Saturday night when things were at their darkest, I sat there with my eyes closed and thought about every wasted night, every wasted minute I had spent worrying about things that didn’t matter. Stress at work, drama with friends or a youth sport, you name it, I thought, what a waste. When you finally face a real “challenge” you realize how much time we spend worrying about insignificant things.
~Terry Norton, CaringBridge, October 18, 2010
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2010, was a beautiful fall day. The rising sun felt warm on my back as I scrambled to get our cooler and everything packed in the SUV. Deb and I left our hometown of Bondurant, picked up Alex in Ames, and made our promised stop at McDonald’s for breakfast. The rich colors of the leaves on the trees bordering the highway, and the anticipation of a Saturday college football game, made our drive one of the fastest and most enjoyable we’d ever made to Luther College.
Deb, Alex, and I spent the ride reminiscing about family trips and dreaming of what our future would look like in retirement. My wife and I agreed we’d like to spend the winters somewhere warm, with visions of the kids coming to visit. Alex said she’d definitely become a frequent guest if we moved to a warmer part of the country. All three of us were riding high on life, feeling the kind of joy that, if it were possible to bottle and sell, my retirement plans would have included a Caribbean island.
We got to Decorah and drove to the spot where we normally tailgated with other players’ families. We set up our table and chairs, and I tossed brats, hamburgers, and hot dogs onto the grill while Deb opened containers of side dishes she’d made the day before, placing them on the table as we chatted with our new friends. The aroma of sizzling meat, the cool but not cold breeze, and the sea of Luther’s royal blue and white colors added to the ambiance.
We appreciated the friendly atmosphere at Luther’s tailgate. Most of our adult life was spent socializing with parents of our kids’ teammates. The camaraderie helped make youth sports fun; thus, our kids’ sports teams dictated a lot of our social life. As loyal fans and Chris’s parents, (and myself an admitted extrovert), we hoped to duplicate that fellowship at college.
Our fears evaporated as quickly as the smoke rising from the grill. We had already met and bonded with Pat Vickers and his wife, Buzzy. Their son Rich was Chris’s freshman roommate and one of his best friends, and we really enjoyed their company. With each game, we got to know more parents and soon realized everyone was really friendly. That was the culture at Luther. They totally embraced the freshmen, and parents were accepted the same way. The players and their parents made us feel like we’d been there for four years.
My mom, aunt, and uncle showed up, and they joined us at the tailgate. I introduced them around while they piled their plates with food. When the game started, we left the grill and everything set up, as was customary, and made our way inside the stadium. At halftime, after a slow start to the game, we came back out to the tailgate and snacked, drank, and rehashed the first half with friends before going back in for the remainder of the game. We sat around centerfield, probably about fifteen or twenty rows up.
In the third quarter, after slashing Central’s lead, Luther kicked off from the south end zone to the north end zone. Chris had the sideline coverage right on our side of the field, and the ball got kicked to a guy on his side. Chris could go through the whole game and might never get the ball kicked to his side of the field. My pulse quickened. He was going to have a shot at the play.
As Chris cut his opponent off on the outside, the kid turned back to the middle. Chris pivoted and made the tackle at his legs, causing the ball carrier to flip over. I saw the collision and heard the familiar smack of helmets and exhalation of grunts. Multiple players lay piled on top of each other, their legs and arms entwined. The ball carrier extracted himself from the pile and limped around holding his thigh. I looked back to where other players were pulling each other from the heap. Someone was still down. One of the Luther players raced over to the bench signaling the problem, and the trainers ran onto the field.
“As the play was nearing completion, I turned to talk with our QB [Chris Reynolds] about our thoughts for the next offensive series. Suddenly, Chris said, ‘Norty [Chris Norton] is down.’ Reynolds quickly repeated it and added, ‘It doesn’t look good!’”
