Leslie Lanahan’s heart breaks as her son’s friends return to college for the fall semester.
It was a year ago that she left her 18-year-old son, Lynn “Gordie” Bailey, at the University of Colorado to begin his life as a college student. Only a month later, Bailey got drunk at a fraternity initiation and passed out. He never regained consciousness.
“I would say for easily the first three or four months (afterward) … I was just totally numb,” Lanahan said from her home in Dallas. “And it has been particularly difficult in the last month with kids all going back to college and my numbness going away. … And the way I look at it is, what a completely preventable death this was.”
In Boulder and Fort Collins, the 2004-2005 school year was overshadowed by a September fortnight when Colorado State University sophomore Spady and Bailey drank themselves to death. Their cases generated significant publicity about the dangers of binge drinking and calls for reform.
Spady had an electric smile and a special way of reaching out to people. Gordie, as his buddies called him, was known for his loyalty to friends and playful ways.
Others who knew the pair only in death joined family and friends to launch foundations and education programs.
Together, they have spent the past year trying to remind every young person that drinking too much booze can kill you.
Kris Roggensack doesn’t let his friends just sleep it off when they pass out.
He shakes them, checks their breathing every minute – just in case.
A year ago, Roggensack walked into a hangout room in his fraternity house and saw a blond girl facedown on the floor. He went over to her to see if she was OK. He touched her leg – it was stiff.
He learned later it was Spady, one of his best friends.
Finding Spady’s body, he says, “was the roughest thing I ever had to go through.”
Spady consumed up to 40 drinks before she passed out in the Sigma Pi house. Roggensack wasn’t there during her last hours but partied with her earlier that day.
He wishes he and his fraternity brothers had known the signs of alcohol overdose: slow breathing, cold hands, bluish skin. He wishes they had realized drinking too much is deadly.
Roggensack, Darren Pettapiece and Kyle Ballew have made it their mission not to let anyone forget Spady. The Sigma Pi brothers have handed out about 35,000 wallet-size cards listing the warning signs of alcohol poisoning. They call their program the “Ace of Spades.”
A spade on the front of the card is entwined with a ribbon of bright blue – the color of Spady’s eyes.
“She was an amazing girl,” Roggensack said. “She was like a sister to us.”
The fraternity brothers also have channeled their grief into organizing the Sam Bam Jam, a sober concert from 3 to 9 p.m. Sunday in Fort Collins’ Old Town Square. Instead of beer, partyers will get bottles of water listing the symptoms of alcohol poisoning.
The fraternity lost its charter after Spady’s death, but the brothers’ mission has kept them together “through hard times and good times,” Roggensack said.
The former Sigma Pi brothers don’t expect college students not to drink. They just want them to act responsibly.
“I think all of us, and the whole university, has changed,” Pettapiece said. “You take a step back and look at what happened. Alcohol can kill you.”
“THERE IS DESIRE TO CHANGE AMONG A LOT OF DIFFERENT GROUPS ON CAMPUS.”
Eric Scanniello, Gordie Bailey’s fraternity brother
As one of Bailey’s fraternity brothers, Eric Scanniello has had to do a lot of explaining this past year.
He tries to explain that Bailey’s death was an accident. He tries to explain he was studying biochemistry on the night Gordie died. He tries to explain that he and his friends aren’t a bunch of cruel and careless people.
Bailey was taking part in a Chi Psi initiation ritual when he died. The pledges were given largevast amounts of cheap wine and whiskey. Bailey’s body was found in the fraternity house early on the morning of Sept. 17, 2004.
Since then, Scanniello and others have been bombarded with a simple question: How could this have happened?
“Everyone comes up to me and is always asking me, ‘Well, you were a part of it,”‘ said Scanniello, who is from Boulder. “And I’ve got to explain myself because my parents’ friends are here. It’s tough.”
Police criticized the fraternity brothers because they had “lawyered-up” – half the members refused to cooperate with an investigation. Then, Gordie’s father revealed that someone had used markers to write vulgarities on the pledge after he passed out.
Boulder’s Chi Psi chapter was dissolved, and 12 brothers pleaded guilty to a charge of providing alcohol to someone under age.
Several of Gordie’s former fraternity brothers have formed an alcohol-awareness group called G.O.R.D. (Guidelines and Objectives of Responsible Drinking, gordcolorado.com ), and Scanniello is teaching this year’s freshmen classabout the dangers of alcohol.
