Bob Padecky: Callan tournament keeps a memory and a message alive
PETALUMA - One by one the boys on the Petaluma High School basketball team rose from their bench seats Saturday afternoon. Inside a locker room at Casa Grande High School they walked slowly but purposefully toward L.J., Julie and Heather Callan. This wasn’t necessary. They certainly weren’t told to do so. But what they just heard, however brief, pulled them.
No pushing or shoving here. One by one they shook L.J.’s hand. One teenager hugged the man. Others hugged Julie. Others nodded to Heather. They didn’t say much, if at all. What could they say? Teenagers are full of verbal torrent but not this time.
“Silence,” said Julie, the mom, “usually there’s silence.”
The Callans had just told the team why this Christmas basketball tournament was named after their son, Brett, a Casa basketball player. A car crash took their 16-year-old son’s life in 2004. They didn’t tell the kids they had to move from their Petaluma house within two years of his death, the memories coming from his bedroom, right there on the left, just after one entered the house, were too fierce.
“We want all of you to come home every day to your parents,” said L.J., the father.
In the quiet of that locker room another moment of therapy took place for the family. Every year they speak to each of the eight tournament teams after it plays its last game of The Callan. If the school hasn’t been to the tournament before, the head coach gets a DVD which describes Brett’s personality and the crash, with a suggestion he could show it to his team. There’s a Callan at every tournament game. Each kid gets a key chain in the shape of a basketball with Brett’s name, birth and death and the encouragement to “Drive Safely.” Counting speeches to schools, CHP presentations to throttle-happy youth and other public affairs, L.J. estimates 20,000 key chains have been distributed in the past nine years.
“This tournament is our Christmas,” L.J. said.
The Callans never know who is listening, who takes it in, who, at that critical moment, pauses, and takes the foot off the gas pedal. They can surmise it matters - if only for the looks they see on the faces. Like the ones Julie saw seven years ago.
Paul Cronin, the football coach at Cardinal Newman, called the Callans. Seems like he had four players in need of a reality check. Could you come to the school and talk to them?
“Have them meet me at Brett’s gravesite,” Julie responded.
Julie and the four boys stood over the grave at Cypress Hill Memorial Park in Petaluma.
“This is my son,” she began.
At first, there was silence. Then tears. Then silence. Then tears. On and on it went, this dose of reality bouncing back and forth between one of two emotions. There’s no in-between reaction like “OK, I’ll think about it.” This is not like sending back a bottle of wine because it tastes too fruity. This is no middlin’ moment. Then again, this was no middlin’ kid.
Any parent who loses a child has that rock-hard pit lodged permanently in the stomach. And every one of those parents knows he and she are not alone. Every one of those parents has an Alex to walk beside them.
Alex met Brett when they were sixth-graders at Sheppard Elementary School in Santa Rosa. They became so close that Alex would come to Brett’s home to help him finish his chores - “because Brett didn’t want to do them,” said Alex. “So yeah, I washed dishes and vacuumed the carpet and did laundry.”
Makes the bro’ hug seem a faint compliment.
Both boys ended up at Casa. Alex would see first-hand why he loved his buddy, and why so many others did as well.
“Brett was never judgmental,” Alex said. “He took people as they were. He was the kinda kid you wanted to be around because you felt safe.”
An example: One day at school a girl was getting a bunch of adolescent sarcasm dumped her way. Brett only knew her by sight but stepped in and said firmly, “Knock it off!” The shrillness stopped. The girl shuffled to a luncheon table, slumped over, by herself, the weight of a teenage world on her shoulders. Brett saw it, walked over, sat down next to her and started talking. To a girl he didn’t know.
“Brett had empathy,” said Alex.
You may be wondering right about now why I have referred to Alex only by his first name. That’s because of what happened to his last name.
He was Alex Webb at Casa. Now 26 he is Alex Callan. He changed his name to honor his friend. He and his wife, Rochelle, are expecting. If it’s a boy his name will be Brett.
Alex has a Brett tattoo on his arm. As a seventh grader Brett went to a convention in Washington, D.C. A souvenir of that trip is a metal dogtag with the date and place stamped on it. Alex hasn’t taken it off since the day he put it on 10 years ago.
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