The Ride
I met the Wilson Family in print before I met them in person.
Their news was tragic. Cory Wilson, a 21-year-old Georgia Southern business major, seemingly healthy and fit, collapsed in class without warning, without reason. He never regained consciousness.
“There’s no way to describe him,” said Cory’s little sister, Morgan, a junior business management major at Georgia Southern. “He was a character. He was just so goofy.” Morgan admitted in high school she didn’t want to be known as “Cory’s little sister.” “I was Morgan. That’s my name. Then, as we got older, it actually became an honor. Everybody loved Cory so much.” She’s never talked about ‘that day’ until now, but wanted to share Cory’s story to help raise AED awareness, hoping it can save lives and spare other families the grief they’ve endured. “I never want anyone to experience this again,” Morgan said.
Cory died of fatal cardiac arrhythmia. Although a courageous classmate, Edwin Garcia, performed CPR on Cory until professional help arrived, use of an AED (Automated External Defibrillator) would have offered Cory his only chance of survival. “An AED is the only effective treatment for restoring normal heart rhythm during a sudden cardiac arrest,” said Dr. Brian DeLoach, medical director, staff physician and AED Committee member at Georgia Southern. “For each minute that passes during this abnormal rhythm, damage occurs, and the likelihood of recovery decreases.” According to the American Red Cross, for each minute use of an AED is delayed, the chance of survival decreases by 10 percent.
Morgan admitted that before that day—January 17, 2013—she felt AEDs were “for somebody else.” “Now that I see how it’s affected my family, it’s become an important cause to us,” said Morgan. “You don’t really think too much about something until it happens to you.” Today, she urges everyone to take note of nearby AEDs and to take them seriously. After all, AEDs are easy to use, and safe for both user and victim. “The units will not deliver a shock unless it detects an abnormal rhythm,” added DeLoach. “Our units on campus are designed so that even a person with no training can open them, power them on, and then follow the prompts to use them correctly.”
Ironically, Cory’s mom, Lisa Wilson, is a registered nurse with the Chatham County Board of Education and a 1986 Georgia Southern nursing graduate. She also is a CPR instructor with the American Heart Association. Lisa was even one of many who worked on Cory in the ER, stepping in line to perform CPR on her own son. “He’s just somewhere… he’s still alive but they can’t reach him because they don’t know him,” Lisa remembers thinking. “If I do CPR, he’s going to know it’s his mom. He’s going to come back because I’m his mom.”
But Cory’s condition didn’t change. Lisa went around again. And again. It had been more than an hour since Cory collapsed and he was still unresponsive. When she was told it was time to stop, Lisa remembers saying, “But I’m not tired. I don’t want to stop.” Even during our interview, she asked herself, “Should I have just done one more round?”
That day was a Thursday. Morgan was in history class—only her second day of classes after the winter break. “I had my phone tucked away in my book bag,” said Morgan. “When class was over I noticed I had around 20 texts and more than that in missed calls. I knew something was wrong.” When she learned Cory had “fainted” in class, Morgan thought, “He’s probably fine. You all can deal with it. I have to go to class.” But before she knew it, Morgan was in the East Georgia Regional Medical Center waiting room, and a nurse was whisking her away to the back of the hospital to a small room with a single chair. “I thought I was going to get to see Cory,” Morgan said. “I was so confused. I made some jokes. Tried to laugh it off.” Morgan said her perception of time was warped that day—every moment feeling like a split second or forever. She remembers her mom coming into the room and the words, “Morgan, your brother didn’t make it.” She remembers screaming. “I couldn’t stop screaming in that little room. My mom started crying. The nurse started crying… I wondered what we were having for dinner. Random stuff. It hadn’t hit me yet. I thought, ‘Cory will walk through the door. It’ll be okay.’”
After that, Morgan never returned to the waiting room. She remembers: a hallway, her friend Ashley holding her hand, her dad crying. She’d never seen her dad cry before, ever. Morgan knew this would change the life she knew—vacations, holidays. “I don’t have any siblings now,” she said. “I’m an only child.” Mother and daughter had to drive Cory’s truck back to the family home in Savannah. “The longest car trip ever,” Morgan said. “That’s when I became the person whose brother passed away. That was my new identity… I went back and forth between sobbing and making jokes. I didn’t really know how to act. I guess everybody’s hurt was different. Nobody knew how to handle each other. I didn’t know how to handle a mourning mother or mourning father, just as they didn’t know how to handle a mourning sister. We dealt with it the best way we could.”