~ Mike Durnin, Former Head Football Coach at Luther College
Parents have a sixth sense about their kids, and right away I felt in my bones the downed player was Chris. I’d spent years looking for him from the stands—I knew his build and every nuance of his stance, his walk, and his run. So even though I didn’t see number sixteen, Chris’s number, I knew from instinct that he wasn’t standing around the field with the other players. My heart lodged in my throat as the breath jammed in my lungs. Chris was down.
In all of Chris’s years playing sports, his nose had been broken playing basketball, and his ribs were broken and his shoulder partially torn playing football, but Deb and I had never gone onto the field to check on him. Chris wasn’t very big or imposing; he was just super tough. And when he got hurt, he never wanted any attention. If Chris ever stayed down, I knew he was really hurt.
After I’d scoured every jersey on the field and sidelines looking for number sixteen, realization hit like a thunderbolt. He’d been down a long time. I looked at Deb, and the color drained from her face. I had to be strong for her. I squeezed her hand. “He’s going to be okay.”
She nodded, but her eyes exposed her fear. We were both desperate to smother the ugly truth that every parent fears—some kids get seriously hurt playing the game they love. He’s tough, he’s strong, he’s a fighter, I reminded myself and then called on God. Oh, please let him be okay; please let him just have the wind knocked out of him. Please God.
“Should we go down there?” Deb sat at the edge of her seat. “Do you think he’s all right?”
He’d been down too long. I swallowed my fear, and we made our way down to the bottom of the bleachers. We stopped at the railing as everyone gathered around him. One trainer had knelt onto his hands and knees, and leaning close to Chris’s face, was talking to him. We hadn’t seen Chris move. My heart and stomach dueled with hope and nausea as we walked through the gate and headed onto the field. All the players on both teams had taken a knee.
Deb and I inched forward, our gazes locked to the prone body of our son. Usually, when somebody was hurt, they rolled around a bit or slapped the ground in pain. Chris was immobile; he didn’t move at all. It would have calmed my rapid-fire pulse if he were slapping the ground with a bad knee injury, or a broken ankle, or whatever. Warning bells sounded in my head. Chris hadn’t moved since the moment we first saw him on the ground.
“I remember Chris’s parents coming down out of the stands and asking Chris if he would move his feet or hands. The look they had as their child was being worked on will always stick in my head. I had become a father eight months earlier that year and I couldn’t imagine what I would be like if that was my daughter being worked on.”
~ Chris Kamm, ATC, CSCS, Former Head Certified Athletic Trainer, Luther College
Coach McMartin from Central jogged across the field, and he and Coach Benny Boyd, Luther’s defensive backs coach, the man most responsible for Chris attending Luther, and Luther’s Head Coach Mike Durnin, tried their best to comfort Deb and me. They seemed confident and very supportive, but we could tell Chris had suffered a serious injury. They didn’t offer any of those, “Hey, he’s going to be okay; he’s going to be all right,” pep talks. They were guarded with their remarks, like they didn’t want to offer false hope. They knew it was serious.
While we still didn’t have any details about what was going on, I let go of Deb’s vice grip and stuck my head between the trainers. I was Chris’s biggest fan, his oldest coach, and his long-ago hero. Despite my mind-numbing fear, it was time to live up to that billing. “You’re doing good, son. Your mom and I are right here.”
The professionals worked on him, touching different parts of his body. The whole scene just seemed surreal. As they brought the stretcher over from the ambulance, I knelt close to Chris’s head. “You’re going to be okay,” I uttered in my most reassuring voice, the same voice I’d used on him as his coach growing up. “You’re going to be all right.”
It seemed like everything went in slow motion. They couldn’t get his helmet off, so they had to use special equipment. They literally cut the face mask off and then peeled the helmet off piece by piece. The paramedics worked together with the trainers to move him safely onto the ambulance stretcher. They did everything slowly with the utmost care and precision.
The part I remember most, the part that burned like a knife in my gut, was that as they stabilized him, he didn’t move at all. Not one part of his body had moved.