The Sun Sentinel tells Brendan’s story

None of us who know Brendan will ever forget the moment when we heard about his accident. The tale of the ricocheting cars colliding on our familiar South Florida highway and the nightmare that began to unfold, and continues to evolve now, three years later.

Most of us remember Brendan this way -

Brendan’s wonderfully loving and dedicated family now cope with rehabilitating a son that is lost inside his own damaged brain, the result of a crash that broke bones in his face and leg and caused one of his lungs to collapse.  Brendan now lives in a nursing home in Ft. Lauderdale and remains in a vegetative state, or “waking coma.”

Sun Sentinel reporter Tom Collie and photographer Susan Stocker documented the day-to-day struggles that Brendan’s family deals with by compiling their information in a multimedia package to accompany the print story that ran as a special report in Sunday’s paper.  The package contained a cleanly edited five-minute video overview of Brendan’s story, with footage of his rehabilitation, home-video of Brendan before his accident and interviews with several friends and family members.  The most touching one comes from his mom, a cherished friend of the community surrounding my high school (everyone loves Mrs. James), who has remained by her son’s side to this day.  Readers can put themselves in her shoes by reading through the archive of e-mails she has sent over the years, providing detailed updates on Brendan’s condition.  They also included a click-through Flash diagram of different ways the brain can be damaged from excessive force from traumatic events like car accidents.

It would be difficult to remain un-biased in a critique of this package.  I was so pleased at the job the Sentinel did with the story of such a beloved friend.  By including the various multimedia features they did Brendan justice by using the right tools to tell his story in the most complete way.

(photos by Susan Stocker)