Alex Brown was a young, pretty, West Texas teenage girl with a rich life ahead of her. A quick sequence of events led to her lying in a field - dying.

The 17-year-old's death just over a year ago led to a crusade by her parents to encourage students to buckle up and stop texting.

Jeanne and Johnny Mac Brown travel to high schools around Texas to spread the message, and Tuesday they stopped for an assembly at Navasota High School.

Alex Brown was a senior at Seagraves High School, which is about an hour and a half southwest of Lubbock. Brown was ranked second in her class, but her college credits would have moved her to valedictorian by the end of the year and she would have had enough credits to be a sophomore in college the day she graduated high school.

"She was a good kid," Jeanne told the students at Navasota. "She loved people, no matter who they were or what they were. Everybody loved her."

On Nov. 10, 2009, Alex was running late for one of her college classes because she spent too much time on Facebook that morning, Jeanne said. That led to Alex scrambling so she wouldn't be TOO late for class. She took the more dangerous route to school - the route her parents always discouraged her to take.

Alex didn't buckle her seat belt. And then, while simultaneously carrying on text message conversations with four different friends, her pick-up truck spun out of control and crashed. Alex was thrown from her vehicle into a field. She just laid there, fading into consciousness and back out again, quickly leaving this world.

The state trooper who investigated that accident said that Alex was driving 70 miles per hour before she spun.

The Brown family followed Alex to an emergency room in Lubbock, where Alex died shortly thereafter.

The cell phone was still in the truck - and it still worked. Friends who had heard about the wreck continued to send messages to the phone. Those messages said to hang in there, and that they would come visit her in the hospital. Jeanne held Alex's phone up during Tuesday's assembly for the students to see.

"This phone is replaceable, but we'll never have Alex again," Jeanne said.

Navasota students have lost approximately 8 classmates in the past few years, including Jessica Mattern.

On June 17, 2009, 16-year-old Jessica Mattern died in a rollover accident that stemmed from students looking for a cell phone in a SUV while traveling on FM 3090. Mattern's 4-year-old sister died from the accident as well.

Johnny Mac Brown on Tuesday told the students at Navasota High School that he overheard kids at his own daughter's funeral say, "Well, it was her time" or "it was her destiny."

"It was NOT her destiny," Johnny Mac said emphatically. "The road to your destiny is the choices you make in life. Her destiny was cut short."

Johnny said that a week before his daughter's accident she was texting before she even left the driveway. He asked her to stop texting, but Alex batted her eyes and told him she wouldn't text while driving.

"When I learned to drive, we didn't have cell phones," Johnny said. "But y'all grew up with this technology and you're used to it. But even really good drivers can't text and drive."

Johnny told of how two NASCAR drivers went through an obstacle course while trying to text, and that both of the drivers swerved all over the place.

"Is it THAT important that you send or receive a message that says "SUP?" Johnny said. "Next time think about the consequences. Think about what the parents go through. They are the ones who go into a room, hold their kid's hands and watch them die. All over a text message.

"That's not something I read or saw on the Discovery Channel. That's something from a page in my life."

Alex's little sister, 11-year-old Katrina, had a video message for the students.

"You are all role models whether you know it or not," Katrina said. "Whether you're the geekiest kid in school or the most popular, we look up to you."

When told of her sister being in a wreck, Katrina said she "felt like a million people punched me in the stomach."

Jeanne and Johnny Mac gave statistics, like how people are 23 times more likely to crash when they are texting while driving. Or how that an average response time for returning a text message is 6 seconds - the time it would take to drive approximately 100 yards, or one football field, at 55 mph.

The Browns pull a small trailer when they travel. The trailer has what's left of Alex's truck - still mangled and twisted and glass everywhere.

"We go from town to town pulling her truck, and we see people going by us, just staring. And in between looking at the truck, they're looking down and sending their own text messages," Jeanne said.

The truck was on display outside the gym at Navasota High School on Tuesday. Navasota students were also able to sign a pledge that they wouldn't text and drive.

"We want you to buckle up and wear your seat belts too," Jeanne said. "Some of you are getting older and think that seat belts don't look cool. I'll tell you that you look a lot cooler with a seat belt than in a coffin. Do you ever think of what clothes you want to be buried in? Or what your coffin will look like? Or what it's going to say on your headstone?

Students who signed the pledge were given a sticker for the car windshield and a thumb ring.

The idea of this program first came up at a Navasota ISD Board of Trustees meeting last summer when Trustee Don Lemon brought it on the agenda as the BUST Program (Buckle Up & Stop Texting).

Lemon recalls a day not too long ago when he was en route to Anderson from Iola. An oncoming vehicle was in Lemon's lane, forcing him off the road.

"I can't swear he was texting while he was driving, but I saw both of his thumbs above the steering wheel like this as he was completely in my lane," said Lemon, who was at Tuesday's assemble as was Trustee Marilyn Bettes. "I thought about the two girls who were killed on CR 3090 a year ago. We know a phone was involved in that accident."

Lemon later found out about the Buckle Up and Stop Texting (BUST) program that began in Seagraves after Alex's death.

"I like this program because it's in a small town like ours," Lemon said.

The program, Lemon said, would be similar to the Shattered Dreams program that tries to deter kids from drinking and driving. Like Shattered Dreams, the BUST program would have kids signing contracts promising to not text while driving.

And it wouldn't be just for kids of driving ages.

"Kids in junior high these days have cell phones and they're already texting," Lemon said. "It's never too early to get them to start thinking about how dangerous it is."

The program didn't cost anything to the school district, but a monetary donation was made to the Remember Alex Brown Foundation by the NHS Student Council.