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49ers DT
Junior Bryant
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San Francisco 49ers DT Junior Bryant has known the kind of nightmarish, scream-out-loud
pain you wouldn’t wish on your worst, most despicable enemy.
A flash. A burn. A life changed forever.
Then pain. Then fear. But give up? Never!
The date was July 5, 1986. Junior Bryant was 15 years old. He had no idea at the
time that he would someday play college football for storied Notre Dame. He had no idea
that he would someday become a solid, versatile defensive lineman for the 49ers in the
NFL.
What he knew at this particular moment was that he was visiting relatives in South
Haven, Mich. That sounds innocent enough. It wasn’t.
He and his mother, Mary Lou, went down to the basement to light a pilot light. They
read the directions on the side of the gas tank together. Unbeknownst to them, gas was
leaking in the basement. Junior got up and was about to walk up the stairs. Mary Lou lit a
match.
Life-changing moment.
A flash. A flash fire, actually.
The only thing that, to the naked eye, caught fire was a paper sack. That sounds
innocent enough. It wasn’t.
The skin of Junior and Mary Lou did not catch fire, but they had been exposed to the
flash fire. Junior ran upstairs and looked in a mirror since he didn’t really feel
anything.
Mirror, mirror on the wall …
The mirror indicated nothing was wrong. The mirror lied.
Junior’s mom then came upstairs and told everyone to get out of the house. An
ambulance was called. Even though appearances didn’t seem too bad, they knew they had
been burned. They just didn’t know to what extent.
As Junior waited outside the house for the ambulance, he soon found out. After a few
minutes, the pain started to kick in. The ambulance did not arrive fast enough, so the
decision was made to wait no longer. They got in a car, and the pain shifted into
overdrive for Junior. He sat in the backseat with his hands and legs up in the air, trying
not to touch anything. All the windows were opened in a futile effort to cool down. Junior
started screaming in agony.
Forty-two percent of his body was burned. Second- and third-degree burns all over the
place. His face was pink. His eyelashes were gone. The list went on and on. His neck. Both
arms and hands from about mid-biceps down. From mid-thigh to the tops of his ankles.
Junior would spend the next month in the hospital. His roommates were pain and
suffering. The first week or two, his days pretty much were: wake up, get a shot of
morphine, get placed in the bleeding tub to breathe the dead skin to protect against
infection, scrub the dead skin (an especially severe bit of agony) and then try to rest.
Then there were two skin graft surgeries (still another form of torture) to endure.
The trauma was more than skin-deep.
"My initial concerns?" said Bryant. "I think after the first couple of
days there I started to think about all kinds of things, such as: Would I ever be able to
play sports again? Would I ever have a girlfriend?"
Plus, he had his mother to worry about. She was worse off than he was. Over 60 percent
of her body was burned. She was in the hospital room next to his, but he didn’t get
to see her for the first couple of weeks they were there. From time to time, however, he
could hear the pain she was in.
"It scares you," Junior said. "Definitely. You obviously don’t want
to see your mother or hear your mother being in pain. It definitely made me scared for
her. I was really concerned about her."
A flash. A burn. A life changed forever.
Then pain. Then fear. But give up? Never!
About three weeks into his hospital stay, Junior received a visitor. If the flash
fire was a life-changing event, so too was this visit.
Junior’s visitor was a man in his late 20s who had been burned years before. The
man, whom Junior had never met before, was a triathlete. He had been involved in a fire
while using gasoline. The man had been burned more severely than Junior yet had persevered
and battled back to compete as a triathlete.
"He really gave me some inspiration to let me know that it wasn’t over,"
Bryant said. "I could still go out and achieve the things that I wanted to do. Just
because I was burned, it wasn’t going to end my life. And for me, it changed my
mindset. I think it was probably one of the biggest things to help me overcome it, not
being really depressed and feeling sorry for myself. Really just kind of looked at it as a
challenge and took it from there."
Eventually, Junior was released from the hospital and went back to his home in
Nebraska. His friends and teachers provided a great support system when he returned to
high school. Still, there was an adjustment period.
"You always deal with some ignorants and people who kind of stare at you like
you’re freakish because you’ve been burned," Bryant said. "You realize
that people just don’t understand. I think I was a little bit self-conscious at
first. I’d kind of put my hands in my pocket and kind of be a little bit unsure. But
I just realized this was going to be a part of me, and I got over that real quick."