Cory’s dad, Kenny Wilson, owns Coastal Truck Parts Center in Garden City, Georgia. He met Lisa at Georgia Southern in Dr. Alexander’s biology class. “You could say we found chemistry in biology,” said Kenny. When Cory was born on Nov. 11, 1991, he recalls walking into the hospital hallway and shouting: “I got a boy! I got a boy!” He told me the two of them loved to hunt and fish together. “We did that a lot,” he said fighting back tears. “I taught him how to ride a motorcycle, too.” Lisa added, “Cory wasn’t just a son but was Kenny’s best friend. After high school graduation we told Cory he could do anything he wanted. Cory chose to spend time with his dad. They packed up the bikes and rode into the mountains, camping along the Blue Ridge Parkway into North Carolina.” Cory wrote a poem about it as part of a class project:
The Ride
It is the ride with my dad in the fall
Gliding along the highway
with the warm breeze against my body
With no intended destination in mind
Away from the rambunctious city
and into the peaceful country
Only miles and miles of highway
with no traffic or stoplights
We stop at a lonely fuel station
to get gas and a refreshing Yoo-hoo
Then back on the outstretched highway
and continue on our journey to nowhere
The occasional glance over his shoulder
to make sure I’m still behind him
Nothing else seems to be there
except his bike and mine
Living in the moment on my perfect day.
– Cory Wilson
February 17, 2009
The entire Wilson Family is still trying to find a new normal. “We buried our child,” said Lisa. “It still seems like a bad dream. We go to the grave every week. We’ve had all kinds of things left—baseballs, tennis balls, pennies, oyster shells and bandanas. Cory loved red bandanas. When he rode in the mountains he always tied a red bandana around his head before putting on his helmet. I think it made him feel tough, like he was unstoppable. But red was his favorite color and it suited him. Cory was so passionate about everything.”
The Wilsons said Cory was so happy to be at Georgia Southern. “He was everybody’s ‘buddy,’ lover of life and all things good. It’s hard to understand, except that in his death others have found life.” Lisa said she had an active save as a result of a CPR class she taught after Cory’s passing. “I wouldn’t have been in that class if someone hadn’t heard Cory’s story,” said Lisa.
And AED numbers have gone up on the Georgia Southern campus because of the Cory Wilson tragedy. The University had a handful of AEDs, even in the 1990s. Some were in Campus Police patrol cars. A few were placed at the RAC and one at the Union, but there was no joint effort yet. “Until recently, it had been an individual department effort,” said University Director of Public Safety and Chief of Police Mike Russell. “Since Cory’s death, we formed an AED Committee. We went through campus and did an inventory of where they should go. The first phase was purchased with year-end money. We bought as many as we could buy. Last year, we completed the second-phase purchase. We’ll continue that trend until we get one in every building.”
Today, there are about 144 AEDs on campus. Chief Russell encourages everyone to take CPR, familiarize themselves with AEDs, and share stories like Cory’s, as well as successful saves. “When they were building the biology building there was a successful save during construction,” said Russell. “One of the company’s workers collapsed and was saved using an AED.” Donations always help. The Wilsons donated one to the KA fraternity house. Even the construction company donated one to the biology department when they discovered one of their own workers was saved by an AED. “We’re funding them however we can,” said Russell.
Georgia Southern President Brooks Keel said the Wilson’s donation indicates that the University is a family. “When tragedy strikes a family, we come together to support each other,” Keel said. “We have come together to take action to hopefully prevent this from ever happening again.”
The Wilsons remember Cory through symbols, gestures and because they’ll simply never be able to forget. Morgan told me she still has three of Cory’s old voicemails. “They’ve been really comforting,” she said. “I try not to listen to them every day. But I just want to hear his voice. Sometimes pictures just aren’t the same.” Morgan even got Cory’s initials tattooed on her foot. “The tattoo is just a simple reminder to not get too carried away with the busyness of life.”
Morgan wants to follow her dreams of becoming a wedding planner, although when everything happened she admitted she just wanted to get away. “I live in the same neighborhood where Cory lived, across from the hospital where he died. And I’m a business major, so I’m constantly across from the classroom that he died in. I see the AED on the wall.* For a while I was walking campus almost a celebrity, but one nobody wanted to run into. I felt like everyone knew who I was. I thought about transferring. I thought about dropping out.” Morgan credited her boyfriend Andrew with keeping her going. She found enormous comfort in RUF (Reformed University Fellowship) as well and said her parents were very supportive. Morgan said they told her, ‘you’re still living. Life is about the living. You still need to experience life.’ “Gradually, I realized I was looking for ways to escape what happened but I didn’t want to escape Cory,” she said. “After a while, running into people became a comfort thing… I saw little bits of Cory in them—in the way they talked and dressed. Georgia Southern still felt like home.”
