OSUsushichic
Fired up! Ready to go!
Just thought I would share an amazing story I read in the local newspaper. She and her brothers have been through a lot.
No easy goodbye to a Pennsylvania nightmare: Family tragedy forces BU softball player Brittany Detwiler to grow up too quickly
By John Tomase
Friday, April 21, 2006 - Updated: 03:28 AM EST
Brittany Detwiler has dreams. She will graduate from Boston University, land a good job and start a family.
Brittany Detwiler has dreams. In them, she sees her mother, Suzanne, and smiles. There are no tears. They talk until their words evaporate with the morning sun.
Brittany Detwiler has dreams. One day she will wake up, and there will be a happy ending.
That day has not yet arrived for the Boston University junior, thrust into adulthood by unfathomable heartache. But she feels it drawing closer with each breath.
Her parents are gone, her mother stolen by a father whose depression had reached depths Brittany struggles to comprehend. Her two brothers watched their mother die, and one pulled the trigger that ended their father’s life before he could take theirs.
The one-year anniversary of the worst day of her life is coming June 18, which happens to be her 21st birthday. In reality, she’s far older. Having sold the family home in Pennsylvania, planned two funerals and delivered two eulogies, she’s now co-guardian of brothers A.J., 18, and Corey, 16. The former will join his softball-playing sister at BU on a wrestling scholarship next fall.
All the while, she awaits her happy ending.
“It’s a constant battle,” she said. “There are times you want to fall apart and break down. But we’re not going to cave in. The three of us aren’t willing to do that. It just shows how strong our parents raised us to be.”
All-American girl
Brittany Detwiler is a lissome, striking 5-foot-8 brunette who appears normal and well-adjusted. She jokes with teammates, laughs and smiles easily, and self-assuredly admits an affinity for the music of maligned pop stars Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson.
“If you were to meet her on the street,” teammate and close friend Brooke Hudson said, “you’d never be able to tell anything tragic had ever happened to her.”
She arrived at BU two years ago as a top pitching recruit, but injuries have hamstrung her, the latest a badly sprained ankle after she hopped off the bench and landed on a ball.
“At that point,” she noted wryly, “I wanted to know what the hell I did to God to make him hate me so much.”
She was living the life of a typical college student last June, preparing to return home for a summer in suburban Philadelphia, when her existence was shattered.
Dawn of a dark day
Her 44-year-old steelworker father, Andrew Detwiler, had been out of work since injuring his shoulder two years earlier while helping build Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park. That made 40-year-old realtor mom Suzanne the breadwinner.
Andrew had survived a suicide attempt a week earlier after being discovered in the garage with his car running. He underwent a psychiatric evaluation, but left before being diagnosed as bipolar.
On the morning of Saturday, June 18, according to the Bucks County District Attorney’s office, A.J. and Corey awoke to their parents fighting. They found Andrew holding a knife to Suzanne’s throat. Following Andrew’s suicide attempt, the family had cleared the house of guns, save for two unloaded shotguns. The brothers each found one and leveled them at their father, who wrestled Corey’s away and ran to the garage for ammunition.
They locked him in while Suzanne called 911, but Andrew blasted his way out. A.J. and Suzanne fled across the back deck as Andrew entered the house. The avid hunter fired once through the dining room window, hitting Suzanne in the back.
With her 911 call still connected, she died in A.J.’s arms. He told ESPN.com that her last words were, “I love you all.”
His gun now loaded, Corey appeared on the porch and screamed at Andrew to “stay away from my mother.” When Andrew raised his gun toward the boys, Corey shot twice, hitting his father once in the right hip and once in the back. He died a few feet away.
“A 15-year-old boy was forced to shoot his father the day before Father’s Day,” Bucks County DA Diane Gibbons said. “There is no question that he acted solely for the purpose of saving his mother.”
Three hundred miles away, Brittany was walking on Comm. Ave. near the BU Bridge when a family friend called to ask if she had her plane ticket home.
“I was explaining that I had a class presentation to make on Monday and wouldn’t be back until Tuesday,” Brittany said. “And she said to me, ‘You don’t know what happened?’ My heart sank. I said, ‘Wait, what happened?’ ”
Her friend’s father took the phone. “Brit, we need you to get on a plane and get home immediately,” he said. Still, no explanation. She ran to a computer in the student union and struggled to boot it up.
