Street Level

Benjamin Garrison Sprague was found dead last weekend in his fraternity house.

On Sunday morning, after a night of partying with him at a nearby house, Benjamin’s buddies awoke to find their friend’s body on a futon, still, cold — and polluted with alcohol.

Now I don’t know Benjamin, never would ever cross his path, given he lived in South Carolina, but his death upset me.

Benjamin was 18 — obviously old enough to know better but still young enough to want to party hearty till the break of dawn.

His grandfather was a state senator.

His mom and dad, Joel and Gaye Sprague, run their own engineering firm and Benjamin, a freshman, was studying the same discipline at Clemson University, following in his parents’ footsteps.

He played soccer on his high school team and centre for its football team.

A family friend said Benjamin was “the hub and the player that could pick the team up if they were down. He loved life.”

And now he’s dead.

He drank himself to a much-too-early grave.

After promising not to wade into the issue of underage drinking, to let it go and hope it just falls off the radar of other media, it’s impossible now.

Because of Benjamin.

And because of my own two boys, who once played minor hockey — thankfully, not in Kamloops.

I’m in a minority here at the office, it seems.

I just can’t buy the “boys will be boys” explanation others are giving for the fact a young hockey player got drunk at the home of the man everyone expects to set the tone for minor hockey in this city.

Let’s not get sidetracked by what the boy’s blood-alcohol level really was.

He was puking drunk.

I’ve been that way once, many years ago, as have many other Kamloopsians — and we know how that feels and how we got that way.

We felt like hell the next day and knew what we had done was wrong.

So why can’t we see that this situation is wrong as well?

I’ve debated this with the boss, the boss’s boss, others who share my little corner of the work world and it’s so obvious they don’t understand why I feel this way.

It’s interesting, though, that a co-worker mentioned his dad agrees it’s a “get over it” issue while his mom is truly dismayed at the lack of supervision provided at the home of Kamloops Minor Hockey Association president Stan Burton when his son and other hockey players got together to party.

I’m with her.

Because I’m a mom.

I’m a mom who has been at the rink at 5 a.m., freezing but proudly watching my guys out there on the ice, practising what is apparently the greatest sport in the country.

I’m a mom who has also been up at 11 p.m., at another rink, watching my guys play the game I just don’t get and haven’t since Bobby Orr hung up his skates.

I’m a mom who wants to know where her children are going if they go out with buddies — yes, even when they were teenagers.

And if they went to parties, I wanted assurances a parent would be present to monitor what happened.

Because I am a mom.

Not naive, but ever-hopeful I can continue to protect my kids from the evils of the world as long as I have to.

Gaye Sprague is likely wishing today she could have protected her son a bit longer.

She’s probably wondering what she might have done wrong, what she could have changed, how she could have kept the evils away for one more day from her not-quite-a-man.

The party at Burton’s house didn’t result in a dead athlete.

But because we’re moms, we always worry that it could have.

Especially when we read about Gaye Sprague’s son.

Boys will be boys?

Sure.

And wishing they wouldn’t be?

That’s a mom thing.

dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

Posted by Dale at 9:28 a.m. Comments