Eric the Red
Team HuskerBoard
Berringer's memory lives on
Ten years after his death, former Nebraska quarterback Brook Berringer is recalled as a good friend whose quiet spirit lives on in his hometown of Goodland, Kansas.
By BRIAN ROSENTHAL | Lincoln Journal Star
GOODLAND, Kan. — Jim McKee brings pictures. About a half-dozen photo album pages filled with pictures. It’s just a sampling from six scrapbooks.
When you’ve never really shared your close Brook Berringer stories — especially with total strangers — photos are a good place to start.
Advertisement
McKee passes them around the kitchen table in Berringer’s boyhood home. It’s a calm, warm spring Saturday morning in northwestern Kansas. If you’re a farmer, it’s a day probably better suited for spraying fields than storytelling. But McKee happily obliges and provides live captions for each candid shot.
There’s one of Brook with the entire McKee family — Jim, Judy, Jayme, Jake, Janel, Jara, Janae and Jance. There’s one of Brook with many of the McKees at Nebraska football photo day in Lincoln, Brook’s freshman year. A local TV station featured the group in a story broadcast that evening.
And there’s one of Brook, standing before the front door, with a duffel bag strapped over his shoulder.
McKee and Jan Berringer, Brook’s mother, look at the photo and smile as they point out the contents of the duffel bag. Jance, then just a toddler, appears tucked away, his head poking out, a big grin on his face.
Now a sophomore at Brewster High School, about 30 miles east of Goodland, Jance is active in sports. Because he had just transferred, he couldn’t play football last season. A shame, really, because Brewster, an eight-man team, loves to throw the football. And Jance, according to his dad, can toss the ball quite a ways, and pretty accurately.
Brook taught him how to throw a football.
“And you can still see it,” Jim said.
n n n
Jake McKee isn’t sure why he stayed home from school that day.
He and his father had planned on leaving that Thursday to get an early start on their weekend trip to Lincoln. They were going to watch the Nebraska spring game and visit Brook.
But Jim had farming duties to tend to, and they postponed their trip a day. Jake, a senior at Goodland High, stayed home anyway. He didn’t have a good reason. He just stayed home.
He was still asleep at 8 in the morning when his mother, Judy, before leaving for an errand, poked her head in Jake’s bedroom. “Keep an eye on your brother,” she said.
Jance, then 5 years old, eventually crawled into bed with his older brother. The phone rang.
“I don’t know why I did this, but I told Jance to go get the phone,” Jake said. “It was Brook. I remember laying in bed listening to them have a conversation on the phone.”
Jance brought the phone into the bedroom, and Jake and Brook talked. It wasn’t a long conversation. Jake told Brook they’re coming to Lincoln a day later than planned.
“I remember Brook said he may go flying,” Jake said. “He said, ‘See you tomorrow,’ ” and hung up the phone.
“The weird thing is, I would’ve never let Jance answer (the phone). I don’t know why I did.”
The news spread quickly later that day. A small plane had crashed near Lincoln. It was reported that Brook was aboard. There were no survivors.
Jake said he can count the number of times he’s seen his father cry. That day was one. Jim hugged Jake and told him he’d lost a son. That was OK with Jake, because to him, Brook was a brother.
As the McKees — all eight of them — mourned together, one eerie fact quickly surfaced. They discovered that each one of them had spoken with Brook earlier that day.
Even little Jance.
n n n
It’s been nearly 10 years since the J-3 Piper Cub airplane that Brook piloted crashed northwest of Lincoln. Tobey Lake, the brother of Brook’s girlfriend, Tiffini, also died. The date was April 18, 1996, only two days before Brook had expected to be chosen in the NFL Draft.
Nebraska mourned. The state grew to love Brook, a Kansas boy, like an adopted son.
Play quarterback at Nebraska, come off the bench to lead the Huskers to a national championship, then go back to the bench as the Huskers win another title, and, well, you’re hero status across the state. The fact Brook was a handsome, likeable, honorable man who didn’t seem to know a stranger added to his lore.
