A story to tell
For those of you who don't know, I used to be a sportswriter. One of the last sports stories I ever wrote was about a guy named Eric Thompson. He was an athletic prodigy, the best kid at every sport in his small Illinois town from the very first time he played it. He was particularly good at football; his coach told me he could have played in college if he wanted. But he didn't, because in eighth grade, Eric tried a new approach to the high jump and shattered the state record. From then on, he was a Track & Field prodigy.
Eric received full scholarship offers to virtually every college program in the country. His high school coaches told him that with just a year or two of training with a top jump coach, he could be repping Team USA at the Olympics. This wasn't pie-in-the-sky stuff. When it comes to comparing jumpers and their career prospects, high jump is pretty straightforward. And Eric only needed a couple more inches at most to join Team USA.
But things didn't go as planned. The story I wrote ran under the headline "The Five-Buck Bump of Cocaine That Destroyed an Olympic Dream." I cannot do Eric's story justice in a few sentences. But I first came across it while researching another anti-doping case and saw it mentioned in a footnote. He became caught in the dragnet of an anti-doping system meant to catch drug cheats, not kids experimenting with a tiny amount of street drugs two days before a meet at a house party. As a result of this one bad decision and the ensuing chain of events, he became a literal footnote in athletic history.
I spent four days with Eric and his family in their home near Herrin, Illinois, where he grew up, in addition to months of reporting about Eric and the anti-doping system. The day I met him, I drove up to Eric's house, which then was adjacent to lightly used railroad tracks. Before I even got out the car, he came out his front door with a big grin on his face. We had only talked once before on the phone, but the second I stepped out of the car, he bellowed "A.G!!" like I was a long-lost friend.
I thought I was going to write a story about a young man the same age as me struggling to come to terms with a life that didn't go according to plan. The story did end up being that, but it was also so much more. Eric had been through some extremely tough times. But by the time I met him, he was settled. He was working in an Illinois coal mine, which is a good job in that area. He had twin daughters with his longtime girlfriend Haley. And he was as loving and devoted to them as anyone I have ever met. While he still had regrets about the athletic dreams unfulfilled, he knew if things had gone according to plan, he never would have met Haley or had his girls. And for him, that was an easy trade he would do every time.
The day after the story published, Eric called me on the phone. It is to this day the most rewarding phone call I have had in my life. He told me, almost in tears, how grateful he was for the article, that it gave him a sense of closure. There is one phrase I can remember hearing as if it was yesterday. He said, "I feel like I can begin the rest of my life now."
I was so happy and excited for him in that moment, and so proud to have played a role in helping him get there. He had a tough life and would be the first to admit he made plenty of mistakes. We all do. It was time for him to feel good about himself again, in a way I got the sense he hadn't in a long time.
I stayed in touch with Eric for a little while, but as these things tend to do, we fell out of touch. I did know he got a better-paying job at a different mine and moved to a bigger house further out in the country. He and Haley had a third daughter, and the kids could roam and play in the sprawling yard just like he did as a kid.
Even though I hadn't talked to Eric recently, I thought about him a lot. Partly because the article I wrote is still my favorite I have ever written. And, to me, it had the happiest of endings, something I don't usually get to do in my writing. Every couple of weeks or months I'd think to myself, "I wonder how Eric is doing." I imagined him putting his girls on his big, broad shoulders like he did when I walked in the front door that day, playing in the mud like they did at his old high school track. I imagined them happy. Of course I did. Why wouldn't I?
On Wednesday, August 25th, Eric ended his shift at the mine. He told his boss that if he hurried home he might be able to get there in time to see his girls before bedtime. On his way home, his motorcycle careened off a curve. Eric Thompson died that night. He was 32 years old.
Eric's death is nothing but a senseless tragedy. It leaves three young girls without a father, a mother without a loving partner, two grandparents without a son who had been through so much and was just beginning the best days of his life, a younger brother without his protective older sibling, and countless other people for whom Eric's existence simply made life a little better, myself included. Eric welcomed me like a friend and opened up to me in a way no one else I've interviewed ever has (or, indeed, in a way he ever had, his girlfriend later told me). He trusted me to tell his story. It's something I will always be honored by and grateful for.
My hope in writing this has not been to make you sad, although that has probably happened and I'm sorry about that. But I'm sending this email out for two reasons. First, I want people to know who Eric Thompson was, because I think he was someone worth knowing. Second, I want you to call that someone you have been meaning to call, or check in on a friend you haven't spoken to in a while, or simply hug your loved ones extra tight tonight. If you do any of those things, then this email would have been worth sending.
I've spent the last week-plus trying to wrap my head around the unspeakable sadness of Eric's death. But there is nothing to come to terms with. There's no point in trying to make sense of the world or rationalize tragedies. The only thing to do is act in such a way that, when the senseless world becomes especially cruel, we have a story to tell ourselves. A story about how we tried our best, how we tried to do right by one another, and how we loved with all of our being. That was Eric Thompson's story.
With love,
Aaron