The words of the burn victim who visited him in the hospital rung in his ears. Junior
could not play football that school year, but the following spring, he competed in the
shot put during track season and returned to the football field for the final two years of
his high school career.
The words of his hospital visitor spurred Junior to marvelous accomplishments. Junior
will always be in the triathlete’s debt. A debt that, in some ways, he can never
repay. A debt that, in other ways, Junior has repaid with interest many times over.
A flash. A burn. A life changed forever.
Then pain. Then fear. But give up? Never!
True, there was nothing Junior could do to fully pay back the triathlete. So he has
done the next-best thing. Pay it forward. Pay it off by doing for others what the
triathlete had done for him.
Junior Bryant, while certainly not a future Hall of Famer, has his own measure of fame.
He uses this fame for good rather than for self-indulgence.
A child suffers the horrors of being a burn victim, and the call goes out. Junior
Bryant answers. Pay it forward.
He raises money for the Alisa Ann Ruch Burn Foundation. Pay it forward.
He attends Champ Camp for burn victims and tells them that they are special and unique
and that they can overcome. He sees 5-year-old burn victims, and his heart breaks. He
thinks that at least he was 15 years old when he got burned. How can someone so young
comprehend what has happened? He plays with the kids, a famous role model who is living
proof of what a burn victim can accomplish. He shows his own burns to an 11-year-old burn
victim, who says, "Wow, you’re burned too!" He talks to the kids. He fends
them off when they try to throw him in the mud pit used for camp mud wars. Pay it forward.
Most impressively, he visits burn victims in the hospital not long after the most
traumatic event of their life has taken place. Usually, Bryant waits a few weeks after
they’ve been burned to allow the first stages of treatment to play out, and then he
makes a visit. Just like the one he received from the triathlete. Pay it forward.
He visited one kid who had been burned in San Jose, Calif., and was really struggling.
The young man had been burned on his arm and half his upper body and did not want to do
the necessary physical therapy. So Bryant offered a bribe.
Bryant asked the young man who his favorite player was. It was Jerry Rice. Bryant said
if the young man started doing the job and showing progress, he’d bring him a signed
Jerry Rice jersey. The youngster has started to make progress. Bryant has talked to the
patient’s mother a couple of times for reports. The jersey hasn’t been earned
yet — the young man’s frustration is still running high over being burned —
but he is finally trying.
A few years ago, a 15-year-old from Idaho was visiting family in California. There was
a fire. The teenager was badly burned. A couple of weeks later, Bryant visited him in the
hospital. It was almost like looking in the mirror.
The young man and Bryant were burned at the same age. The young man played football.
Like Bryant. The young man was a lineman. Like Bryant.
Bryant looked at the young man and saw his past. The young man looked at Bryant and saw
all that still could be accomplished.
"He was really down, obviously, being burned," Bryant said. "Kind of
like the same mental process I went through. So (we were) kind of connected as far as that
standpoint because we really had a similar experience as far as where we were at in life
and being burned."
That day, the young man set a goal for himself to play football again. That day, Bryant
invited him to return to California for a 49ers game when he got healthy. Two goals to
shoot for.
Two goals met.
The young man battled back and played a couple of seasons of high school football.
Plus, he returned to California for a 49ers game. And not just any 49ers game. The
49ers’ game in which all-time great Joe Montana’s jersey was retired. It was a
memorable night. A night to reflect on achievement.
A flash. A burn. A life changed forever.
Then pain. Then fear. But give up? Never!
"My biggest message is not to give up, not to let what has happened to you
beat you," Bryant said. "I think the biggest thing about being burned is,
mentally, it’s a battle. The scars are going to be with you forever, regardless. The
mental scars, though, you can get rid of. … Stay as positive as you can. The mind
game is the biggest battle to face. It’s the toughest game to play because that can
really set in motion a lot of things. For me, the message that was given to me was (be)
positive and keep on fighting. That’s the message I try to relay to people, is just
don’t let it beat you, and keep on going ahead."
Pay it forward. Bryant has paid off his debt to the triathlete more often than a
long-distance trucker pays tolls. Fittingly, Bryant follows in the footsteps of the
triathlete by going the distance for young burn victims. |