“What you saw with Brook is what you got. He didn’t put on a face,” said Brad Wells, a close friend and college roommate of Brook. “Just a great, great guy, with great integrity, great values. Just a true character.”
The outpouring of support was tremendous. Jan received 10,000 pieces of mail, most of it from Nebraska fans. One letter was addressed, “Brook’s Mom, Goodland, Kansas,” and arrived with all the others. Thousands filled Max Jones Fieldhouse in Goodland for a funeral that lasted three hours and was broadcast locally on radio.
In the days, weeks and months that followed, everyone shared Brook stories. But not once in the past decade has Jim McKee spoken publicly about his father-son like relationship with Brook, whose natural father, Warren, died of cancer when Brook was 7.
McKee turned down numerous interview requests shortly after Brook’s death. He’s mentioned, but not quoted, in “One Final Pass,” the book Jan Berringer helped write with author Art Lindsay. The five-year anniversary of Brook’s death passed without comment from McKee to the media.
The soft-spoken McKee is still somewhat guarded in how much he shares. He chooses his words carefully as he tries to explain his special relationship with Brook, whom he met through his daughter Jayme.
“It was just a real personal experience,” McKee said. “I felt like what he and I had ... was not to be talked about again.”
Said Jake McKee: “Their relationship will never fully be known by me. And I’m his own kid.”
In fact, not even Brook’s mother fully understood, McKee said, until he began sharing stories with Jan after Brook’s funeral. Jan had known the McKees, who farmed near Goodland, because Brook dated Jayme in high school. But beyond that …
“We were his getaway, and we just left it that way,” Jim McKee said. “Nobody really knew about it.”
Of course, the 15,000 acres of McKee land were like heaven for Brook, an avid outdoorsman. Anyone who spent a lot of time with Brook probably has a hunting story to tell, whether it be about calling coyotes, falling in a creek bed while chasing turkeys … or even risking a new fishing pole on a stupid snapping turtle.
Gathering cattle, roping steers, driving semis, running the combine, helping with wheat harvest. Brook was part of it all on the McKee farm. He was a part of the family.
Football? A small part of the conversation, usually. But Jim and Brook talked on the phone four or five times a week when Brook was in Lincoln, and those talks inevitably turned to football. When Brook learned he’d lost the starting quarterback job to Tommie Frazier prior to the 1995 season, he called Jim.
“There were a lot of issues with him and football,” Jim said. “There were a lot of things he had a hard time dealing with.”
McKee especially remembers one of Brook’s last phone calls, about four days before the plane crash.
“It was basically a thank-you phone call,” McKee said. “He said, ‘I want you to know I love every one of you.’
“He had never, ever said anything like that before.”
n n n
A medium-sized red Nebraska flag flies just above the ground of Brook’s gravesite, in a cemetery on the north edge of Goodland.
The flag first appeared not long after Brook’s funeral. When it eventually became torn and tattered, Jan decided to replace it. She purchased a new flag during her next Nebraska trip, but when she returned to the cemetery, the old flag had already been replaced.
Somebody has continued to replace it every year. To this day, Jan says she has no idea who. She turns to Jim as she’s re-telling this story, and asks him if he knows. Jim shakes his head.
Pheasant feathers, gun cartridges, notes to Brook, Nebraska sweatshirts and Nebraska ball caps have also been left on Brook’s grave. Jan tells the story of a trucker who parked his rig on a nearby highway and walked about a quarter-mile to the cemetery, asking cemetery workers where he could find Brook Berringer’s grave. Jan has had strangers come to her home and stand in the front yard to take pictures of Brook’s house. One such occasion led to a two-hour conversation on the front patio. They, of course, were Nebraska fans.
“You can’t live in Nebraska and not know who Brook Berringer is,” said Jake McKee, who also played football at Nebraska and now lives in Omaha.