“I couldn’t make it work and I couldn’t find a flight,” Brittany said. “I still didn’t know what had happened. I was freaking out.”
For five frantic minutes, she feared the worst. Finally, her mom’s closest friend took the line.
“She said, ‘Brit, we have something to tell you,’ ” Brittany recalled. “ ‘Both of your parents have passed. You’ve lost them both. They’re gone.’ ”
Illness went undetected
When Brittany Detwiler reflects on her upbringing, she sees nothing to suggest what would come. The Detwilers were an All-American family, with a strapping husband, blonde wife, and three athletic children.
Family vacations invariably included deep sea fishing expeditions, with Andrew playfully instructing his children to keep quiet so they wouldn’t scare the fish.
The children excelled athletically. Brittany joined a traveling softball squad out of Virginia in her early teens and earned a selection to the Junior Olympic team. A.J. and Corey, meanwhile, became outstanding wrestlers.
Love filled their home.
“We were brought up to support each other,” Brittany said. “If we started picking on each other our parents would say there are enough people in this world to bring you down -- you don’t need to bring each other down.”
Brittany developed a sisterly relationship with her mother, speaking to her daily after moving north.
“She was my best friend,” she said. “She was the pillar in my life. She was my rock and foundation.”
She describes her father as fun-loving and outgoing. But that changed after a pair of shoulder surgeries left him unemployed. With Brittany away and A.J. old enough to drive, she believes he felt unneeded. No one understood his despair until he attempted suicide.
“My first instinct was to be pissed,” she said. “I think suicide is a weak way out. Then I thought maybe it would be a positive, light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel kind of thing. It was his cry for help.”
She last talked to her father three days before he died. Michigan had just won the softball national championship and he thought she should transfer.
“I was like, ‘Hello? You just tried to kill yourself,’ ” Brittany said. “I was irritated with him.”
She remains understandably conflicted. She wishes the family had seen the signs of bipolar disorder -- the highs that prompted spending binges, followed by the lows of anger and callousness. She hopes that by telling her story, others in similar situations will act.
At the time of his death, Andrew believed his wife was planning to leave him, a notion Brittany doesn’t dismiss.
“You could definitely see there was still love there because she hadn’t packed up and left years ago,” she said. “She loved him, but didn’t know what to do at that point.
“I’d want people to remember him for what he was before the last two years, definitely not the end of his life and what he did. It sucks and I hate the fact that he did it, but I don’t want that to stick in people’s minds.”
Letting go of her mother has proven more difficult. Pennridge High School wrestling coach John Rittenhouse has A.J. as one of his stars and worked as a realtor with Suzanne, whom he considered a close friend.
“Honestly, not a day goes by that I don’t think about her,” he said, “and I don’t know if there’s ever going to be such a day. If it’s that way for me, I can’t imagine what it’s like for the kids.”
They’re not kids anymore.
Courage amid chaos
Following her parents’ deaths, Brittany drove home to East Rockhill Township, a covered-bridge kind of community in well-off Bucks County, accompanied by Terriers trainer Lisa Murray.
“What she knew from the moment it happened is that she needed to step up and take care of her brothers first and herself later,” Murray said.
She compiled a list of what needed to be done: funeral arrangements, burial clothes for her parents, eulogies, cleaning and selling the house, getting counseling for her brothers. Along with Mike and Linda Pulli, cousins on her father’s side, she became co-guardians of her brothers, who remain in Pennsylvania.
“She showed tremendous poise in the weeks that followed coordinating everything,” Rittenhouse said. “She was amazingly strong.”
That doesn’t mean it’s been easy. Brittany’s friend Hudson said it hurts to see other parents at games, that Brittany sometimes has trouble sleeping, and that dating a new boyfriend can be fraught with stress while waiting to address the subject of parents.
Brittany said it really hits her when she’s pitching. Her mother was a fixture at her games and the first person she called after victories.
“It still kind of takes me by shock at times,” Brittany said. “I’ll be on the mound and think, ‘I can’t wait to tell mom about this play.’ And then it hits me and sets in.”
At those times, she calls on her brothers, who have experienced similar ups and downs. The pain will never disappear, but it will fade.