The most difficult time of year Morgan has had to deal with is Christmas because of the family traditions. “On Christmas Eve, me and Cory would play Mario Cart on Nintendo 64,” said Morgan. “Christmas morning has just been so hard to deal with. I think my parents are still struggling with family vacations, too. We did go on a trip after Cory died, but instead of it being the four of us, it was only three. So the seat on the airplane for Cory was empty. It was hard to travel that way. I always tell Andrew, I hope you’re prepared to have 30 kids because I don’t like being an only child at all… When he’s with us it evens out to the way I think things should be. There are four of us again. He’s goofy too. Not quite as goofy as Cory but he goes hunting and fishing so he can relate to my dad more. My dad really misses having his ‘buddy.’ Now our family is just two girls and a guy… my dad has had to watch a lot of episodes of ‘Say Yes to the Dress!’”
In Sorrento, Italy, this past summer, Morgan was in a dock area where a man started drowning. Bystanders administered CPR but the man died. “The resort didn’t have an AED,” said Morgan. “That was one of the first times I asked myself, ‘how do you not have an AED?’ I’m so used to looking for them now. You don’t even have to be certified. It hurts to know I didn’t know this before… I guess I would tell readers that it’s simple. An AED is so simple to use.”
To say the Wilsons were flat-footed and stunned by Cory’s death would be an understatement. “You just never saw this coming,” said Lisa. “There’s no words anybody can tell you that’s going to make you feel like it’s all better.” And their entire support system was in shock. Grandparents were grieving for their children who were in turn grieving for their child. “I prayed for healthy children. Everything else was extra,” said Lisa. “If I could have been given a paper to write down the things I wanted in a son or daughter, I wouldn’t have chosen anything different for either of them. Cory’s dream was to be like his dad. He admired Kenny so much. And he was well on his way. For me, being his mother made me a better person, just as being Morgan’s mom makes me a better person. ‘Live, laugh, love, Mom,’ Cory always said. He taught us so much about living. How is it that a mother holds her baby’s birth certificate and death certificate in the same hand? I suppose there’s peace in knowing he lived life to the fullest and he was where he wanted to be, with the people he wanted to be with, on the day he died.”
An athlete growing up, Cory loved going to Georgia Southern football games, but especially watching “Freedom.” When the bald eagle flew, everything stopped. During Commencement, in which Lisa and Kenny accepted Cory’s degree posthumously, his red bandana was attached to one of Freedom’s wings. “What an honor and tribute to Cory,” said Lisa. Georgia Southern held a candlelight vigil for Cory and students organized a balloon lift in Cory’s memory. And when musician Darius Rucker was in town, KA and Phi Mu recorded a video singing “Wagon Wheel,” which was to be Cory and his girlfriend Olivia’s wedding song. “Everyone has been wonderful to all of us,” said Lisa. “The University also wants to do something in the spring to spotlight cardiac awareness. We’re so grateful.”
The Wilson family wants Cory’s story shared so people understand the importance of CPR and using an AED. “It’s like a fire extinguisher,” said Lisa. “It doesn’t do any good if it stays on the wall. Our purpose in sharing is to hopefully allow someone else to understand that saving a life is really within anyone’s potential. We want that part of our tragedy to be turned into something positive… We don’t want sympathy. We want action. Don’t feel sorry for us. Just get busy. What happened was tragic and it hasn’t gotten easier, but we hope people read this and want to help or become informed. Do whatever they can. Nothing will make it easier, but someone else’s life will be touched.”
From my time with Morgan, Lisa and Kenny, I know I have been. To Cory, who I only know through the words of others, I wish you a safe ride ‘gliding along the highway.’ Thank you for taking us all along for the ride. – Michael J. Soloway
*AED was donated by Cardiac Science and hangs beside a plaque in Cory’s memory.
Cory Joseph Wilson Fireball 40 Memorial Baseball Tournament
Statesboro is not the only community to embrace the Wilson’s cause. AEDs have been placed in many Savannah businesses and churches in Cory’s memory. Chatham County hosted The Fireball 40 Cory Joseph Wilson Memorial Baseball Tournament in both 2013 and 2014, and plans are underway for the 2016 event. One hundred percent of the proceeds from the Fireball 40 go toward the purchase and placement of AEDs in the community. Kappa Alpha (KA) fraternity members, as well as others from the Georgia Southern family have played both years.
The Fireball 40 is sponsored by numerous local Savannah businesses and 10 AEDs have been donated through the tournament so far. In addition, two memorial scholarships, one through KA and another through the Savannah Community Foundation, have been established in Cory’s memory.
For more information visit Fireball40.org.
What is an AED?
An Automated External Defibrillator (AED) allows anyone to easily correct an abnormal heartbeat within seconds. The instructions are clear and the device is automated.
When prompted simply open the device, turn it on, then follow the audible instructions that detail where to place chest pads. The machine automatically detects the heart rythm and delivers correction, if needed.
For more information about AEDs on campus please visit GeorgiaSouthern.edu/AED.