"ALIVE" by D. Scott Fritchen

Tad Melichar was a fraternity brother and Kansas State football player. He allowed me to write about him on September 17, 1996. I was informed Tad passed away on Wednesday, April 7, 2010. No details were given. Everyone has a story. This is Tad's story. This is a celebration of his life and I felt sharing it was the right thing to do. It had gone unpublished until now. Tad will be dearly missed and always remembered in the hearts of those who knew him.

"ALIVE"


Sitting on the bench in front of his locker, his heart racing while butterflies filled his stomach, Tad Melichar appeared surprisingly calm in the Kansas State locker room before his first college football game. His brow continued to grow moist two hours before kickoff, despite the comfortable temperature. With a wide closed-mouth grin tattooed on his face, he sat quietly in his gray sweat shorts and matching half-shirt while teammates, dressed more like young business executives than football players, continued to file into the locker room.

He talked to his neighbor, senior Kirby Hocutt, who was situating his navy-blue sport jacket on a hanger. Surely, he would provide some relief. He looked for fellow freshman and close friend Mike Bush to enter the ocean of purple and gray locker room carpet. He too, would be experiencing the same anxiety attack. Still no relief. Finally, the high-strung freshman linebacker closed his eyes, leaned back against the stained wooden locker for a second and began to sing to himself Pearl Jam's "Alive."

Is something wrong
she said
Of course there is
You're still alive
she said
Do I deserve to be
Is that the question. . .

He was relaxed. He was pumped.

Now everything made sense in this alternative world filled with comfort.

For a brief moment his levels of excitement and relaxation reached equilibrium. He tried to concentrate on the events of today, but in his mind the smell of fresh-cut grass and sight of Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder's raised neck veins generated a familiar electricity vacant to him since a year ago.

He was transported back to a time when he was a high school football player from Caldwell, Ks., destined to make it big.
- - -


Melichar arrived at K-State in Manhattan as a small town boy with a big-time future. He came to the city of 40,000 having dedicated the first 18 years of his life to farming and playing football for the rural town with a population of 1,500.

"Caldwell is your typical small town," he said. "You could be outside of town and get into an accident and before you could get back into town everyone would know about it. News flies around small towns."

His family was the typical farming family. His father, Albert, shared duties as a farmer with a 10-year stint as a chemistry professor at the neighboring community college. Tad watched him fix the family cars at an early age and eventually his father delegated daily chores to his son and daughter, Amy, enabling them to experience every facet of farm life.

"I learned a lot of things and I think it reflects on how I am today," Melichar said. "Responsibility-wise, I knew things needed to be done. Maybe it meant I couldn't go out that night because we had to work late, but we had to know our priorities.

"If I can be half the man my dad is, I'll be pretty successful."

His mother, Turi, is a first grade teacher whom he rode to school with until he reached high school. When he began playing high school football as a freshman, she gave her son the keys to the nicer of the family cars, a white Oldsmobile Delta 88, so he could get home from football practice at night.

Caldwell High School sat two blocks from Main Street., two country miles from the Melichar farm. It was inside those classrooms he built a strong educational foundation with some of the same teachers who taught his father 30 years ago. He and 13 others in his class had spent their entire lives together. His graduating class of 27 was considered a large class for Caldwell.

It was outside on the bleachers under the bright lights each Friday night from September to December that every town member screamed assiduous support for Melichar and 19 other football players. Caldwell had never had a team comprised of more than 20 players and was one of three brave schools in Kansas competing in 11-man football with fewer than the standard 45 players. They lined half the field to perform pregame exercises. Across the field, Melichar looked up to find the opponents occupied the other half of the field with five or six lines of players.

He wasn't intimidated by numbers.

"I wouldn't have it any other way," he said.

When opponents would tire after playing one side of the ball, Melichar remained seemingly fresh. He played every down, including duties as long snapper on field goals and extra points, but he didn't have to perform all the various on-field duties. He chose to. With each play came more determination, more adrenaline, and the growing sense of pride knowing he was playing every down. He didn't have to look at the sideline to know there was no one to come in and take his place.

His freshman season, he was 5 foot 10 and 145 lbs. one of the bigger players on the team. Caldwell finished the season 4-6.

Give it time, he thought. His time would come.

