BRAD FRITZ
PUBLIC SPEAKING
My Story
I was born on May 8th, 1984
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I was the youngest of three sons
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Later my younger sister was born
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Sports were big in my family and I was raised learning to play every sport
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I was also fairly smart growing up
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Rockin' the speedo at 6 years old
God
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I was raised Catholic and went to a Catholic grade school
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I believed in God no more or no less than the average kid
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As I got older, my relationships with people grew, as did my relationship with God
For The Most Part I Was A Happy Boy
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I had many friends growing up and I had no idea what would happen in the future
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When I was in the second grade, my Godfather, who was also my cousin, fell off an overpass coming home from a Red’s game
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He was in a coma three years before dying
Childhood
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I believe childhood ends the moment you realize you won’t live forever and that you too will eventually die
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For me, childhood began ending in the second grade when my cousin fell
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It began to finalize ending with his death in the fifth grade
Resisting Childhood Ending
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Even with my cousin’s death, I tried to resist becoming an adult
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I wanted to be a child forever
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I wanted to live a normal life
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I kept playing sports and being a typical kid
My Early Life
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Aside from my cousin passing, I lived a pretty normal childhood
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I played every sport imaginable and I was fairly good at most of them
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When I was in the 6th grade, my team won the junior pro national championship in basketball
8th Grade...I made the bowl cut look hot
High School
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I was always looking forward to going to school at Covington Catholic
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On the entrance exam, I scored in the top three and won an academic scholarship
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I loved my first year, I played varsity football and I made all region for freshmen basketball
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As freshman year ended, I was loving life
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I had a girlfriend I liked
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I had more friends than I needed
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Summer rolled around and I partied all summer like it could never end and I could never get hurt
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That was my flaw…………
Sophomore Year
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As sophomore year started, I looked at school only as a way to play football
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I began to play more- rotating in on defense, returning kicks, and doing other small things
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I still had the same girlfriend and I loved life
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This was my football picture from that year
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I was cute
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Kind of chunky
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But cute
Friends
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At the time I had two best friends
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One played soccer and football at Covington Catholic
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And one played football at Beechwood
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I was in a few fights but I really didn’t hate anyone and no one really hated me
September 17th, 1999
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On Friday, September 17th, we played Beechwood High School in football
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We got crushed
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Since football was such a big part of my life, I was upset
September 18th, 1999
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After football practice in the morning, I went to the Covington Catholic verse Beechwood JV football game with my girlfriend and a few of her friends
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We watched my one best friend play for Covington Catholic and my other best friend play for Beechwood
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I also had more friends on both teams
That Night
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Later that night my two best friends called me from the ones house
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They didn’t tell me what they had been doing before I got there or what we would be doing that night
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I paged my brother and asked him to pick me up at our house and drop me off at my friend’s
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Being a cool brother, he did
My Friend's House
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He dropped me off and my two friends already had the night figured out
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They told me we were going to a party in the cemetery
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They didn’t tell me how we were getting there
We Were All Only Fifteen
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My best friend who lived where we started the night said his sister’s boyfriend gave him the keys to his car
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I knew it was dangerous, but these were my two best friends
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We left his house and before going to the cemetery we stopped down the street at another kid’s house
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Adding ignorance to stupidity we started drinking
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I had a little more than a beer in my system when I went out front to toss football with another kid who was already there
As The Night Went On
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We left his house and went to the cemetery
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He wasn’t driving too great
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We got to the party at the kid’s house who lived in the cemetery
The Cemetery
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At the party, we talked to people and just sat around for a while
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Some people called us stupid
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Some acted like nothing was happening
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No one stopped us
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We stayed there a while
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Then we left again
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We went and got gas
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We came back
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And then we left one more time
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This time we drove around the cemetery
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He was messing around speeding
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Before we got out of the cemetery he sped around one last corner…………
At University Hospital
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The passenger went for help and the driver stayed with me as I laid there fighting for my life
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When the paramedics found me, my right lung was collapsed
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My jaw was dislocated and fractured
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Paramedics say my head was swollen to the size of a basketball
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I was air cared to University Hospital
Coma
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Somehow, I lived through the first night, but I was still unconscious
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Having been wrong once, doctors now said I would never wake up from a coma
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I spent two weeks in ICU
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Time passed and I still lay unconscious
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I was declared brain dead on October the 5th and was transferred to Children’s Hospital
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Months passed and I still lay in a coma
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My right lung collapsed again
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As they lifted my arm to put in a chest tube, they dislocated my shoulder
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One night I opened my mouth so wide that it snapped the wires in my mouth
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After my Godfather, thoughts of me never waking up weren’t too unreal
