Two Cowboy Boots and a Tennis Shoe Point Mom on Path to Healing

It was one fleeting moment of frustration--of succumbing to confusion, sadness and guilt--that allowed Bonnie Brady to let go and move on.

She doesn’t know exactly what drew her to the stock pond where her two young sons had drowned just a few weeks earlier. But in one single moment as she cleaned a toolshed on a warm afternoon in 1996, she just knew she had to see it.

She stood alone at the pond’s edge, the first time she had been to the scene of her sons’ deaths since the accident. It had been drained, at her urging, by the coal company that owned the land.

And in the tall grass, a small tennis shoe lay between a pair of cowboy boots at the bottom of the pond. It marked the spot where her sons--14-year-old Lance and 9-year-old Brett Brady--had been pulled from the water an hour after going under.

“I felt it was a gesture saying ‘We’re OK, Mom. We are together. We are at peace,’ ” Brady said. “Really, you can’t describe what something like that means. It was just a little closure for me.”

A new song about the Bradys’ story captures that unforgettable image. “Two Cowboy Boots and a Tennis Shoe” not only tells how the boys drowned, but it tells how the family healed.

It is now being played at radio stations in both Yankton, S.D., and Gillette--giving a sort of eternal life to the boys and their story.

To the first-time visitor, it might appear that three wide-eyed children still live at the Brady home, northeast of Gillette. Mom, Dad, a young girl and two boys smile from the family portraits lining the living room shelves. Outside the front window sits the horse trailer that Lance and his dad, Mark Brady, once drove back from Casper together. Brett’s dog still runs underfoot.

The Bradys have never tried to bury the past.

“There’s just a million things like that around here. We think about stuff that happened all the time,” said Mark, wearing a belt buckle that Lance won that summer in a rodeo roping contest. “We’ve just found [talking about Lance and Brett] is a lot more healing. They were part of our lives for 14 years.”

That is the power of this song. It gives the family one more memory to hold on to, one more tribute to show how important their boys were to friends and family.

It ensures that their boys won’t be forgotten.

It was written by Cosette Hemen of Yankton, S.D., after hearing the story from Bonnie’s sister, Rebecca Dobesh, who also lives in Yankton.

At its heart is the image that Bonnie confronted at the pond that summer afternoon, a formula of acceptance for family and friends. The shoe and the boots told them the boys were, and still are, together.

*

Little man, I’ll watch over you.

I’m your big brother and I will stay with you.

So hold my hand,

Our footprints left behind, soft on the earth;

Two cowboy boots and your tennis shoe.

*

On that sunny afternoon, July 26, 1996, Lance; his sister, Jolene; and several neighborhood friends headed out on a horseback ride. At first Brett wasn’t permitted to go on the outing, but he begged to come.

*

Oh big brother, I want to be with you.

I’ll follow in your footsteps and do the things you do.

*

Finally Brett was saddled up with the rest of the gang, and they rode to the pond. As his horse crossed the pond, its legs became entangled in weeds and dead brush. Brett climbed to the top of the horse’s head but soon disappeared under the water. Lance jumped into the pond and grabbed his little brother.

He held him, trying to keep him above the water. But his own weight and that of Brett, along with a pair of water-filled cowboy boots, proved too much. The boys drowned, reportedly holding on to each other.

A month later, their mother returned to find the peace she was looking for.

*

Two cowboy boots and a tennis shoe . . .

*

The song is finding air time on local radio. Announcer Erik Bergquist invited the Bradys to the studio in December and debuted the song to Gillette listeners. The station has had a huge response, Bergquist said, and it is being played about once or twice a day.

“I wanted to show that there has been a sort of positive spin taken on this unfortunate accident,” he said.

The song is a tribute not only to the boys but to the family’s healing.

But it has also brought back memories that the family hadn’t thought about in a long time--such as the boys’ love for country music.

And the time Brett’s boot began to fall off while he was barrel-racing in a rodeo. He stopped to put it back on rather than worry about the time clock--”He always made people laugh. . . . Sometimes he just looked at the crowd to see if they were talking about and looking at him.”

And Lance, who, unlike Brett, was never “funning around.” That summer before he died, he guaranteed his family that he would win a saddle.

He did too, although it was dedicated to the family after his death, Bonnie said.

The family doesn’t lock away these memories to spare themselves pain. They are still, as they were then, a five-member family. And, if nothing else, the song will keep those conversations going.

“I hope it makes people see how much they have and how lucky they are. We can’t take the simple, everyday things for granted,” Bonnie said. “They always say a song can touch your heart. . . . You always have a fear they will be forgotten. This way, they definitely won’t be.”