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Van Pelt Suffering All Alone
The Denver Post Feature Story
Dec. 16, 2001
By Natalie Meisler FORT COLLINS, Colo. - Win or lose, good game or bad this season, Bradlee Van Pelt talked to reporters long after his Colorado State teammates hurried to greet awaiting friends and family. Van Pelt never rushed, no matter how many friends milled around the parking lot outside Hughes Stadium. The one person Van Pelt wanted to see most, older brother Justin, couldn't be there. He never would see CSU's quarterback play a college game. No sense sprinting out of the locker room just to see a photograph at home. Justin Van Pelt, 23, died in the basement of a friend's rented house in Lafayette the morning of June 7 from a lethal combination of alcohol and diazepam (Valium), "multiple drug toxicity," according to the Boulder County Coroner's office. "I hope everyone learned you have to watch out," Bradlee Van Pelt said. "Some will learn. Some won't. I think he took one for the team." The tragedy occurred nearly three months before Bradlee took his first collegiate snap. Bradlee never discussed the pain he played with this past season publicly and rarely with teammates and coaches. Outwardly, he portrayed the fun-loving persona of a quarterback skateboarding down the athletic department hall, the fan favorite for autographs and the team's charismatic on-field leader. While Van Pelt helped lead his team to the New Orleans Bowl Tuesday, inwardly he played with an unspeakable emotional pain, filled with what-ifs that might haunt him for a lifetime. He vows to use the pain he has felt in a positive way. "Losing my brother, I'm going to turn it into a motivational thing," he said. "I'm not going to let it disrupt me. When I think about him, it gives me motivation I could do anything." Stranded in Lafayette His car was in the shop. His brother and brother's friends called Bradlee to get down to Boulder. It was June 6. Justin was binging on drugs. Justin had been in an accident while riding his bicycle in late May. Without funds or insurance to treat the broken rib and broken hand, Justin resorted to his own pharmaceutical means to cope. In early June, most football players are gone from campus. Van Pelt didn't have anyone to call to borrow a car. He didn't make it to Boulder. Justin died the next day. "My dad told me, 'Maybe you would have picked him up and he would have died anyway,' " Van Pelt said. "I don't want to live with the fact I know I could not pick up my brother. I'd rather have the guy die in my arms than die in someone's house on the couch." The friend who placed the 911 call, Edward Benton, is free on $10,000 bond awaiting trial in Boulder District Court next month on six counts of possession of marijuana and controlled substances and possession with intent to sell, according to court records. Bradlee Van Pelt, meanwhile, hid his hurt from the public and vented his rage working out. He hit the weight room with a vengeance not usually seen in a quarterback. Struggling with his throwing after two years of sitting out of competition, the sophomore started the season as a backup. Four games into the season, after the coaching staff already had asked him to switch positions, Van Pelt earned the starting quarterback job and helped lead the Rams to four wins in their final five games and a berth in the New Orleans Bowl. He still doesn't have his car. Van Pelt has spent months battling the dealership - Dellenbach Motors, a longtime CSU sponsor - in court. He blames the dealership for not having his car ready in time to get to Boulder. "That's why I'm bitter. I'm learning to live with it," he said. "I take my anger about my brother and the car and put more into football. That guy wanted to watch me play football. "Now that the season's over, I'm not afraid to talk about it. I lived a fairy tale on the field. Outside, I've never had a tougher time." Part of Van Pelt's fury came from not having his car. His problem started as a knock in the engine, a miscommunication and dispute over a bill, and escalated from there. Van Pelt took his car in to be fixed early last summer. The car is still in the dealership parking lot. Van Pelt sued Dellenbach Motors over dispute of the bill, and failure to get his car back, and was awarded $64,000. The dealership appealed. He hasn't collected anything. Mike Dellenbach, owner of Dellenbach Motors, declined to comment other than saying the dealership failed to respond promptly when Van Pelt sued. "We didn't reply in a timely matter. We offered a settlement, then it got into court." Finally building a bond Bradlee Van Pelt is the third of four sons born in five years to ex-New York Giants all-pro linebacker Brad Van Pelt and Susan, his ex-wife. Justin was the oldest. As youngsters, Bradlee and Justin shuttled between their mom's home in Santa Barbara, Calif., and their dad's home in Michigan. Bradlee transferred from Michigan State to CSU in the summer of 2000, and reunited with Justin, who had moved to Boulder with