By his senior season in 1994, he was 6 foot 2 and 230 lbs., helping Caldwell to a 12-1 record. In his final game, Caldwell drove to within one yard of advancing against Stockton to the state championship. Stockton, a 2A powerhouse, was a team loaded with talent, but contained only half the heart of the outnumbered players lined across the field.

"I've been out of high school for three years now," he said, "I still think about why one play couldn't get across the line."

He still thinks about it sometimes at night.

It was outside, under the bright lights amid an always-packed stadium with family and friends, people he had farmed with, and perhaps a few strangers from early childhood whom he didn't know but nevertheless people who knew him better than he knew himself that he played his way into the hearts of the community. Children rushed to get autographs after games. When Melichar unhooked his helmet strap for the final time, he turned around to find he had become one of the top 50 Bluechip high school recruits. His name was listed among the best in Kansas football talent at the linebacker position. Most important to him, he had paved a road of football tradition for the little-known western Kansas town. As he looked forward, he was sure he had fulfilled his aspiration to play Division IA football.

However, the Stockton defeat coupled by a last-second buzzer-beater loss suffered in the 2A state basketball championship, led Melichar to remark, "I had a great senior year, but per se, it couldn't get any worse than that."

I changed by not changing at all. . .
Small town predict my fate. . .
Perhaps that's what no one wants to see. . .

It was a bone-chilling frigid morning of mid-February. There was snow deposited along the ditches of adjacent roads, while the dark soil of fields was blanketed by a lace of ice, drastically different than the sight in the months to come. Melichar drove to school along Bluff City Rd. in his Delta 88 with the heater on full blast.

It was just like a normal school day. He went through his classes and as usual had his homework completed for each one. However, right before lunch he was instructed to go to head football coach and Athletic Director Randy Sauyer's office.

He had received the call.

Melichar had been contemplating calling K-State back since his visit to Manhattan four months ago, when he witnessed the Wildcats' 21-7 victory over Oklahoma. He felt like they had rolled the red carpet out for him. He remembered how the coaches took time before the game and shook hands with all the recruits. He heard K-State running back coach and recruiter Ben Griffith's southern drawl as the short, curly brown-haired gentlemen introduced him to the staff. He felt at home and the atmosphere gave him an unavoidable adrenaline rush.

It was his first recruiting visit. Now he knows it should have been his last.

He visited University of Kansas in Lawrence, and polite as always, he kept a smile when the red carpet was replaced by scowls from fans and employees at the football office. He suddenly sympathized with his cows back home. He was a number.

"The coaches wouldn't even talk to you," he said. "It was right then and there I was going to K-State."

Griffith called his home once or twice a month. When he wasn't home, Griffith chatted with his parents.

Melichar didn't expect K-State to call with an offer. But when he arrived in Sauyer's office, the small box-shaped closet filled to the brim with art projects and stat sheets, Sauyer, a lifetime Wildcat fan, was all smiles. He handed Melichar the phone.

Griffith informed Melichar that K-State would like him to walk-on to its football program with the possibility of a scholarship the following year.

Melichar was ecstatic. He was a officially a Wildcat.
- - -


Melichar remembers his first night in Manhattan in early August just as vividly as any other nightmare. His family drove him and almost every worldly possession to Haymaker Hall on K-State's campus and then in the blink of an eye, they were gone for good.

"Needless to say, I was teary-eyed for sure," he says now.

For the first time in his life, he was alone. He knew no one. New atmosphere. He didn't know what to expect. His trips down Bluff City Rd. to get to school were finished. The world as he knew it the countless trips down Main St. in his friend's convertible and the bright lights of the stadium seemed like a blurred memory.

Worse yet, his new roommate was playing at the honorary Shrine Bowl for high school seniors, and even though all the freshmen players were arranged on the same dormitory floor, and most of the guys seemed friendly enough, Melichar felt he had nobody to talk to.

So he set two alarm clocks to ensure he'd wake up at 6 a.m., turned out the lights, laid in his new bed, stared at the ceiling and cried.

The next day was busy with physicals, meetings to learn team rules and regulations, a math test to determine math placement and finally more meetings.

Melichar remembers it being "very boring. Like being in class for eight to 10 hours."