“In fact, every conversation I have when I introduce myself, when I say I’m from Goodland, people bring up Brook.”
Some Husker fans have entire walls in their homes dedicated to Berringer. The Nebraska football team named a citizenship award in his honor and memory. A local Fellowship of Christian Athletes banquet will pay a special tribute to Berringer on Monday night in Lincoln.
But how is Berringer remembered in his hometown? You might be surprised.
There are no signs on the edge of town declaring Goodland the home of Brook Berringer. Of the dozens of local and regional artifacts hanging on the walls of Crazy R’s, the local eating joint and watering hole, not one is a red No. 18 jersey. Or a Berringer high school jersey. Or photo of Brook.
You will, however, find a poster commemorating Berringer that hangs in the trophy case at Max Jones Fieldhouse, the high school’s gymnasium. But no local awards or scholarships are known to be presented in Berringer’s name.
“We all remember Brook,” said Richard Schwansinger, a long time coach and teacher at Goodland High School. “I don’t know that there was anybody in town who didn’t know him. He was just that personable.
“The community … they just grew up here. We knew all the kids. It’s a tragic loss when we lose any student.”
The locals will tell you Goodland loses one or two of its youth each year. That’s an abnormally high number of tragic losses, that often, for a town of around 5,000 people.
Last May, the community mourned the loss of Derek Lutters, who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. Illnesses, such as lupus, have claimed the lives of teenagers. Many have died in car accidents.
“It’s hard for the people here in Goodland to separate different losses like this out and hold them differently than others, because there are so many,” Jim McKee said. “As far as honoring one individual who passed away tragically at a young age ... well, there’s so much of that here. It just blends in with everything else.
“It’s a big deal to everybody depending on how close they were to the person at that time. There are so many people dealing with their own losses, that it’s hard to share in too many of those.”
Don Smith was Brook’s high school basketball coach. When asked about his memories of Brook, he’ll tell you that Brook was “absolutely” a better basketball player than he was a football player.
When asked his thoughts on how Brook is remembered around Goodland today, Smith paused.
“I don’t know how callous this will be ... but I had a son who was killed in an accident, also. As those years go by, those memories definitely fade.
“There aren’t many people who say anything to me about my son. As time goes on ... they just forget about it. The people that remember are those who had the personal involvement. That’s the sad fact of it.”
That’s not to say Brook wasn’t respected here. Things are just a bit more tempered, partly because of the many other losses of young people, partly because many in Goodland didn’t share in the Nebraska football connection.
“Brook was just another guy that graduated,” Jake McKee said. “For people in Goodland, they’ll never know. They’ll never know what he did up here. That’s neither good nor bad … in fact, it’s probably good.”
n n n
Jan Berringer still lives in Goodland, in the same house she and Warren Built some 30 years ago. She’s retired from teaching but still substitutes locally, when she’s not traveling. She healthy, having recovered from a double mastectomy and surgery for colon cancer.
Her daughters, Drue and Nicoel, are married with families. Drue lives in Omaha, Nicoel in Fort Collins, Colo. Nicoel’s daughter, Brook Ellen, was born four days after Brook’s funeral. Jan has three other grandchildren. Their Easter baskets are all ready, sitting on the dining room table.
Tiffini Lake, who grew up in Goodland, is married and lives in Vermont, where she’s an anesthesiologist. She’s expecting her first child in May. Tiffini, through a friend, declined interview requests.
The McKees live in Goodland, only a few blocks from Jan, with whom they’ve grown close. Jim still farms some 30 miles outside of Goodland. He’s in the field a lot these days, and can tell you the exact spot where was driving his tractor 10 years ago when he heard about Brook’s accident. Certain spots around the farm trigger hundreds of memories.
He admits he doesn’t believe Brook has received the respect he deserved from his hometown because of his accomplishments. It doesn’t bother him though. He knows Brook was more than just a Nebraska football player. He was a part of the family. Still is.
“For a lot of people, it’s still a really big thing,” McKee said, “and always will be.”