friends. The brothers started to heal their rift, an outgrowth of Bradlee's disdain for his brother's lifestyle. Bradlee was the most athletically gifted of the brothers. Former Santa Barbara San Marcos coach Roger Kuntz, now the volleyball coach at Middle Park High School, said, "Justin was very talented, but he lacked Bradlee's drive and focus." As much as he loved his brother, Bradlee doesn't mince words about his anger at Justin's choices to abandon organized sports and school. But in the year they had lived together in Colorado he came to appreciate Justin as a person, as much as he abhored his drug use. "You think people who have problems with drugs, they're just bad people," Van Pelt said. "Justin got up and he worked his butt off. Everyone liked him. You wouldn't ever know that he had a problem with drugs. "He never graduated from high school and got into drugs early. Basically he partied too much. When you go over the edge you go into a zone and don't know what you're doing. I wouldn't agree with all the things he did. One of the interesting things about accepting him for who he was, was the bonding. I didn't condone what he did." Surrounded on a team with three sets of brothers, Van Pelt said: "I was so excited to have a brother here. He'd be at all my games. Finally we opened up. It's amazing how once he died so many people told me 'He's such a good guy.' " The characterization was upheld by Tammie Johnson, the manager of the Buff Restaurant, where Justin Van Pelt worked for a year. "There wasn't anyone who knew him who wasn't his friend," she said. The manager, a de facto mom to her young staff, said Justin never was late for a 6 a.m. shift. "He was a respectful kid. If something needed to be done I could ask Justin and I knew it would get done," she said. Jeremy Parmenter, a waiter who worked with Justin, said, "He was a great guy. I thought it was cool that someone's brother was a starting (Division I-A) quarterback." Making his own name Van Pelt wasn't anointed the starter until the fourth game. He had rapidly closed the gap with incumbent sophomore D.J. Busch in the spring game but couldn't pull ahead in the fall. Not having played a game since his senior year in high school, Van Pelt needed to overcome two years of rust after attending Michigan State, and then transferring. And, his running style didn't fit completely with CSU's long-established drop-back, rollout scheme. For all his swagger on and off the skateboard around campus, he had to work on his football confidence. "I can pass the ball, it's developing confidence in myself," he said. "I had two years where I didn't work on mechanics." While trying to fight through his problems throwing the ball, Van Pelt was battling his despair over his brother. "I tried to act normal, (but) I was crazy at times," he said. He was the one who had to call his parents at opposite ends of the country to tell them of Justin's death. The CSU coaches raced off the golf course to comfort him once they found out. "I can't imagine going through something like that," offensive co-coordinator Dan Hammerschmidt said. "He did a great job bouncing back (emotionally). He's a tough sucker. He overworked himself. He was in the weight room all the time, he'd go throw balls for three hours if there was someone to throw to." CSU coach Sonny Lubick said: "It was a big shock for him. He handled it as well as you can possibly handle something like that. All we could do is give him moral support." Hammerschmidt was on the verge of naming Van Pelt the starter near the end of fall practice. All that was left was the one major preseason scrimmage. Come through that, and Van Pelt would start. He fell apart. Busch was named the starter. After the second game, though both quarterbacks were struggling, the coaches asked Van Pelt to consider a switch to the injury-depleted running back position. He refused. Instead, he stayed after practice to work on his passing. For as much as the starting job meant to him, he seemed unruffled. "Things were bad but, hey, I'd seen worse days," he said. When CSU's offense bogged down in the Mountain West opener against San Diego State, Van Pelt was summoned from the bench and led the Rams to their lone score, enough to win him the starting job. He kept it. Though he was erratic, he kept getting better, playing well enough for CSU to win four of its final five games. He threw for 1,247 yards and ran for 546. A young man who grew up as "Brad Van Pelt's son" was making his own name. That father was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame last week. Bradlee, meanwhile, tied for MWC newcomer of the year honors in one newspaper poll. "It's not the Hall of Fame but you've got to start somewhere," Bradlee Van Pelt said. "It's like we said about the New Orleans Bowl, I really think we should be playing Southern Cal in Las Vegas, but you got to start somewhere."
Now that's he started, he's not looking to stop anytime soon, not as long as he honors his brother's memory.
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