However, he was excited at the opportunity to meet new friends, in particular a group of new recruits from Blue Valley North high school in Leawood, Ks. Mike Bush, Brian Nabours, Matt Lenz, Justin Swift, and Jason Duffy the "Blue Valley Boys," were a close-knit group who Melichar remembers he "envied because they had each other to fall back on, where I had no one." For some reason and Melichar still doesn't know why, considering their vast differences in lifestyle the group quickly accepted Melichar as a peer, and little did he realize it at the time, but they would be friends for life.

Within three days, Melichar's attitude had made a drastic change. His roommate, Mark Prestwood, had finally arrived and neighbors on his floor finally remembered his name.

"It was something that was the greatest thing in the world," he remembers. "It's so much better than having someone say, 'what's up' when you know they don't know your name. Being known is the best feeling in the world."

Besides just knowing people, Melichar was discovering a valuable lesson, once the upper-class players arrived for preseason practice: looks can be deceiving. The first day of practice, Melichar took a look at his comrades and felt like a child in a man's world.

"Gosh, I'm not as good as these guys," he said. "Everyone is twice as big as I am and twice as mature as I am. There is no way I can compete with these people."

He was scared. But after meeting many of the players, Melichar discovered that half of the recruits were walk-ons just like himself. They were scared to death. They thought they weren't any good either.

"You couldn't tell a walk-on from a scholarship player unless you asked," he said.

His neighbor in the locker room, Hocutt, a starting linebacker, sensed Melichar's uneasiness early on during the practices. Melichar felt comfortable asking him questions that become second-nature and almost insulting to most seasoned veterans: "Where does the laundry go" Hocutt would always go out of his way to be the first to say hi to him when he saw him off the field, and the first to poke fun at Melichar in drills.

The linebacker corps was a tight-knit family. They would die for one another on or off the field.

"I enjoyed them so much," he remembers. "They were a real special group. They helped me out so much."

Melichar established a great friendship with the group, which with K-State sideshow attraction Mike Ekeler, was a group that knew when to be serious and when to have fun. Besides realizing that having a high maturity level wasn't always a prerequisite to complete the job, Melichar's technique was steadily improving on the field.
- - -


"I had a good first day of school," Melichar says now, grinning from ear to ear.

It was 8 a.m. and he was already roaming the halls of the Military Science building at K-State, looking for his 8:30 a.m. speech class. He couldn't be late. Not for the first day of class. He couldn't find the room and began to panic. He checked his schedule. Is it the right day

Then he found the room and looked in the window and saw it was already packed full of students.

"Oh my gosh, I must be late," he thought to himself. He pushed open the door and immediately all eyes focused on the confused invader. His face turned a deep shade of scarlet

"Can I help you" the professor asked.

"Yes. I'm here for my 8:30 speech class," he said.

"Well, you're 15 minutes early," she said. "This is a 7:30 class."

Distraught, he hoped this was a first-day-of-school-oops-I-forgot-to-wear-underwear dream. Her lips moved in slow motion and as seconds that passed seemed to turn to minutes. Then hours. He glanced up into the crowd of puzzled expressions and spotted sophomore linebacker, DeShawn Fogle, smiling devilishly like the cat that swallowed the canary, his hands covering his eyes.

The class laughed at him.

"They just reamed me in practice that day," Melichar would remember with a chuckle. "It was a good ice-breaker."
- - -


Eddie Vedder's lyrics flowed through Melichar's head like the voice of a familiar friend. Melichar wiped his brow and sat up straight as coaches began their casual walk into the center of the Powercat painted on carpet in the locker room. All voices quieted to a considerate hush and Vedder's words halted their march.

Head coach Bill Snyder, known as the architect of K-State football tradition, took center stage and delivered his opening game speech for the debut of the 1994 season a general in a sweat suit, directing helmeted troops in purple fatigues into battle. The calmness in his voice caused ears to grab at his words like smoke signals so faint in the distance, but so significant that not to recognize one would ruin the effect. Everyone listened. Then the offensive coordinator, Dana Dimel, took the stand, followed by defensive coordinator Bob Stoops.

Then on cue, the lights dimmed. A K-State highlight video was played to the tune of "Right Now" by Van Halen. Veteran players concentrated with an occasional "Ohh!" venting from under their breath after each impressive play. Their focus was on images of perfection: leaping catches, head-decapitating blocking, graceful strolls to the end zone, a sack, another catch and another. The freshmen sat amazed. Stunned. Chills went up Melichar's spine as he remained astonished at the scene. He immediately thought of old times.