“I don’t think there has been change, but there is desire to change among a lot of different groups on campus,” said Scanniello, now a senior.
It’s an uncomfortable subject , but he said he and his friends are determined to prevent another tragedy.
“When it does come up, I try my best to describe … what we are doing now,” he said. “But there’s probably always going to be assumptions made about us, just probably because of the way it came out in the press …
“When you think of a Chi Psi, you probably don’t think of him as a very good person in Colorado.”
A coroner’s point of view
“IT’S PROBABLY ONE OF THE CASES I WON’T EVER HAVE A CHANCE TO FORGET ABOUT.”
Dean Beers, coroner investigator
Dean Beers was expecting to find a guy when he was called to investigate a body at a fraternity house the evening of Sept. 5, 2004.
When the coroner’s investigator walked into the second-floor room and saw 19-year-old Spady, he was crushed.
“A person who is happy-go-lucky one minute and dead the next is literally a completely different body lying there.”
Beers worked through the night to find out exactly what happened to Spady. He talked to her parents several times. He still feels the ache of that first phone call.
The Spadys were vacationing in the Ozarks, and a police officer told them of Spady’s death. Then Beers was on the phone.
The moment is a blur now. Beers can’t remember which parent he was talking to; he just wanted to make sure he said the right things.
He promised he would find out exactly how Spady died.had.
Beers usually doesn’t talk much about his job when he’s at home, but this time, his stepdaughters – one a year younger and one a year older than Spady – needed to hear how she died.
“It was just one of those times when you had to let them know what was going through my mind,” he said.
It was days before Beers could tell the Spadys, who live in Nebraska, for certain that alcohol killed their daughter. Her blood-alcohol level was .436 percentcq. t assaulted or injured, he assured them.
Rick and Patty Spady created a foundation (samspadyfoundation.org.) to educate youths about binge drinking. Beers stays in touch with them, a rarity in his line of work.
“It’s probably one of the cases I won’t ever have a chance to forget about,” he said.
“WE’RE NOT OUT THERE TRYING TO STOP KIDS FROM PARTYING. WE ARE KIDS WHO PARTY … BUT IT IS ABOUT DOING IT IN A RESPONSIBLE MANNER.”
Anthony Rossi, emergency medical technician and staffer at Greek parties
Anthony Rossi became angry when he heard how Bailey died.
“If one of these fraternity members just knew how to identify alcohol poisoning, this guy would not be dead,” he said.
Rossi, a premed student, fraternity founder and certified emergency medical technician, figured he could do something about this. He came up with the idea of staffing Greek parties with trained medical volunteers.
Now that he has graduated, Rossi is working with about 40 trained volunteers and another 60 or so untrained students this fall who want to help with Student Emergency Medical Services (SEMS, semsf.org ). Rossi started a foundation and hopes to expand the model beyond Boulder.
The group has worked several parties, getting one person who drank too much to the hospital.
“People at the party, they don’t want to believe that this person is a special situation,” he said. “Everybody says, ‘Well it’s just another drunk person.’ But that’s the whole problem. … That’s why people are dying.”
Rossi said he is constantly fighting fears that he will get people in trouble.
“We’re not out there trying to stop kids from partying,” he said. “We are kids who party … But it is about doing it in a responsible manner.”
“MY GOAL IS THAT IN FIVE YEARS, IT WILL NO LONGER BE A COOL THING TO ENCOURAGE YOUR FRIEND TO GUZZLE TONS AND TONS OF ALCOHOL.”
Leslie Lanahan, Lynn “Gordie” Bailey’s mother
For Lanahan, the anniversary of her son’s death will bring her to Boulder for the first time since before he started class.
“I’ve had such bad feelings about it all. It might actually help me and make me feel a little better about his time out there.”
Bailey’s family has spent the past year setting up the Gordie Foundation (thegordiefoundation.org) , which encourages young people to keep an eye on their friends.
“We can’t take on the alcohol industry,” Lanahan said. “We can’t prevent kids from drinking. …What ends up happening is you get this pinpoint focus on taking care of your friends and just spreading that word.”
When you’re a parent, Lanahan says, perhaps it’s all you can ask for – a little caution, a little restraint, a little hope.
“My goal is that in five years, it will no longer be a cool thing to encourage your friend to guzzle tons and tons of alcohol,” Lanahan said. “And that no one will be allowed to die alone on a couch.”
Staff writer George Merritt can be reached at 720-929-0893 or gmerritt@denverpost.com.
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-820-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