“We’re all going to graduate from school, start our own families, and stay as close as we are now,” she said. “We’re going to move on from this. I truly believe we’ll have a happy ending.”
http://sports.bostonherald.com/college/view.bg?articleid=136065&format=text
No easy goodbye to a Pennsylvania nightmare: Family tragedy forces BU softball player Brittany Detwiler to grow up too quickly
By John Tomase
Friday, April 21, 2006 - Updated: 03:28 AM EST
Brittany Detwiler has dreams. She will graduate from Boston University, land a good job and start a family.
Brittany Detwiler has dreams. In them, she sees her mother, Suzanne, and smiles. There are no tears. They talk until their words evaporate with the morning sun.
Brittany Detwiler has dreams. One day she will wake up, and there will be a happy ending.
That day has not yet arrived for the Boston University junior, thrust into adulthood by unfathomable heartache. But she feels it drawing closer with each breath.
Her parents are gone, her mother stolen by a father whose depression had reached depths Brittany struggles to comprehend. Her two brothers watched their mother die, and one pulled the trigger that ended their father’s life before he could take theirs.
The one-year anniversary of the worst day of her life is coming June 18, which happens to be her 21st birthday. In reality, she’s far older. Having sold the family home in Pennsylvania, planned two funerals and delivered two eulogies, she’s now co-guardian of brothers A.J., 18, and Corey, 16. The former will join his softball-playing sister at BU on a wrestling scholarship next fall.
All the while, she awaits her happy ending.
“It’s a constant battle,” she said. “There are times you want to fall apart and break down. But we’re not going to cave in. The three of us aren’t willing to do that. It just shows how strong our parents raised us to be.”
All-American girl
Brittany Detwiler is a lissome, striking 5-foot-8 brunette who appears normal and well-adjusted. She jokes with teammates, laughs and smiles easily, and self-assuredly admits an affinity for the music of maligned pop stars Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson.
“If you were to meet her on the street,” teammate and close friend Brooke Hudson said, “you’d never be able to tell anything tragic had ever happened to her.”
She arrived at BU two years ago as a top pitching recruit, but injuries have hamstrung her, the latest a badly sprained ankle after she hopped off the bench and landed on a ball.
“At that point,” she noted wryly, “I wanted to know what the hell I did to God to make him hate me so much.”
She was living the life of a typical college student last June, preparing to return home for a summer in suburban Philadelphia, when her existence was shattered.
Dawn of a dark day
Her 44-year-old steelworker father, Andrew Detwiler, had been out of work since injuring his shoulder two years earlier while helping build Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park. That made 40-year-old realtor mom Suzanne the breadwinner.
Andrew had survived a suicide attempt a week earlier after being discovered in the garage with his car running. He underwent a psychiatric evaluation, but left before being diagnosed as bipolar.
On the morning of Saturday, June 18, according to the Bucks County District Attorney’s office, A.J. and Corey awoke to their parents fighting. They found Andrew holding a knife to Suzanne’s throat. Following Andrew’s suicide attempt, the family had cleared the house of guns, save for two unloaded shotguns. The brothers each found one and leveled them at their father, who wrestled Corey’s away and ran to the garage for ammunition.
They locked him in while Suzanne called 911, but Andrew blasted his way out. A.J. and Suzanne fled across the back deck as Andrew entered the house. The avid hunter fired once through the dining room window, hitting Suzanne in the back.
With her 911 call still connected, she died in A.J.’s arms. He told ESPN.com that her last words were, “I love you all.”
His gun now loaded, Corey appeared on the porch and screamed at Andrew to “stay away from my mother.” When Andrew raised his gun toward the boys, Corey shot twice, hitting his father once in the right hip and once in the back. He died a few feet away.
“A 15-year-old boy was forced to shoot his father the day before Father’s Day,” Bucks County DA Diane Gibbons said. “There is no question that he acted solely for the purpose of saving his mother.”
Three hundred miles away, Brittany was walking on Comm. Ave. near the BU Bridge when a family friend called to ask if she had her plane ticket home.
“I was explaining that I had a class presentation to make on Monday and wouldn’t be back until Tuesday,” Brittany said. “And she said to me, ‘You don’t know what happened?’ My heart sank. I said, ‘Wait, what happened?’ ”
Her friend’s father took the phone. “Brit, we need you to get on a plane and get home immediately,” he said. Still, no explanation. She ran to a computer in the student union and struggled to boot it up.
