"Loss, love and a promise kept for the voice of Auburn football"

quote:

---

JAN TEXTS ANDY. It is Saturday. Andy is in Baton Rouge, broadcasting the radio pregame show before Auburn plays LSU. Jan is at home in Auburn. She has a question: Josh, who is 16, has asked for more than the usual allowance of $75 that Jan and Andy give him every two weeks. Jan texts her husband: "What should I say?"

Andy's eyes go wide. He isn't used to texts like this. Jan's Saturday texts are usually things like "Good first quarter" or "How did we not score there?" During a commercial, he calls her.

---

quote:

---

At home, Josh pleads his case. He points out the progress he has made on keeping a budget lately. He has a job at a gift shop, but he also has a car now, and things are expensive. "I'm really working hard on this," he says, and Jan sympathizes. She does want to help him. She and Andy want him to be happy. "We know you're working hard," she says, and Josh brightens. Maybe there is a sliver of light here. But then Jan touches his arm and shakes her head. "We're very proud of you for that," she says. "Keep it up."

Josh realizes he has no chance. He goes to his room. Jan exhales and texts Andy. Andy exhales and gets ready to broadcast a football game. On this day, they've done what mothers and fathers do all the time: A child presented them with a choice. They talked about it. They made a decision. They followed through. It was, by almost any measure, a fairly ordinary act of parenting. Except for this: Josh is not their son.

---

quote:

---

One Friday in the fall of 2018, the four are eating at Venditori's, an Italian restaurant in Auburn. This is one of their regular spots. Rod loves the fried cheese, and Andy likes the sausage Parmesan. All four adore the bread balls soaked in melted butter and garlic. After the entrees are cleared, Rod looks across the table. "We have an important question," he says. "We would like for you to be the guardians of our children if something should happen to us."

---

quote:

---

A FEW DAYS later, on May 25, 2019, Andy and Jan are at their niece's high school graduation party in Huntsville, more than three hours from Auburn. The party is at a bowling alley. Andy is the kind of bowler who is ecstatic to break 100, but he is having fun. The mood is bright.

His phone rings. It's a friend who is a police officer in Auburn. "Andy, I need to tell you something. There's been a wreck, an accident. It's very serious, and it involves Rod and Paula."

Andy shivers. His throat catches. He croaks, "How serious?" and hears his friend hesitate. "It's very serious."

---

quote:

---

No one talks much about the accident. The police arrested a local teenager, and he has been charged with two counts of manslaughter. Going nearly 90 mph, he plowed into the back of the Brambletts' car while it was stopped at a red light. The youth says he fell asleep at the wheel. Toxicology reports found marijuana in his system. Josh and Shelby don't care much about what happens with the case, although Shelby doesn't like when she hears news reporters talk about how "three lives were ruined that day." She laughs at the idea that it was only three.

All she wants is what Josh and Andy and Jan want as well: to look forward together, even if everything around them has a hint of the past. So the steps come slowly.

---

quote:

---

One recent afternoon, Jan gets a call from the district attorney. The teenager who crashed into the Brambletts has been charged as an adult. His lawyers are petitioning for him to be sentenced as a minor. The difference is massive, the attorney explains to Jan. As a minor, he might get three years in prison; as an adult, he would be facing more than 20. The attorney wants to know what Josh and Shelby think.

Jan brings it up to Josh. She is nervous about what he will feel, what he will say. But Josh doesn't lash out. He doesn't run from it. He doesn't brood.

He says, very simply, that he believes there should be real consequences for the teen's actions. And then he says, "Someday, I'm going to have children, and my kids will never know their grandparents. They'll never know them."

Josh pauses. "But they'll have y'all," he says to Jan. "They'll know you."

---