you were easily smiling,” said the victim’s cousin and friend Marcell Thomas.

Rick Bender, mouth cancer survivor.

This week students at the middle and high schools are getting a closeup look at the effects of smoking and chewing tobacco as part of a national campaign that culminates with the 18th annual Kick Butts Day on March 20.

Nationally known anti-tobacco speaker Rick Bender — a survivor of mouth cancer he attributes to using chewing tobacco as a teenager — shared his story with groups of middle schoolers on March 18 and high schoolers the following day.

Mr. Bender, who started using “spit tobacco” at age 12, opened one session at the middle school on Monday by asking the students if they’ve ever tried the product.

Only a few hands went up. But when he asked if they knew anyone who used dip regularly, nearly all the students raised their hands.

Mr. Bender of Sarasota, FL grew up in California and played baseball in high school, which was part of the reason he started using a couple of cans of dip per week. He said his aversion to cigarettes and peer pressure also contributed to his habit, which increased to one can every other day by the end of high school.

By 1988, Mr. Bender, then in his mid-20s, was up to a can a day. That’s also about the time he noticed a little sore on the side of his tongue, which was nothing new. Similar sores, appearing as white bumps or rough patches of white tissue in his mouth, had been coming and going for years.

But this time the sore didn’t go away, and instead grew rapidly to the size of dime on his tongue.

“You want to talk about hurt, this thing hurt. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t eat. It was rubbing across my teeth,” Mr. Bender said.

He consulted a family physician who couldn’t diagnose the sore. He was directed to another doctor, who biopsied the growth that proved to be cancer — an undifferiented squamous cell carcinoma to be exact.