Fearless (6 page)

“He started crying like a baby,” says Richard, “and Buschmann looks over at him and says, ‘Adam! Stop your crying! Don’t you have any more respect for your father than that?’ ”

He cried most of the way to the station, and when Larry showed up, he started again. Early the following morning Larry drove him over to the house to help clean up the mess with the other culprits. No other discipline was necessary, because “the ride in the police car did the trick,” says Janice. “He apologized for weeks.”

At the beginning of the summer before their senior year, Adam sat down with Jeff, Heath, Richard, and a few of the other varsity football players. In one year Adam had shot up to almost six feet out of the six foot two he’d eventually reach. He was lean and lanky and, on the field, anything but graceful. “He was proof that you didn’t have to be the biggest or the fastest to be a leader,” says Richard. “It was his heart—his spirit—that drew people to him.”

Indeed, Adam was passionate about his final year as a Wolf. In his junior year, they’d made it to the state semifinals, which wasn’t bad, but Adam was emphatic: if they really wanted to put Lake Hamilton High on the map, they needed to make the finals. The only way to accomplish that would be to work out, eat right, not drink a drop of beer, and hold conditioning practices on their own before the start of the football season. A pact was made, and to the beat of songs like “Kickstart My Heart” by Mötley Crüe and “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor, the teammates pumped iron in the weight room, ran the bleachers and did wind sprints, and cranked out push-ups, sit-ups, and leg lifts.

When the official two-a-day practices began in late August, “We were stunned by the team’s level of fitness,” says Coach Anderson.

“We would have been mediocre that season if we hadn’t rallied the way we did,” says Richard. “It took leaders like Adam to inspire so many guys to get out there and sweat their summer away for a long shot.”

The Lake Hamilton Wolves won their first game. Then their second, and third—and they kept winning, all but one game, landing them in the state finals and inspiring Adam to shave his jersey number, 24, into the cropped sides of his mullet.

Although the team ultimately lost the state championship, as Arkansas State runner-up champions, it surpassed everyone’s expectations and earned bragging rights throughout Garland County. The 1991 Wolves would forever be remembered as the players who put Lake Hamilton on the high school football map in Arkansas.

Over the Christmas holiday break, Richard and Adam were watching a video at the Williamses’ house when they saw an action-packed preview for the movie
Navy SEALs
, which began with Lieutenant Dale Hawkins (played by Charlie Sheen) jumping from
the back of a speeding Jeep off a highway bridge into water at least fifty feet below. This spectacular stunt was followed by gunfire, explosions, and a deep, melodramatic voiceover and monologue: “When danger is its own reward, there are men who will go anywhere, dare anything. They’re Navy SEALs, a unique fighting force who doesn’t know how to lose.… Navy SEALs get paid to take risks; they’re paid to die if necessary.… Together they are America’s designated hitters against terrorism. Born to risk, trained to win … Navy SEALs …”

In 1991, the Lake Hamilton Wolves seniors led the team in a historic season to become runner-up Arkansas State champions; #24 Adam, #20 Heath Vance, #19 Jeff Buschmann, and #16 Richard Williams.

Danger is its own reward? Go anywhere, dare anything?
Hell
, Richard thought immediately,
they aren’t talking about the Navy SEALs—they’re talking about Adam
.

Adam, on the other hand, was most inspired by the stunt. “I’m gonna do that,” he said to Richard. “I’m going to jump out of a car when we’re crossing the 70 West bridge.”

“You’re crazy,” said Richard.

As senior year progressed, every time Adam drove across the bridge, he brought the topic up to whichever buddies he was with.

“We all jumped off that bridge,” Jeff says, “but to do it from a speeding vehicle … let me tell you, it’s scary enough standing still and doing it.”

“I don’t want any part of it,” Jeff informed Adam. “And you are not using my Jeep.”

As Adam and his friends walked out to the school parking lot following the end-of-year athletic banquet, Adam announced he was ready for the bridge. Jeff remained steadfast in his refusal to allow Adam to jump from his car, and Richard, who was driving a Pontiac Grand Am, didn’t have the right type of vehicle. Another friend volunteered his Suzuki Samurai, and they headed out into the night, a convoy of a half-dozen vehicles with Adam riding in the back of the open-topped Samurai.

Richard drove directly behind the Samurai, nervous but also confident that nothing would happen to Adam. “He’d bend, he’d get hurt,” says Richard, “but he never broke. He never didn’t get up.”

The convoy slowed to about thirty miles per hour halfway across the bridge. The water below was dark, making it impossible to spot any boats or floating debris—not that Adam cared. Richard watched the Samurai edge closer and thought,
Maybe this isn’t such a good idea
. The Samurai was now in the bike lane, just a foot or so away
from the waist-high concrete wall. Then the silhouette of Adam rose up in the back, held on to the roll bar for a second, and dived into the abyss.

