?The life you save may be your own?
Commentary by Adam Tanous
By
Adam Tanous
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Imagine for a moment coming home to the following phone message:
?The worst thing that could have happened has happened. Please call.?
For a parent that can mean only be one thing.
Wood River Valley resident Lynn Bailey received that phone call. He learned that his son, Lynn ?Gordie? Bailey, had died sometime in the early hours of Sept. 17.
The manner in which we die probably has no real bearing on the depth of pain loved ones experience. There are no degrees of loss within a grieving family. The gaping hole in their lives is as jagged and raw as life can be.
But for those outside that immediate circle of loss, how we die matters greatly.
And so there is much to learn from Gordie Bailey?s story.
As a freshman this year at the University of Colorado, Gordie pledged with the Chi Psi fraternity. On Sept. 16 he and 26 fellow pledges went through a pledging ceremony at the house and then?according to reports in the Denver Post?were taken blindfolded to the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest and told to drink a large amount of liquor as part of the tradition of ?pinning.? After 30 minutes the pledges finished approximately two gallons of whiskey and two and a quarter gallons of wine. They were then driven back to the fraternity house. Gordie, who was ?sick and visibly intoxicated,? according to the police, was carried to a couch and left with a metal bucket.
Since Gordie had passed out with his shoes on, another Chi Psi tradition held that other ?brothers? draw on him with markers. They did this sometime around 1 a.m., covering his body with racial, sexual and otherwise offensive words and drawings.
He was left there until 9 a.m. when he was found face down on the floor by the couch. He wasn?t breathing and could not be revived.
An autopsy revealed that Gordie died of alcohol poisoning. His blood alcohol level was .328, more than four times the legal threshold for driving intoxicated.
Gordie?s father, Lynn Sr., asked me last week, ?Was he dying when they were writing those things on him??
In the wake of this tragedy, the Chi Psi fraternity was shut down. The national leaders of the fraternity eventually admitted that the incident resulted from hazing.
Gordie?s desire to be part of a group is the most natural and human of our impulses?to connect with others as we try to understand the world. What is unnatural is our tendency to create artificial barriers to those communities, as if initiations magically forge bonds in a group. Bonds, trust and friendship develop slowly over time. They are a product of character as it is played out through experiences--good and bad. The ability to chug whiskey has no bearing on character. Perhaps it relates to body weight and metabolism but not character.
It is possible that the biggest failure in this sad story is ours, the community?s. It is a failure to educate kids about the potentially lethal aspects of alcohol. We educate them about the dangers of cars, household poisons, guns; why not about drinking ourselves to death?
We don?t take kids? flirting with deadly levels of alcohol very seriously, perhaps because we?ve been there and have lived to tell the tale. I have. It doesn?t make it right. It just makes me lucky. What?s more, just because we did it and were lucky doesn?t mean we can?t learn from our luck and prevent other young people from getting unlucky.
Lynn Bailey is determined to transform Gordie?s death into something positive. To that end, he and his ex-wife and their spouses have created the Gordie Foundation. Bailey told me the goal of the fund is to educate the public about alcohol poisoning, identify steps parents and students can take to avoid such tragedies and to eradicate fraternity hazing. Bailey is not naïve about the challenge; he acknowledges it may take a generation to accomplish the foundation?s mission.
In his senior year at Deerfield Academy where he was captain of the football team, Gordie wrote an essay titled ?Band of Brothers,? which was about football and teamwork and love. No doubt Gordie was searching for that connection in joining the Chi Psi fraternity. The fraternity was a hollow promise.
But perhaps in his death, Gordie will inspire some insight and education. Maybe someday a brother Gordie never knew, one in another time and place, will live when he might otherwise have died after drinking with the ?brothers.? That would be a gift a true brother might give.