Melichar knew he wasn't going to play that day, yet watching the tape created such an adrenaline rush that he placed his pads on with the pride of a starter.

"All my life, I had never really been on the sideline," he said. "Knowing people were better than me was something I just had to learn to accept."

The players, dressed handsomely in purple garb, put on their helmets the final touch and headed toward the exit of the locker room, the entrance to the field. The passageway to collegiate stardom. It was an experience Melichar had witnessed countless times before on Saturday afternoons while watching college football, but one he couldn't identify with, until now.

"Having 40,000 people yelling was unreal," he remembers. "I couldn't even put it into words how big it felt big smile, the atmosphere. It just didn't feel like Division I. I couldn't believe I was alongside the players who I used to watch on television and think, 'This is what I wanna be. This is what I wanna be.'"

Melichar took his position on the sideline alongside the "Blue Valley Boys" and as they would all season long, they experienced the sideline theatrics together. They cheered. They talked. They debated over who would fetch water from the Gatorade cooler and then wondered if it was proper to steal drinks since they weren't playing. A player offered to place Melichar's helmet on the bench, but he declined. With his newfound adrenaline, he grasped the face mask tightly, if only for one play...
- - -


Melichar always possessed a good work ethic as a student, athlete, and part-time farmer. His parents were always proud of his efforts and never thought of compounding the pressure he already had put on himself.

Got a 90 percent on an exam

Get a 100.

Squat 350 lbs. during a morning workout

Better get 400 next time.

"There was no room for second place for me," he said.

There was an internal fear burning inside his soul. Never shortchange yourself. Be the perfectionist you always were.

Melichar was hardly seen at his dormitory, now moved to the seventh floor of Haymaker since the start of school. His structured schedule allowed little time for fun, with a normal day beginning before the K-State Collegian student newspaper was delivered, and concluding a little before the sports telecast on the evening news. The only evidence of Melichar's presence was the sound of Pearl Jam escaping under his dorm room door:

I. . . I. . . I'm still alive.
I. . . I. . . I'm still alive. . .
I. . . I. . . I'm still alive. . .

However, he thought it was important to meet his neighbors. He wanted to engage in conversation, to be able to relate to fellow freshmen and enjoy their stories and experiences. Although he loved his buddies on the field, he wanted casual relationships with other students who were experiencing his trials as a new face on campus. He wanted someone without a mouthpiece to hear his stories.

He was always tired. "I don't know what keeps me from going insane," he told one friend.

He began hanging out in the dorm more often than Farrell Library. He stumbled into his dorm room nursing bruises and crippled muscles from practice and watched a movie down the hall from his room.

"They let me hang out," he admits now.
- - -


Pearl Jam kept him going. The very tunes that once blasted in volume through his Walkman while riding in a squeaky-seated school bus en route to an away football game now kept him focused on life. Being raised in a highly religious family, Melichar believed in no higher power than God. The words can't be plainly explained. They just have an "effect" on him.

He still recalls the first time he heard the band play. It was on a night in 1991, while he was dragging Main Street. The voice singing the debut single, "Alive," was just so different. His voice seemed so mysterious. Baritone. So sincere. While most rock artists scream their lyrics, Vedder's voice drops octaves lower and included an addictive quality that captured Melichar's ear.

"I heard them, and knew they were my group," he says. "The music. . . it just touches me."

Pearl Jam was appropriate for any mood. If he was mad, it relaxed him. If he wanted to get pumped up, he could listen to it. The harmony of electric guitars cascaded through his veins while messages cleared his conscious.

"If I was addicted to a drug, it would be Pearl Jam," he says. "Eddie Vedder once said, 'Music means what you want to make it mean.' Music should help me."

Melichar had the opportunity to see Pearl Jam live once during high school. Melichar wanted to drive to Wichita to experience the feeling of Vedder's voice rattling through his chest. All his friends had tickets. Being the biggest fan of all, he didn't even make an attempt to attend. Oh, he had the opportunity to buy tickets although the concert sold out in 31 minutes, but he refused to ask his parents for permission. They didn't consider rock music to be good music. So he stayed home and listened to his friends talk about their awesome experience for many months to come.

"I'll see them sometime," he muttered with a sigh.

Pearl Jam played religiously in Melichar's room throughout his freshman year in college.

