A coach’s loss, and a town’s

BRIAN PARKS collapsed Aug. 21, on a scruffy field, in the shadow of a badly bent goalpost.

It was halfway through a Monday afternoon preseason football practice for the Willows High School varsity. Parks was a 16-year-old junior, a candidate to be the team’s starting quarterback.

It was 92 degrees, a good 10 degrees cooler than at much of the previous week’s practices.

The person closest to Brian when he went down, about an arm’s length away, was the head coach. He was in his 29th year of coaching in the Northern Section of the California Interscholastic Federation, and the last 26 of those had been as a head coach. He also taught physical education, health and sports medicine at this school 75 miles north of Sacramento, and was the person best equipped to handle the crisis.

Brian had fallen face down, helmet slightly embedded in the dirt. His arms were splayed to his sides, hands resting awkwardly. One of his teammates yelled at him to “Quit screwing around.”

When the head coach turned him over, he saw lifeless eyes.

The head coach ordered a 911 call, then started CPR. Brian’s practice jersey was quickly cut off, then the shoulder pads. While an assistant searched for a pulse, the head coach continued mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, the procedure that he had taught and been taught.

It took less than three minutes for the paramedics to get there. In Willows, almost nothing is more than five minutes away. The sign at the city limits helps explain that: Population 6,250, Elevation 135.

When the paramedics arrived, they found groups of teenage boys, standing in small clusters, their faces blank with a sort of collective inability to comprehend. Nearby, an assistant coach was down on all fours, sobbing.

Once the head coach relinquished medical efforts to the paramedics, he thought of his wife, who had just driven up from their home, three blocks away.

The head coach’s name is Curtis Parks, and he knew that he and Cindy had just lost their only son, a son whose middle name was Curtis.

JERRY SMITH, assistant principal at the high school, calls Willows “Mayberry.” And he knows an unthinkable small-town tragedy when he sees one.

“This is your worst nightmare,” Smith said. “A kid goes down in a practice session, you do the CPR and it’s your own kid. That’s a one in a million.”

Willows is a 10-second exit off Interstate 5. In general, people who live here farm, teach, work for insulation manufacturer Johns Manville or in small businesses.

The streets are a collection of small homes that people buy to live in, not to see appreciate to $1.2 million in three years. There are the staples of life -- McDonald’s, Denny’s, Starbucks -- and on a weekday in October, the most expensive hotel room in town was $69.95.

Most of the families have loved ones buried in the cemetery just east of town. Brian Parks is there, but his family is still working on the headstone. The latest sketch has the words: “Brian Curtis Parks; Dec. 6, 1989-Aug. 21, 2006; Our beloved son, brother, friend.” And then: “Psalm 117: The upright will behold his face.”

As is the case in most of the small towns near here, football heads the Friday night social calendar in Willows.

The small businesses buy signs with ads that cover both ends of the football field, which is in the center of town and directly across the street from the practice field where Brian died.

The tiny press box commemorates two recent CIF division titles, in 2000 and 2003. Curtis Parks coached both those teams, making him part of the fabric of the city pride.

Smith said that emotions remain fragile.

His son is a quarterback at nearby Winters High, and when Winters lost to Willows in one of the early-season games only weeks after Brian died, he went down on the field after the game.

“My son hugged me and told me he loved me,” Smith said, “and he told me there are things in life more important than football.

“Then I looked behind me and Curtis was standing right there, and I lost it. I’m thinking, I have my son and Curtis doesn’t.”

When Brian died, Curtis Parks was in the process of sanding his house to repaint. Quickly, friends took over, arriving in groups, donating the paint and finishing the work. It is shiny gray with red trim now.

A little later, another friend showed up with a refrigerator for the garage, saying that lots of people would be stopping by with food.

The flower bed in the front is new too. Some of Cindy Parks’ friends arrived one day, redesigned the yard and encircled the flowers with rocks. Curtis said he planned on adding to those rocks by bringing some back, one at a time, from places he and Brian went to hunt and fish.

Around town, pasted on cars, are decals that read: “In loving memory, Brian Parks.” The words circle a football with No. 2, Brian’s jersey number.

