Mark WiedmerAccording to a Washington Post article from 2008, nearly 80 percent of Americans at that time believed miracles occurred and 92 percent believed in God or a universal spirit. More recent polls have found both of those numbers in decline, some surveys showing a drop of more than 10 percent in each of those areas.
But whatever your religious or spiritual beliefs this Easter morning, if you can find time to say a prayer for former NFL tight end Todd Heap and his family, such words surely would be appreciated.
If you’ve missed this horrible tragedy while carting your own kids about for Easter egg hunts or shopping for that perfect dress, necktie or pair of shoes for this morning’s church service, the 37-year-old Heap accidentally ran over his 3-year-old daughter on Friday while attempting to move his truck at the family’s Mesa, Ariz. home. She died a short time later after being rushed to the hospital.
As a proud father of two daughters, I’ve had a bowling-ball-sized knot in my stomach ever since I heard the news. How could such a tragedy happen? Where do the Heaps go to return even the slightest bit of normalcy to their lives? How do Todd and Ashley not only keep their marriage strong, but be the parents they need to be for their four other children ages 8 to 14?
What possible good can ever come from such an unfathomably heartbreaking death as this?
Or as the Baltimore Ravens – where Heap starred for 10 of his 12 NFL seasons – noted in a Saturday statement: “We cannot imagine the heartbreak and sorrow Todd and Ashley’s family feels right now. This is knee-buckling news and an overwhelmingly sad tragedy.”
And because this parental nightmare falls on Easter weekend – the one time of the year above all others that so many of us seek to embrace fully the ideals of hope and forgiveness and resurrection in all their various forms and functions – our spirituality understandably could be tested.
Even more than Christmas, this is the day all Christians are asked to hold tight to an unshakeable belief in a higher power and that power’s assumed grand gift to forgive all sins and shortcomings.
Maybe those of us who believe in such concepts are right to do so, and maybe we aren’t. Life’s complicated. Religions of all kinds require you to trust in something you can’t necessarily see or touch or validate. That’s why it’s called Faith.
But everyone, regardless of what you believe or don’t believe, surely can find a place in your hearts to pray for the Heaps today, just as we should just as fervently pray for all those in our own city who continue to senselessly lose their children, their siblings and their friends to the horror of gang violence, including children younger than Heap’s daughter.
And while the Heaps understandably may want no mention of their deceased daughter’s name in news stories regarding this tragedy, it seems a good time to remind our town of the six victims of the Woodmore Elementary School bus crash last November. Images of the once-bright smiles and forever lost potential of D’Myunn Brown, Zyanna Harris, Cordayja Jones, Zyaira Mateen, Zoie Nash and Keonte Wilson should never leave our hearts and minds. Nor should our demand for justice and safety reforms ever wane regarding that crash.
Yet from our darkest moments occasionally come our brightest dawns. For at the same time we grieve for the unspeakable pain being endured by the former Ravens tight end Heap, the sad passing of another Ravens tight end this past December brought new life and hope to Hall of Fame baseball player Rod Carew.
When 29-year-old Konrad Reuland died on Dec. 12 after suffering a brain aneurysm, his heart and kidney went to Carew, who was at the top of the donor list after dealing with life-threatening complications from a heart attack he suffered a year earlier.
In one of those you-can’t-make-this-up moments, Carew’s kids had gone to middle school with Reuland. Beyond that, Carew wore No. 29 as a player.
According to the Ravens’ website, when Reuland’s mother Mary met Carew last month, she greeted him with a big hug and said, “You’re part of our family now.”
Regardless of our religious or spiritual beliefs, we are all family, sharing the same earth, our lives either part of the problem or part of the solution for society’s future.
That the Heaps did so much to find solutions makes this worse. In 2007, Todd pledged $1 million toward a new pediatric center at what is now MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center. The Todd Heap Family Pediatric Center’s pediatric emergency department and 24-hour-a-day pediatrician staffing is the first of its kind in Baltimore County.
So on an Easter weekend hugely saddened by the Heaps’ tragedy here in the States, and tinged with fear by threats and unrest abroad, the words Heap spoke while being inducted into the Ravens’ Ring of Honor a few years ago now touch the heart more than ever.
“It’s all about family,” he said.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com