He continued hanging out with his dorm room friends on occasion, particularly on weekends after the game. Televisions were tuned into college football every Saturday and Melichar would leave the room. The voice of commentator Keith Jackson was beginning to wear thin on Melichar's nerves. He watched football religiously as a boy. Now he didn't view a televised football game his entire freshman year. Everything was football, school, football, school. The nights of practice became increasingly intense as the season wore to a close and the Pearl Jam lyrics became increasingly loud during the late hours of the evening.

Then Nebraska visited Manhattan with the largest attendance at a K-State football game. ABC was on hand, and a nationally-televised audience fulfilled the television market expectations. The biggest struggle the sidelined players endured was trying to attract television cameras. Players would flock toward the ball when it would spiral towards a receiver completing a sideline route, in hopes of helping a fallen receiver or defensive back on the sideline to their feet, in the process drawing the camera lens toward their uniforms.

During one play, a player fell right in front of Melichar and Bush on the sideline. Melichar helped the fallen player when a second player quickly joined in and asked, "Are we on television" Melichar smiled and responded, "You know we are."

Following the games, Melichar and the "Blue Valley Boys" always met their parents outside the locker room, and shortly after their departure from the front doors of Vanier football complex, would undoubtedly be hounded by children begging for autographs on shirts, hats, and footballs.

"I'd be thinking, 'Why do they want my autograph' We'd always joke about how many autographs we signed," Melichar said. "That was a neat feeling. They kinda looked up to you. Granted, they didn't know who you were, but you were part of the organization, so you were someone they looked up to."

The 'Cats finished their season 9-2, earning a berth to the Aloha Bowl to face Boston College. Melichar looked forward to the vacation after receiving a 4.0 carrying 13 hours his first semester of college. As always, Melichar and the "Blue Valley Boys" were daring each other to do mischievous deeds on the sideline. This time, under the unforgiving Hawaiian sun, the joke was to tap coach Snyder on the shoulder on the sideline and ask him for some sunscreen to protect a few sun-burnt faces and arms.

Everyone declined to take the dare.

No one was laughing after the game in the locker room. K-State lost, 12-7, summer drills would inevitably be hell and Pearl Jam was blaring on the flight back to the Midland.
- - -


"This year will be different," Melichar thought. The optimism expressed before the summer drills was unflagging following a summer of helping his father with the farm. Melichar didn't know if he'd be offered a scholarship, but he anticipated a shot at some playing time.

Besides working the farm, Melichar ventured into the Greek life at K-State when he joined Delta Upsilon fraternity. He enjoyed the year at Haymaker Hall, but the same home-like atmosphere that attracted him to K-State in the first place led him to join the fraternity late in the summer. He immediately acquired 89 brothers who cared about him and accepted him into their house based on his personal characteristics, not based on family income, religious beliefs, or living style.

"Coming into a new environment, you always are trying to figure out how to fit in," he says now. "I fit in being myself. When you feel like you don't have to impress anybody, you feel more comfortable around them.

"I've met some of the greatest people of my life here. These guys are very special to me, and guys I'll never forget."

With his new fraternity, Melichar was at odds with himself. He found himself wanting to be a normal college student. He didn't want to be a stranger like he was in the dormitory for half a year.

His motivation dropped once he arrived at Manhattan. He lost interest in practice and his work outs were lagging from the previous year. He often didn't really know why he was playing football. It was the game he studied so closely all his life; the game that had inspired his collection of 15,000 trading cards that he memorized and has hidden in a wooden chest he built as a kid; the game that surged through him with adrenaline each time the motivational video was displayed before kickoff.

It was the game he now hated.

He thought something was wrong with him. This couldn't be happening. Then one night, he read the poem, "The Guy In The Mirror" pinned up above his roommate's desk.

Then it struck him violently like the C chord on Vedder's guitar.

"The guy's looking at himself in the mirror and looking to see if he had lived his life to the fullest, or did he live for everyone else, just because that's what they said that's what you need to do, what you ought to do," Melichar said.

He remembers the praise he received constantly each Friday night for four years as a high school football player. Each word had meaning back then. Now, they're empty thoughts without content.

You're such a good athlete.

You're such a good leader.

The poem ends, "And your final reward will be heartache and pain if you cheated the man in the glass."

Football had indeed become a business. It had lost all its fun. Quitting the game would be the worst break-up he had ever suffered.