“I couldn’t make it work and I couldn’t find a flight,” Brittany said. “I still didn’t know what had happened. I was freaking out.”
For five frantic minutes, she feared the worst. Finally, her mom’s closest friend took the line.
“She said, ‘Brit, we have something to tell you,’ ” Brittany recalled. “ ‘Both of your parents have passed. You’ve lost them both. They’re gone.’ ”
Illness went undetected
When Brittany Detwiler reflects on her upbringing, she sees nothing to suggest what would come. The Detwilers were an All-American family, with a strapping husband, blonde wife, and three athletic children.
Family vacations invariably included deep sea fishing expeditions, with Andrew playfully instructing his children to keep quiet so they wouldn’t scare the fish.
The children excelled athletically. Brittany joined a traveling softball squad out of Virginia in her early teens and earned a selection to the Junior Olympic team. A.J. and Corey, meanwhile, became outstanding wrestlers.
Love filled their home.
“We were brought up to support each other,” Brittany said. “If we started picking on each other our parents would say there are enough people in this world to bring you down -- you don’t need to bring each other down.”
Brittany developed a sisterly relationship with her mother, speaking to her daily after moving north.
“She was my best friend,” she said. “She was the pillar in my life. She was my rock and foundation.”
She describes her father as fun-loving and outgoing. But that changed after a pair of shoulder surgeries left him unemployed. With Brittany away and A.J. old enough to drive, she believes he felt unneeded. No one understood his despair until he attempted suicide.
“My first instinct was to be pissed,” she said. “I think suicide is a weak way out. Then I thought maybe it would be a positive, light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel kind of thing. It was his cry for help.”
She last talked to her father three days before he died. Michigan had just won the softball national championship and he thought she should transfer.
“I was like, ‘Hello? You just tried to kill yourself,’ ” Brittany said. “I was irritated with him.”
She remains understandably conflicted. She wishes the family had seen the signs of bipolar disorder -- the highs that prompted spending binges, followed by the lows of anger and callousness. She hopes that by telling her story, others in similar situations will act.
At the time of his death, Andrew believed his wife was planning to leave him, a notion Brittany doesn’t dismiss.
“You could definitely see there was still love there because she hadn’t packed up and left years ago,” she said. “She loved him, but didn’t know what to do at that point.
“I’d want people to remember him for what he was before the last two years, definitely not the end of his life and what he did. It sucks and I hate the fact that he did it, but I don’t want that to stick in people’s minds.”
Letting go of her mother has proven more difficult. Pennridge High School wrestling coach John Rittenhouse has A.J. as one of his stars and worked as a realtor with Suzanne, whom he considered a close friend.
“Honestly, not a day goes by that I don’t think about her,” he said, “and I don’t know if there’s ever going to be such a day. If it’s that way for me, I can’t imagine what it’s like for the kids.”
They’re not kids anymore.
Courage amid chaos
Following her parents’ deaths, Brittany drove home to East Rockhill Township, a covered-bridge kind of community in well-off Bucks County, accompanied by Terriers trainer Lisa Murray.
“What she knew from the moment it happened is that she needed to step up and take care of her brothers first and herself later,” Murray said.
She compiled a list of what needed to be done: funeral arrangements, burial clothes for her parents, eulogies, cleaning and selling the house, getting counseling for her brothers. Along with Mike and Linda Pulli, cousins on her father’s side, she became co-guardians of her brothers, who remain in Pennsylvania.
“She showed tremendous poise in the weeks that followed coordinating everything,” Rittenhouse said. “She was amazingly strong.”
That doesn’t mean it’s been easy. Brittany’s friend Hudson said it hurts to see other parents at games, that Brittany sometimes has trouble sleeping, and that dating a new boyfriend can be fraught with stress while waiting to address the subject of parents.
Brittany said it really hits her when she’s pitching. Her mother was a fixture at her games and the first person she called after victories.
“It still kind of takes me by shock at times,” Brittany said. “I’ll be on the mound and think, ‘I can’t wait to tell mom about this play.’ And then it hits me and sets in.”
At those times, she calls on her brothers, who have experienced similar ups and downs. The pain will never disappear, but it will fade.
“We’re all going to graduate from school, start our own families, and stay as close as we are now,” she said. “We’re going to move on from this. I truly believe we’ll have a happy ending.”
http://sports.bostonherald.com/college/view.bg?articleid=136065&format=text