By the time Willows played its first game, 11 days after Brian’s death, every school in the district had attached decals with the No. 2 to each of its players’ helmets. At that first game, against Gridley, a raffle was held, with 50% of the take targeted for a memorial fund. When the winner of the other 50% was announced, he donated it back.

In the Parkses’ bedroom, neatly stacked, are more than 600 letters of condolences.

“With what has happened, you get a sense of the people who live around you,” Curtis Parks said. “I wouldn’t want to live through something like this anywhere else.”

JERRY SMITH, the man who calls Willows “Mayberry,” also calls the Parkses an “All-American family.”

Curtis, 50, and Cindy, 48, met as students at Chico State and have been married 26 years. They have twin daughters, Emily and Holly, 24. Both are college graduates, both live and work in Redding and both have traveled extensively and done charity work, including helping AIDS victims in Africa.

Holly came home for a while after Brian died to be with her parents, and Emily calls several times a day. No phone conversation ends without expressions of love.

Cindy works at two jobs. In the mornings, she runs the preschool she owns and in the afternoon she works at the local recreation department. She named her preschool “Joyful Noise.”

One of her fondest memories of her son was when he was 8 or 9 years old and was a water boy for Curtis’ football team.

“He was so proud to be with his dad,” she said. “For the first three quarters, he would be running all over the place. But by the fourth quarter, he was up in the stands, in my lap, his shirt-sleeves soaked, curled up and sound asleep.”

Brian Parks was a 4.0 student. He somehow had become a Florida State fan, but there was talk of Berkeley and Stanford, even UCLA to the south.

His girlfriend, Devin Rezendes, lived 25 miles away in Corning. Her picture in a field hockey uniform remains on the wall of his bedroom.

Before Brian started to drive, the Parkses would take him to Corning to see Devin and the Rezendeses would bring him back. Now, every Monday, the day of the week that Brian died, Curtis and Cindy drive to Chico for counseling and have worked out a schedule so they can continue on to Corning to see some of Devin’s field hockey games.

The Parkses belong to a non-denominational Christian church. Sunday school at the church has always been a tough sell for teenagers. In the last year, weekly attendance had fallen to one: Brian Parks.

HOLLY PARKS said that she has watched her father closely through all this.

“I’ve seen things in him that I could only hope he was,” she said.

When you have been around as long as Curtis Parks, you have an image in your area. If there can be legends in high school football, Parks is one.

Pat Hopkins, a principal at Williams when Parks taught and coached there, said Parks once came to him with a student who had been drinking. “He said we needed to help this young man and agreed when I said I would have to suspend him. When he left, I realized it was his quarterback.”

Hopkins’ son, Theron, an English teacher in the area, said he once had a discussion with Parks about another of his players, a star quarterback who was trying to regain eligibility in summer school.

“Coach Parks approached me on the first day of school and said, ‘You do what you need to do in there. I have already spoken to Scott, and I told him we can go 3-7 with you or 3-7 without you.’ ”

Now, Curtis Parks lingers on the edge of tears at all times.

In heavy traffic, the Parks house is minutes from school. Curtis drove to school with Brian most mornings, had him in class, drove home with him for lunch and then went to the same football practice field. The halls that his son walked, and the field where he died, are the places Curtis Parks works.

In towns this size, coaches become father figures, even to those with fine fathers. So Curtis Parks determined that at least part of him would have to carry on. “He wants the team to know that he won’t give up on them,” said Gary Enos, the friend who delivered the refrigerator.

About an hour after Brian had been officially declared dead at a nearby emergency medical center, players and students started gravitating back to the school. Soon, the gym was full and a call was made to Curtis, asking what he wanted school officials to do. I’ll come over, he said.

What transpired was the first of several inspirational moments that people in Willows are still talking about.

Mort Geivett, the principal, said, “He spoke for 20 minutes, told everybody he didn’t know what happened or why. He told them they all have to get back on their bikes and ride soon, and that he’d be there with them.

“Then, he told them that all he could figure out was that God needed another quarterback.”

Geivett paused to compose himself, then added, “I watched the entire time in amazement.”

Five days later, Parks did it again. At a Saturday memorial service in the same gym, with more than 1,000 people squeezed into every corner, Parks got up, followed eloquent eulogies by his twin daughters, and spoke for nearly 30 minutes. One member of the media, John Ryan of the Redding Record-Searchlight, wrote, “Saturday, Curtis Parks taught us how to stand when he had every right to crumble.”