"It really hurt me, because the game I loved became the game I hate. I despised it," he said.

The signs were there all along, but he refused to listen. He thought perhaps his lack of interest in watching football on television stemmed from the hours of tape he viewed each week and the brutal practices each day.

"People would want to watch a game and I'd say, 'I could care less about watching that,'" he said.

He didn't want to watch football.

He didn't want to read about football.

He didn't want to talk about football.

And now, for the first time in his life, he didn't want to play football.

He dreaded going to practice.

"I'd be out there thinking, 'I hate this. I hate this,'" he said.

However, his smile never left his face on or off the field.

"I was turning one of the greatest things in my life into something I just hated," he says now. "I needed to get out of it. I didn't know if I was playing for myself, or I was playing because someone expected me to play, because I was supposed to be a small town hero that made it in the big time."

He was full of emotions and afraid to unload all of them onto one man's soul. However, he knew he wasn't playing for himself anymore. He knew that was completely wrong. He continued going through the practice and working out motions. Pearl Jam was blaring every night. He contemplated quitting every minute of the day, the feeling tore like the most heated heartburn, but it wasn't until bed time, when he was all alone staring at the ceiling, that the emotions intensified.

Then one night he decided to end his life.

I don't question
our existence
I just question
our modern needs

Tad Melichar still doesn't know quite what stopped him from taking his life that fateful night.

"Why am I living" he'd ask himself. "Why am I doing any of this I will never know. I came so close. I knew what I wanted to do. I came so close to doing it. What kept me from doing it I will never know. I came so close, day in and day out. It was so wrong. What I was doing. I was living for everyone else. Why even go on."

He is sitting in a cushioned dark blue chair in the chapter room of Delta Upsilon, admitting this. His face is again scarlet, in deep contrast to his medium-length dark brown hair trimmed handsomely around the ears and tapered in the back. His dark eyes remain focused, with tears rolling off his rounded cheeks while he fights to keep a smile.

Something stopped him.

Melichar was a blessed soul with talents beyond definition. Everyone was fooled by his constant smile, but inside he was hurting. A lot of people didn't understand his problem. He had everything going for him. But internally, his mind always created questions: Am I living for everyone else not just people in Caldwell but everyone I've ever met because I can't let them down. I'm Tad Melichar. I didn't drink. I didn't smoke. The pressure was to great. I couldn't let people down.

"That's what I strived to do in college, but there were things I wanted to do," he says. "But then I'd ask myself what people would think if they knew."

Everyone in a small town knew.

"And so I was thinking, 'This is a joke. My life is a big joke,'" he continues. "I've always had a determination to do things the best. But what do I do these things for"

He knows ending his precious life would have hurt a lot of people.

"I found there are so many things to live for and I found I can make myself happy," he says. "Just meeting people, just being with people. I enjoy doing things. There are so many things to do.

"Worrying about what other people think of you is the worst thing you can ever do, because you're not even living at all."

"What are you worrying about" he'd think.

"You're wasting your time."

Melichar officially quit football five days before school started, the day after two-a-day practices were completed for the summer.

Two weeks after Melichar quit football, he had the Pearl Jam logo tattooed on his right thigh. It is a picture of a stick figured man, with his arms jetted high above his head and his head looking toward the sky.

He bought it not because of the music, like many chose to believe, but to symbolize strength.

"It's getting through a time in your life when you didn't think you could make it," he says. "Things were stacked against you. Things were bad, bad, bad. I look at that and see the guy looking up at the sun as if he's victorious. No matter how bad things might get in my life, if I can make it though my freshmen year, I can make it through anything.

No one in Caldwell knows about the tattoo, including his parents. Melichar was wrong; not everyone in small towns knows everything after all.

Melichar didn't attend a K-State football game throughout the 1995 season until October 21, when Nebraska played K-State.

He didn't want to see it. He didn't want to deal with it. But he was curious to see the 'Cats biggest game of the season. He stood in the student section in the stadium with his fraternity brothers and cheered as loudly as any other fan.

Inside, he was missing his friends. Most of all, he had fallen back in love with the game.

He went to his linebacker coach, Jim Leavitt the week after the Nebraska game.

"Maybe I'm ready to come back."

And he who
forgets. . .
Will be destined
to remember. . .