Ten years after his death, former Nebraska quarterback Brook Berringer is recalled as a good friend whose quiet spirit lives on in his hometown of Goodland, Kansas.
By BRIAN ROSENTHAL | Lincoln Journal Star
GOODLAND, Kan. — Jim McKee brings pictures. About a half-dozen photo album pages filled with pictures. It’s just a sampling from six scrapbooks.
When you’ve never really shared your close Brook Berringer stories — especially with total strangers — photos are a good place to start.
Advertisement
McKee passes them around the kitchen table in Berringer’s boyhood home. It’s a calm, warm spring Saturday morning in northwestern Kansas. If you’re a farmer, it’s a day probably better suited for spraying fields than storytelling. But McKee happily obliges and provides live captions for each candid shot.
There’s one of Brook with the entire McKee family — Jim, Judy, Jayme, Jake, Janel, Jara, Janae and Jance. There’s one of Brook with many of the McKees at Nebraska football photo day in Lincoln, Brook’s freshman year. A local TV station featured the group in a story broadcast that evening.
And there’s one of Brook, standing before the front door, with a duffel bag strapped over his shoulder.
McKee and Jan Berringer, Brook’s mother, look at the photo and smile as they point out the contents of the duffel bag. Jance, then just a toddler, appears tucked away, his head poking out, a big grin on his face.
Now a sophomore at Brewster High School, about 30 miles east of Goodland, Jance is active in sports. Because he had just transferred, he couldn’t play football last season. A shame, really, because Brewster, an eight-man team, loves to throw the football. And Jance, according to his dad, can toss the ball quite a ways, and pretty accurately.
Brook taught him how to throw a football.
“And you can still see it,” Jim said.
n n n
Jake McKee isn’t sure why he stayed home from school that day.
He and his father had planned on leaving that Thursday to get an early start on their weekend trip to Lincoln. They were going to watch the Nebraska spring game and visit Brook.
But Jim had farming duties to tend to, and they postponed their trip a day. Jake, a senior at Goodland High, stayed home anyway. He didn’t have a good reason. He just stayed home.
He was still asleep at 8 in the morning when his mother, Judy, before leaving for an errand, poked her head in Jake’s bedroom. “Keep an eye on your brother,” she said.
Jance, then 5 years old, eventually crawled into bed with his older brother. The phone rang.
“I don’t know why I did this, but I told Jance to go get the phone,” Jake said. “It was Brook. I remember laying in bed listening to them have a conversation on the phone.”
Jance brought the phone into the bedroom, and Jake and Brook talked. It wasn’t a long conversation. Jake told Brook they’re coming to Lincoln a day later than planned.
“I remember Brook said he may go flying,” Jake said. “He said, ‘See you tomorrow,’ ” and hung up the phone.
“The weird thing is, I would’ve never let Jance answer (the phone). I don’t know why I did.”
The news spread quickly later that day. A small plane had crashed near Lincoln. It was reported that Brook was aboard. There were no survivors.
Jake said he can count the number of times he’s seen his father cry. That day was one. Jim hugged Jake and told him he’d lost a son. That was OK with Jake, because to him, Brook was a brother.
As the McKees — all eight of them — mourned together, one eerie fact quickly surfaced. They discovered that each one of them had spoken with Brook earlier that day.
Even little Jance.
n n n
It’s been nearly 10 years since the J-3 Piper Cub airplane that Brook piloted crashed northwest of Lincoln. Tobey Lake, the brother of Brook’s girlfriend, Tiffini, also died. The date was April 18, 1996, only two days before Brook had expected to be chosen in the NFL Draft.
Nebraska mourned. The state grew to love Brook, a Kansas boy, like an adopted son.
Play quarterback at Nebraska, come off the bench to lead the Huskers to a national championship, then go back to the bench as the Huskers win another title, and, well, you’re hero status across the state. The fact Brook was a handsome, likeable, honorable man who didn’t seem to know a stranger added to his lore.
