Five years and two days later, Glenn Clark's essence pervades. He's at the middle school where he used to teach, memorialized by a Bradford pear tree planted with the help of the red-headed, blue-eyed son born four months after the accident. He's at the wrestling room on a plaque and inside the gym in the form of a wrestling tournament bearing his name. He's in the high school and beyond, commemorated by an annual scholarship and ex-wrestlers who grind through college, the way their old coach schooled them.

"I was sitting in my house, in the same place he was sitting the last time he was here" hours before the accident, assistant coach and successor Tom Dorsch recalled recently. "I said, 'Glenn, you really got to give me a sign that everything's OK.' Just then a big thunderstorm blew in, and as soon as it was over, a rainbow appeared.

"I looked up and said, 'Are you sure?'

"A second later, a second rainbow appeared."

As a teacher, as a wrestling coach, Clark brought color and light to Mars schools and Planets wrestling, which he and Dorsch launched in 1996 at the middle school. He never got to see it to the finish. Or did he?

Dorsch, multitasking while talking to a reporter, scrolled through his home computer and stumbled across a file from his church containing clip art of ... a rainbow. "Tell me that's not weird," he said.

Glenn and Annette Clark stopped by the Dorsches for a quick Saturday visit on June 15, 2002, the husband climbing behind the wheel and bellowing that he just might drop by later. Returning along rainy Neupert Road from a Butler County auction, the Clarks' pickup was smacked head-on by a truck driven by Jennifer Langston of Cabot, who was admittedly speeding, driving after consuming alcohol and talking on a cell phone. Glenn, 38, died an hour later. Annette, then 34, went into a coma from where she gave birth that November to Michael Anthony Clark. Young Mac is being raised by Annette's sister and brother-in-law. She remains in a Mars nursing home, where Dorsch visited a fortnight ago.

"In a way, when their child was born, it was a gift," said Terry Onufer, father of two of Clark's wrestlers.

Five years and two days ago, Clark certainly held the world in a headlock.

He was busily building a Mars program, commuting at first from his old job at Penn Hills High. He was wed to an understanding woman who teased her mat-devoted husband and staff each fall, "See you at the end of March." Glenn and Annette were anticipating the arrival of their firstborn, who already had a cousin: her sister's child, born nine days before Clark's death. Now the two kids live together.

The committed wrestling coach never got to see Justin Scarfo the next February win the first WPIAL title in Mars history, at 152 pounds. He never got to hear Scarfo say afterward, "I can't step onto the mat without thinking about what he's meant to this program." Or did he?

"We went on a canoe trip, and we always thought of him," Dorsch said. "We'd do something goofy, and say 'Glenn's looking down on us.' We try to keep the memory alive."

Trees and tournaments and plaques and scholarships are nice. Yet here's a Father's Day wish for a man who raised so many other parents' boys, but not his own: a measure of roadway peace in Pennsylvania. Not that it was the sole reason for an accident that generated publicity for its initial shaming sentence requiring, for one, the other driver to carry Clark's photo in her wallet. Removing cell phones from all drivers' hands, though, seems like a proper starting position.

For months after the accident, Onufer worked with Sen. Jane Orie, R-McCandless, to push for legislation forcing motorists to use hands-free devices. Onufer added, "I still think something should be done. It's not like we're talking about outlawing cell phones. It's just to keep both hands on the wheel."

Cell usage while driving is banned in countries from Australia to Japan, to the United Kingdom to Zimbabwe. It is banned in New York, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey, where legislators aim next to stop texters. It is coming in 2008 to California, where a survey found phones were the leading cause of inattention-related accidents. It is considered similar to driving while impaired and the root of 2,600 deaths and 300,000-plus U.S. injuries each year. But, in Pennsylvania, three such bills went nowhere.

"Not only as a person he warrants being remembered for how he touched kids, but how we lost him, too," Onufer said. "It's a McDonald's/instant-gratification world, but it's a story that bears remembering."

That should be the pot of gold at the end of Mars' rainbows: a Clark Cell Law. Keep their name and memory alive, along with scores of drivers, children, mothers, fathers.