Melichar rejoined the Wildcats in the middle part of November. He began lifting at the football complex, in his mind knowing this was a choice he was making. He was doing this for himself. He felt comfortable coming back for winter conditioning following the close of the 1995 season. He built himself into the best condition of his life. He remembered the defense. He felt like things were going great.

Then one day during spring training, a paralyzing pain shot throughout his neck and shoulders as he made contact on a hit. He remained on the ground for 30 seconds, fighting to bring his numbed fingers to life. Then suddenly, the pain halted just as it had arrived.

Melichar suffered from "stingers," a condition caused from the sudden impact of the head onto another object, namely someone's chest during practice. Leavitt said he wasn't strong enough. Give it some time. "You're neck's not built enough," he said. Melichar kept playing, determined to keep his dream of playing alive. However, the reoccurring problem refused to stop, even after his body was so heavily padded and taped that he couldn't move his neck while in pads.

"It was a helpless feeling," Melichar says. "You never think about getting hurt, but you lay there and think that something's wrong when things like this are happening."

Melichar suffered four to five stingers a day, each blow striking a pain in the left shoulder and carrying over the neck to the right shoulder. It became really frustrating.

"I'd keep thinking, 'Is this the one that' really going to mess me up" He began second-guessing himself. Rehabilitation didn't work, yet Melichar told doctors and coaches he was alright because he hated being hurt. He hated being on the sideline.

It got worse.

Team doctors consulted with Melichar, pleading for him to stop abusing his body. Although there wasn't a big chance any permanent damage would occur, the possibility existed. Melichar thought about his hands. He needed those to be a surgeon.

Finally, the doctors and Leavitt sat down with Melichar and his parents in the office and explained the diagnosis. The question was: was he willing to take that chance

Melichar left the meeting fighting back the tears. His parents were supportive of his decision.

"It really hurt to give it up the second time, because this time it wasn't my choice. It was a medical choice," he says. "It was kind of like it was taken from me. That's what hurt the most. It was the smartest choice."

Melichar sits in the blue chair and stares at the wall. Then he arises and walks to his room in the fraternity house. In his room, Pearl Jam's new song "In My Tree," from their new "No Code" album, fills the room. He is proud of his 20-disc Pearl Jam collection, which he has collected and hidden in his desk drawers like his football cards years ago. On the bulletin board above his desk hangs quotes, neatly typed out in a Calligraphy font: "Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have," "Every man dies, not every man lives," "NEVER QUIT," "We are not of those who draw back. Hebrews 10:39. A Smashing Pumpkins ticket stub from the July 20 concert in Kemper Arena in Kansas City is pinned up, along with several pictures of Melichar and his fraternity brothers. On the ceiling, hangs a poster of Eddie Vedder in a t-shirt, leaning back grasping a microphone, while his shoulder-length hair is highlighted by red lights. The veins in his neck really do stick out.

Melichar opens up his backpack and with a big smile on his face, pulls out a ticket.

"This will cost me some money, but it's something I have to do before I die," he says, admiring the slip of paper. "This is my chance to do it."

It is a Pearl Jam ticket to the September 28 and 29 concert in New York City. Melichar has never been to New York and doesn't know what to expect, but he plans to stay with his cousin and enjoy his weekend of fate to its fullest.

Currently, Melichar is training for the 9-mile Tulsa Marathon in October. He has run the last few weeks and is now up to three miles. His goal is to increase a mile every week. He hates running, but it is something he has to do.

It is his choice.

Melichar pulls out a pad of paper. Listed are activities like bungi jumping, sky diving, paintball war, scuba diving, taekwondo, white-water rafting, hiking and mountain biking, repelling, street biking, and water skiing.

"This is my list of things to do before I end college," he says. Number 11 on his list, dropped to the last line of the page and written in blue pen opposed to black reads: "11. See Pearl Jam live."

Melichar, a biology and pre-med major, still shows unbridled success in the classroom. With a 3.8 GPA, he wants to attend medical school at the University of Kansas when he graduates in a year. He will take his first entrance exam in April.

He hunts for the light switch to turn off his desk lamp, hanging directly over his old football name plate that hung over his locker.

He pauses.

"It was the smartest choice but it wasn't my choice," he said. "Football was taken from me and that's the hardest part."





D. Scott Fritchen
Powercat Illustrated
GoPowercat.com
fritch@spiritstreet.com