Parks said he wanted to speak because “he wanted to share Brian.” He said he prepared several days before by standing out in his driveway and making notes. He said that it was “the strength of God coming out his mouth” that allowed him to keep his composure. He joked that “if you give a football coach a microphone in front of 1,000 people, you’ll get lots of nonsense. But if you give it to God, it’s different.”

ON Oct. 13, one part of the nightmare began to subside. Curtis and Cindy Parks were called to meet Dr. Thomas Resk, the pathologist who would tell them exactly why their son had died.

It had been two months of agony. Had he worked his son too hard in the heat? Had they not taken enough water breaks? Brian had seasonal asthma. Should they not have let him play football?

In this day of steroids and supplements, there are always other worries, other unknowns.

“On the night of Brian’s death, the sheriff’s department came in and searched his room, which they have to do by law,” Curtis said. “As they did that, I had not one moment of doubt. I encouraged them to look everywhere.”

Parks said two of the deputies were crying as they searched Brian’s room.

So, when Resk told them that Brian died of cardiac dysrhythmia, that, in over-simplification, his heart was supposed to beat right and it beat left, they finally had an answer. Which was, there was no answer.

The official report concluded , the cause of death was “consistent with a functional disorder of the heart, such as spontaneous ventricular fibrillation, hereditary or acquired predisposition to cardiac arrhythmia, or possibly arrhythmia associated with excessive sympathetic nervous system discharge.”

Resk assured them that heat wasn’t a factor, exhaustion wasn’t a factor, the asthma wasn’t related.

All indications were that Brian Parks was, for all intents and purposes, dead before he hit the ground.

Curtis Parks thought about that for a while and then, remembering his son’s birth, found something to cling to.

“I cut his umbilical cord,” he said. “And I was the last one to have my hands on his face when he still had a breath left. I am blessed to have that.”

WHEN the Willows players took the field at home Friday night to play Colusa in their ninth game of their season, they made their ceremonial run through the band, the cheerleaders and the jayvees. As they ran in front of the press box and past their bench, a junior named Walter Michael, a reserve lineman, stopped and placed a No. 2 game jersey on the Willows bench.

That is the team’s way of keeping Brian Parks with them. A different players does the honors each week.

There is another story developing now, an amazing one. With a 35-7 victory over Colusa, Willows, now 5-4, may have clinched a CIF playoff spot, something it can do for certain by beating Live Oak next Friday night.

.

Calling the plays, and essentially running the team, was a former Willows player named Jason Romano, 23. He had been on his way out of town, looking for work elsewhere, when Brian Parks died. But he and several other former Willows players, sensing the need, volunteered to handle the team.

Curtis Parks’ friend, Enos, who runs a 900-acre farm, gave Romano a job driving a tractor during the day, until practice starts at 3.

Curtis Parks missed the 10 days of practice after Brian died, but he went to the first game and stood far down the sideline with Enos. Since then, he has been in his usual place near the bench, but said he has been there “mostly as a figurehead” and added, “Jason Romano calls a better game than I do, anyway.”

Before the tragedy, Parks had started to look toward the end of the tunnel. Next season would be his 30th in coaching, and he called that a “nice round number.”

Next season also would have been Brian’s senior season, a sure thing as starting quarterback.

Now Parks says that he might keep coaching.

“I’m a football coach,” he said, “and when you are that, you get within 100 yards of a locker room before a game and you can feel your ears turning red.”

Before those decisions, there is much to be done. For example, what to do with the practice jersey that Brian wore that day, the one his father cut open to do CPR.

“I don’t want to throw that jersey away,” Parks said, “But I don’t want to look at it, either.”

The sheriff’s department also has Brian’s helmet, shoulder pads and football shoes.

“They told me they will hold everything until my heart lets me go get it,” Parks said.

Cindy is equally perplexed. She cleaned out her son’s sheets and clothes and then realized she missed his smell. Then she found a pair of dirty sweat socks in his school locker and still keeps them. She said she likes to go to the games because she can hug the sweaty players afterward. That reminds her of her son.

“I don’t use the term ‘moving on,’ ” Curtis Parks said.

It remains too soon to know if, or when, he ever will.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com