Hope
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In November, they discovered that I might not be brain dead
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After three months, I started to show signs of life
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I opened and closed my hand on call one day
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Hope had gotten so small that it made my mom cry
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That was my first sign of life
Waking Up
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In December, I began to regain consciousness
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I got confused and mad at the world real quick
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At first, the only thing I remembered from before the wreck was my family and close friends
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I was so angry and confused that I didn’t even want to be alive
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My injury was so severe that, at first, I couldn’t stand up or even mutter small words
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I was so angry at the world that I didn’t think about God
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My anger grew as people told me what had happened that night
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For the longest time, it was the anger that fueled my recovery
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I was discharged five months after the wreck and still couldn’t even stand
Starting Over
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After being discharged from the hospital, I went back for the second half of the school year
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That was my 1st real time learning about God since the wreck
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I soon became mad at God also
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I wondered why God was punishing me
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Mad at the world and God, I had little left
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Nothing special happened that summer and my life was losing meaning
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I learned that I had to repeat my sophomore year since I missed so much time
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As my second sophomore year started, I was becoming more and more angry at God and the world
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I was asking why I was so easy for God to hurt
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My faith kept getting smaller as bad things kept happening
One Year
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I stayed mad at God and the world as the one year anniversary of the wreck came up
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One year passed and it was nothing to anyone besides me
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I realized that the only things I was remembering were the bad things that happened in life
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That made it very hard to live
Time Went On
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I was raised learning how selfish suicide was and how it was taking the easy way out
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So I never even considered suicide
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Only remembering the bad things meant that I was constantly watching a horror film over and over again in my mind
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I started remembering more from before the wreck
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As time went on, I became very unhappy
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Everyone always expected me to smile, and, even though I was unhappy, I smiled
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Even though I was smiling, my unhappiness soon grew to pure hatred
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Suicide began to cross my mind
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The only thing that kept me from taking my own life was knowing it’s selfish and taking the easy way out
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I had gotten through my second sophomore year
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Even though it seemed like no time at all had passed, the two year anniversary came around
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By this time, I could walk a fair amount with a cane and I could talk some
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At this time, I had little faith in God
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And I thought if there was a God he must hate me
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It got to the point where my only real motivation to waking up in the morning was in hopes that I would be in another accident that would kill me
September 11th
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I came into class on this Tuesday to find everyone staring at the TV
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Someone told me what had happened in New York in the morning
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I knew my cousin, who was my Godfather’s brother, worked in the World Trade Center
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But I didn’t know where
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After what had happened to his brother, I thought there was no way he was hurt
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Everyone joked about it, but I had the worst feeling
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Just before lunch I was called into the gym
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I saw my dad sitting in the stands with a blank look on his face
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I knew
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I said “Brian,” he nodded, and my head dropped
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A single tear formed in my eye
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I quickly wiped it from my eye and raised my head
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Right then I quit believing that there was even a God that hated me
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Now I didn’t care how selfish it was or that it was taking the easy way out, suicide seemed like the only way
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One week later marked two years since the wreck
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I started considering how I would kill myself
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This went on for around a month
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There were constant reminders on TV and the radio of what had happened that day
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I think everyone knew what was going through my head
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My friends told me that in October they were going on retreat
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They asked me if I was going on it
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I decided I might as well go
Retreat
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I went into that weekend not knowing what to expect
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I heard a lot of different stories- rape stories, adoption stories, drug stories- and my story didn’t seem so tough anymore
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I realized everyone suffers
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The whole point of life is to suffer
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It’s what we do in that suffering that makes us human
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I went and came back from that weekend with a new view on life
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I no longer considered suicide, I was just happy to be alive
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It brought back my faith in God because I realized that I hurt myself, and God kept me alive
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I felt selfish that I thought my story was any more difficult than anyone else’s
Now
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As far as the present is concerned, I still only remember the bad things
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But I’ve learned to cherish the good things and hang on to them long enough that it drains out the bad things
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Enjoy life, but live it so that you’ll have more days to enjoy
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Respect life
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I didn’t
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And it hurt me
One Last Thing To Consider
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As far as the present is concerned, I still only remember the bad things
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But I’ve learned to cherish the good things and hang on to them long enough that it drains out the bad things
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Enjoy life, but live it so that you’ll have more days to enjoy
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Respect life
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I didn’t
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And it hurt me
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Even in a coma………
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I was still a very cute boy!
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Me And My Pretty Sister




