Special Report: Saving Bobby

BY BRYN NELSON | STAFF WRITER

February 26, 2006

Bobby Palange, age 3, who was accidentally run over by his father's car in their driveway one year ago. (Newsday / Ken Sawchuk / February 20, 2006)

Everything falls apart on a Monday. Presidents Day.

Kim Polly-Palange has just finished a month of jury duty and allows herself a rare day off before returning to her secretarial job in the radiology department at St. Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson. The 35-year-old mother of five will visit the dentist with her three oldest children, while 2 1/2-year-old Bobby and his younger brother Jacob -- one week past his first birthday -- will go along for the ride.

An overnight snowstorm has complicated her plans, however. At 8 a.m., the snowflakes floating by her cream-colored ranch in North Bellport give way to freezing rain.

Robert Palange, Kim's 30-year-old husband, heads outside soon afterward and begins to shovel away the four inches of wet snow blanketing the driveway. The Palanges have regrouped after a rough spell in their relationship, and they now agree on a plan: He will free the family's Dodge Durango first and back it out of the driveway so his wife can do the same with her Ford Windstar.

In a quieter moment of the day, Bobby might be coaxed to sit through a reading of his favorite book, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear," or to nap with his favorite stuffed animal, a floppy-eared dog named Snoopy.

This is not one of those moments.

A boy in perpetual motion, he is seemingly always running. Or jumping or throwing a ball in that uncanny pitcher's motion, whether at home or at the Tutor Time day care center he has attended since he was eight weeks old.

Bobby adores his father and follows him everywhere, even carting around a play set of tools when Robert works on the car. It's only natural that the toddler should head into the driveway after him, bundled up in a coat, gloves and knit cap and towing his own little shovel.

But there are plenty of distractions, to his mother's exasperation.

"He'd come in, and I'd feed him breakfast, he'd want to go back out again," Kim recalls. "He'd come in, and as soon as I started to take off his jacket, he'd want to go back out again."

Bobby runs out and Kim closes the outer glass door, which has fogged up like a bathroom mirror. Then he's back, nose dripping, gloves missing, waiting to be let in.

"Oh, my hands are cold."

"OK, well why don't you stay in?" Kim asks.

"No I want to go outside."

So his mother tries to lure him in for good -- or at least until everyone else is ready for the trip to the dentist.

"Do me a favor. Go get your gloves. Where are your gloves?"

"By daddy."

"OK. Go get your gloves and bring them to me."

It will take Kim about a week to figure out what happens after Bobby bounds from the front door, past the white porch columns with their gingerbread brackets and down the walk to the driveway.

He doesn't find his gloves or his dad behind the 2001 Durango, where a path has now been cleared to the street. But surely his dad will be there soon and help Bobby look.