Richard threw on his hazard lights and screeched to a halt as Jeff sped past to get to the other side, where Adam would exit the water. The other cars pulled over as well, and Adam’s buddies scrambled out and leaned against the bridge wall, scanning below. There was just enough ambient light for Richard to see Adam swimming to shore.

“You all right, Adam?” he shouted.

“Yeah!” Adam yelled up.

Sprinting down the trail, Jeff reached the water’s edge the same time Adam did. “Damn, Adam,” he said, offering a hand. “How was it?”

Adam explained that when he’d dived out of the Samurai, he had hoped to straighten out and land feet first. Instead, he’d hit the water sideways, which from that height and with the forward momentum was more than he’d bargained for.

“I don’t think I’ll do that again,” was his response. “Slapped the water pretty hard, but I’m glad I did it—it would have eaten at me forever.”

D
ECKED OUT IN
W
OLF COLORS, MAROON AND GOLD
, the Hot Springs Convention Center was the only building in town that could hold the crowd for Lake Hamilton High School’s 1992 graduation ceremony. Along with the rest of the school board, Larry Brown was seated on stage, taking turns presenting diplomas as principal Curtis Williams called out the graduates’ names. In the audience Janice nudged Shawn when Larry stood up and approached the podium. Adam’s and Manda’s names were coming up; they were both graduating with honors.

“Adam Leroy Brown,” Principal Williams spoke into the microphone. The nearly three hundred graduates erupted in laughter.

“I didn’t know Adam’s middle name was Leroy,” Shawn said to his mother.

“It’s not,” replied Janice, shaking her head and a little perturbed as she watched Adam strut up to his dad to receive his diploma.

“He grinned real big when he shook my hand,” says Larry, “because he had just put one over on the principal by telling him his middle name was Leroy, not Lee.”

Once the laughter subsided and people stopped shouting “Leroy Brown!” Manda’s name was called, and when she shook her father’s hand, she smiled and rolled her eyes.

At the end of the ceremony, the grads threw their caps in the air. Adam ended his high school career with a bang, literally, as he walked out the door, but once Manda and he had posed for photos and said their good-byes to friends, Adam became melancholy. Always sentimental, he made sure to tell Jeff, Richard, and Heath, “No matter where we are, no matter what we’re doing, we’ll always be there for each other.”

Right before heading off to college, Richard drove Adam home through the winding roads of Hot Springs. It was dusk, the windows were rolled down, the warm
summer wind was on their faces, the familiar woods of their youth blurred by, and they hung on to every chord of Hank Williams Jr.’s guitar as they sang along to “Country Boy Can Survive.”

Soon after, the country boys from Lake Hamilton scattered in pursuit of their educations. Jeff went to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville with plans to attend Officer Candidate School and become a Navy pilot. Heath headed to the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, where he had mapped out an education in sports medicine in order to stay involved with football. Having earned a full-ride football scholarship to Ouachita Baptist University, Richard was living the dream—as well as studying accounting.

While Adam had dreamed of playing college football for the University of Arkansas Razorbacks, a scholarship wasn’t in the cards for him. “Adam was like Rudy wanting to play for the Fighting Irish,” says Richard, referring to the true story of Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, a steel mill worker’s son who had all the heart but not the size, financial means, or grades to attend, much less play for, Notre Dame. “That movie
[Rudy]
came out around that time, and when I saw it, all I could think about was Adam. His desire far outreached his size and skills, just like Rudy.”

Still, Adam was pleased to attend Arkansas Tech University, a smaller college two hours from home, where he was confident he would be a star on the football team. He “walked on” for the Wonder Boys, and his toughness earned him a spot on defense, but he barely touched the field the entire season, playing just a few downs in three of the games.

“It was the first time Adam realized he wasn’t everything he thought he was on the football field,” says Larry, who with Janice attended all his home games and some of the away ones. “He wasn’t fast enough or big enough to compete at the college level.”

In high school Adam was a popular standout who had thrived on his crazy, unstoppable reputation. But at Arkansas Tech he was just another student, another face, and another forgettable jersey on game day. His grades were mediocre: biology, C; chemistry, D; college algebra, C; sociology, B. In a family where Cs were unacceptable, Adam was slipping.

He vowed to his parents that he would do better second semester, but his grades
were the same for the follow-on courses in biology, chemistry, and algebra: C, D, and C. His one A was in bowling. He worked at a retail store as a clerk to help offset the expenses paid by his parents, and in his free time he would go to parties and hang out at the bars and clubs around campus with friends he’d made in class or on the team. But for the first time in his life, he seemed out of sync.

“Adam went through his awkward stage later than most,” remembers Manda. “We’d talk on the phone, and you could tell he was unhappy, didn’t really fit in with any one group, and that’s what I mean by ‘awkward.’ Adam had always been friends with everybody, and in college that changed. Lots of acquaintances but no real friends.”

The summer after his freshman year, Adam returned home to work for his father. Being in Hot Springs recharged his batteries for the fall of 1993, when he transferred to Henderson State University in Arkadelphia—the same college where Shawn had been on a football scholarship until he’d blown out his knee.