“What you saw with Brook is what you got. He didn’t put on a face,” said Brad Wells, a close friend and college roommate of Brook. “Just a great, great guy, with great integrity, great values. Just a true character.”
The outpouring of support was tremendous. Jan received 10,000 pieces of mail, most of it from Nebraska fans. One letter was addressed, “Brook’s Mom, Goodland, Kansas,” and arrived with all the others. Thousands filled Max Jones Fieldhouse in Goodland for a funeral that lasted three hours and was broadcast locally on radio.
In the days, weeks and months that followed, everyone shared Brook stories. But not once in the past decade has Jim McKee spoken publicly about his father-son like relationship with Brook, whose natural father, Warren, died of cancer when Brook was 7.
McKee turned down numerous interview requests shortly after Brook’s death. He’s mentioned, but not quoted, in “One Final Pass,” the book Jan Berringer helped write with author Art Lindsay. The five-year anniversary of Brook’s death passed without comment from McKee to the media.
The soft-spoken McKee is still somewhat guarded in how much he shares. He chooses his words carefully as he tries to explain his special relationship with Brook, whom he met through his daughter Jayme.
“It was just a real personal experience,” McKee said. “I felt like what he and I had ... was not to be talked about again.”
Said Jake McKee: “Their relationship will never fully be known by me. And I’m his own kid.”
In fact, not even Brook’s mother fully understood, McKee said, until he began sharing stories with Jan after Brook’s funeral. Jan had known the McKees, who farmed near Goodland, because Brook dated Jayme in high school. But beyond that …
“We were his getaway, and we just left it that way,” Jim McKee said. “Nobody really knew about it.”
Of course, the 15,000 acres of McKee land were like heaven for Brook, an avid outdoorsman. Anyone who spent a lot of time with Brook probably has a hunting story to tell, whether it be about calling coyotes, falling in a creek bed while chasing turkeys … or even risking a new fishing pole on a stupid snapping turtle.
Gathering cattle, roping steers, driving semis, running the combine, helping with wheat harvest. Brook was part of it all on the McKee farm. He was a part of the family.
Football? A small part of the conversation, usually. But Jim and Brook talked on the phone four or five times a week when Brook was in Lincoln, and those talks inevitably turned to football. When Brook learned he’d lost the starting quarterback job to Tommie Frazier prior to the 1995 season, he called Jim.
“There were a lot of issues with him and football,” Jim said. “There were a lot of things he had a hard time dealing with.”
McKee especially remembers one of Brook’s last phone calls, about four days before the plane crash.
“It was basically a thank-you phone call,” McKee said. “He said, ‘I want you to know I love every one of you.’
“He had never, ever said anything like that before.”
n n n
A medium-sized red Nebraska flag flies just above the ground of Brook’s gravesite, in a cemetery on the north edge of Goodland.
The flag first appeared not long after Brook’s funeral. When it eventually became torn and tattered, Jan decided to replace it. She purchased a new flag during her next Nebraska trip, but when she returned to the cemetery, the old flag had already been replaced.
Somebody has continued to replace it every year. To this day, Jan says she has no idea who. She turns to Jim as she’s re-telling this story, and asks him if he knows. Jim shakes his head.
Pheasant feathers, gun cartridges, notes to Brook, Nebraska sweatshirts and Nebraska ball caps have also been left on Brook’s grave. Jan tells the story of a trucker who parked his rig on a nearby highway and walked about a quarter-mile to the cemetery, asking cemetery workers where he could find Brook Berringer’s grave. Jan has had strangers come to her home and stand in the front yard to take pictures of Brook’s house. One such occasion led to a two-hour conversation on the front patio. They, of course, were Nebraska fans.
“You can’t live in Nebraska and not know who Brook Berringer is,” said Jake McKee, who also played football at Nebraska and now lives in Omaha.
“In fact, every conversation I have when I introduce myself, when I say I’m from Goodland, people bring up Brook.”
