Friday, June 5, 2009

Chris DeBiase


*Chris is third from the right in sunglasses and white t-shirt. This picture was taken at the end of freshman year. So glad all of us could take a group picture.

This blog goes out to all of my Rollins family and friends who knew Chris Debiase. Chris was my best friend in college who died in a car crash the summer after freshman year. I just stumbled upon this blog that my friend Louis wrote about what really happened (no1 had any idea the true story) and decided to put it in a more public place so that more people can read this. It is a bit graphic and extremely hard to read if you knew Chris, but knowing that multiple people are alive today because they received his organs makes me feel as good as I can about this situation. Chris, I love you and miss you. I stayed in college for you and I know you are always there in spirit.

The Letter:

Today I received a text message asking me to meet with Chris' parents and take them to his tree and just explain what we did for him. This is what I found out from his parents.

Forgive the grammar, this came from an aim conversation.


A few weeks before Chris died he was at his apartment with one of his friends and they were tossing around Chris' cell phone. The phone was dropped and broke and was unable to be used and he lot all of his phone numbers.

The day that Chris was in his accident he unexpectedly left for work early because the restaurant he worked in was really slow and so he free and clear to leave. He decided to go to the verison store and have them upload his numbers onto his new phone. After that he was supposed to meet his ex girlfriend for lunch or dinner because they hadn’t seen each other in a while.

He got to the verison store and the lines were so fucking long that he said fuck it and left, figuring he would get the numbers another time. He was driving down a straight road, doing about 70 in a 45. In the right lane was a semi truck and he started to pass it, as he moved into the left lane and started to pass the truck, the truck turned into his lane. Maybe the driver didn’t see Chris, like a blind spot or something, they don’t know, it is under investigation at the moment. But the truck moved into his lane, he swerved into oncoming traffic but didn’t hit anyone. He cut the wheel so hard that he popped the curve on the other side of the road, flipped the car, rolled into and up the first tree and then reflected off that tree into a second tree. When the paramedics got there he was no longer breathing. They were able to revive him and keep him on life support, but the pressure to his brain was too much. So they cut open his skull to try and relieve it, but that didn’t work, the pressure just kept building. By the second day after the accident he was pretty much brain dead, and his parents decided it best to honor his wishes to be an organ donor if anything should ever happened to him. So two different people received a perfectly healthy kidney, someone got his lungs, another his liver, and yet another his heart. His parents were happy, as happy as parents can be in such a situation, that a little part of their son was able to largely affect the lives of so many people in such a large way.

They told me this after I walked with them from the chapel to behind Mckean, on the way I told them how I knew Chris and we just chatted a little. When we got to the tree I told them about the tree, how it is a bald cypress, the largest and tallest growing tree east of the Mississippi. How his tree was the first tree to be planted on lake Virginia as a restoration project for the lake, and then Katie and I left them alone for a minute with the tree.

I got through all of that, from the chapel and back again okay, like I wasn’t fine, but I could deal with it, but then they told me how he died and about his organs and I cried a little but I was okay, and then we said goodbye and i went back to ROC and just cried. I so wasn’t expecting to be doing this today.

His mother said that the police were basically looking to find the report that he had been on drugs or alcohol and that was why he crashed, but he wasn’t, and then they blamed it on speeding and that it was his fault, and finally they discovered that a truck had been there and forced him off the road. The driver denies everything.

Rest in Peace Chris

We love you.

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