of willpower but he could not stop. He said to me “Dad, nobody told me that you could get into this stuff and you couldn’t get out.” He was a slave to alcohol and drugs. Even though he was a big strong kid with a lot of willpower, he became a slave.
By Reggie Whitten as told to Jim Priest
these huge black eyes. He grew up to be a real people person. He always had a smile on his face, it was hard to get him in a bad mood and that’s why everybody loved him.
M
Brandon ended up being homecoming king and a star football player at West Moore High School. He punted, he played offense and he played on the defensive line – he never left the field. He was recruited by many of the top colleges and he played one year at Arkansas before getting homesick and coming back to Oklahoma. He decided to transfer and play football at Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford and they ended up winning the national championship.
Brandon and I thought we had his life all planned out. He wanted to get his college degree, he wanted to go to law school and then he wanted to come back to Oklahoma City and practice law with me. I was going to teach him everything I knew about the law.
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VYPEOK.COM | APRIL 2012
y son Brandon was born with his eyes wide open – they were huge – that’s what I remember – he had
He was going to get married, have kids and live down the street from me. At least that’s what we thought. But it didn’t turn out that way.
The idea that Brandon would get hooked on alcohol and drugs was ridiculous. Brandon was such an athlete he didn’t want to mess with that stuff because he was not a follower. He was not the kind of guy that would cave in to peer pressure. But in college somehow, he became a follower. The guys on his football team told him it would be ok to take prescription medicines and chase it with whiskey. They told him it would help with the aches and pains of football. I found out later they were actually doing it in the weight room to help with the aches and pains from games and practice. These guys were telling him it’s okay to do this, it’s cool to do it, it’s fun to do it and he gave in and he did it.
Brandon tried to quit and he went through several years of ups and downs where he would be clean for awhile, only to be gripped once again by addiction.
Will power wasn’t enough. This kid had a lot
Brandon and I had been avid motorcyclists forever. He was an excellent driver, but not when he was taking valiums. One day in February 2002 he got on his motorcycle and he had a terrible accident that ended his life. He was going 65 miles per hour and he hit a brick mailbox, and it just exploded.
When I got to the hospital, they told me he’d passed away. I got to see him that last time and I held him. I held the back of his head and the back of his head was just crushed in. There’s no way I can describe to you what I was feeling it was just, surreal. There was no way this happened to Brandon. But it did and it all happened because he gave in to peer pressure when someone said, “Take one of these”, and he didn’t know that he couldn’t stop. We want young athletes to know the dangers of alcohol and drugs and how using them can negatively affects their athletic performance and their life. That’s why we created the non profit organization called FATE (Fighting Addiction Through Education) (
www.fate.org) and the program Oklahoma Life of An Athlete (www.okloa. org). We don’t want any young athlete to say what Brandon said: “Nobody ever told me.” That’s why we’re telling his story.
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