Person after person saying the same words, as heart felt as they were, hollow in their content, because they were right, there was NO WAY they could know how I felt...but those words, and the stories they shared with me of Gator were enough to drive me to want to do something...and while standing outside talking to one of Gator's friends mothers, it came to me that he wasn't going to die, and be f
orgotten, or a memory, or a picture. A few weeks after the funeral, I recieved a phone call, informing me that Gator had a very high blood alcohol content at the time of his death, and the final documented cause, blunt force trauma to the head, breaking the neck and severing the spinal cord...the only solice, he never knew what happened to him, and never laid in pain or fear. I became instanlty infuriated and was on a mission to make something good of the tragedy that cost the world a beautiful soul, a best friend to everyone, a brother to six, and a son to his mother and myself. The decision came to me, sitting and staring at his picture on his page. Gator was just two weeks away from starting at Rhodes State College in their Nursing program, because he knew he could make a life for himself and eventually hopefully his family by doing something he loved to do, and that was helping others. Thus the birth of the Gator Spradlin Memorial Nursing Scholarship, and gatorspradlin.org.