Some Husker fans have entire walls in their homes dedicated to Berringer. The Nebraska football team named a citizenship award in his honor and memory. A local Fellowship of Christian Athletes banquet will pay a special tribute to Berringer on Monday night in Lincoln.
But how is Berringer remembered in his hometown? You might be surprised.
There are no signs on the edge of town declaring Goodland the home of Brook Berringer. Of the dozens of local and regional artifacts hanging on the walls of Crazy R’s, the local eating joint and watering hole, not one is a red No. 18 jersey. Or a Berringer high school jersey. Or photo of Brook.
You will, however, find a poster commemorating Berringer that hangs in the trophy case at Max Jones Fieldhouse, the high school’s gymnasium. But no local awards or scholarships are known to be presented in Berringer’s name.
“We all remember Brook,” said Richard Schwansinger, a long time coach and teacher at Goodland High School. “I don’t know that there was anybody in town who didn’t know him. He was just that personable.
“The community … they just grew up here. We knew all the kids. It’s a tragic loss when we lose any student.”
The locals will tell you Goodland loses one or two of its youth each year. That’s an abnormally high number of tragic losses, that often, for a town of around 5,000 people.
Last May, the community mourned the loss of Derek Lutters, who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. Illnesses, such as lupus, have claimed the lives of teenagers. Many have died in car accidents.
“It’s hard for the people here in Goodland to separate different losses like this out and hold them differently than others, because there are so many,” Jim McKee said. “As far as honoring one individual who passed away tragically at a young age ... well, there’s so much of that here. It just blends in with everything else.
“It’s a big deal to everybody depending on how close they were to the person at that time. There are so many people dealing with their own losses, that it’s hard to share in too many of those.”
Don Smith was Brook’s high school basketball coach. When asked about his memories of Brook, he’ll tell you that Brook was “absolutely” a better basketball player than he was a football player.
When asked his thoughts on how Brook is remembered around Goodland today, Smith paused.
“I don’t know how callous this will be ... but I had a son who was killed in an accident, also. As those years go by, those memories definitely fade.
“There aren’t many people who say anything to me about my son. As time goes on ... they just forget about it. The people that remember are those who had the personal involvement. That’s the sad fact of it.”
That’s not to say Brook wasn’t respected here. Things are just a bit more tempered, partly because of the many other losses of young people, partly because many in Goodland didn’t share in the Nebraska football connection.
“Brook was just another guy that graduated,” Jake McKee said. “For people in Goodland, they’ll never know. They’ll never know what he did up here. That’s neither good nor bad … in fact, it’s probably good.”
n n n
Jan Berringer still lives in Goodland, in the same house she and Warren Built some 30 years ago. She’s retired from teaching but still substitutes locally, when she’s not traveling. She healthy, having recovered from a double mastectomy and surgery for colon cancer.
Her daughters, Drue and Nicoel, are married with families. Drue lives in Omaha, Nicoel in Fort Collins, Colo. Nicoel’s daughter, Brook Ellen, was born four days after Brook’s funeral. Jan has three other grandchildren. Their Easter baskets are all ready, sitting on the dining room table.
Tiffini Lake, who grew up in Goodland, is married and lives in Vermont, where she’s an anesthesiologist. She’s expecting her first child in May. Tiffini, through a friend, declined interview requests.
The McKees live in Goodland, only a few blocks from Jan, with whom they’ve grown close. Jim still farms some 30 miles outside of Goodland. He’s in the field a lot these days, and can tell you the exact spot where was driving his tractor 10 years ago when he heard about Brook’s accident. Certain spots around the farm trigger hundreds of memories.
He admits he doesn’t believe Brook has received the respect he deserved from his hometown because of his accomplishments. It doesn’t bother him though. He knows Brook was more than just a Nebraska football player. He was a part of the family. Still is.
“For a lot of people, it’s still a really big thing,” McKee said, “and always will be.”
Last edited by a moderator:
