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'Is This Worth It?' Football, a Suicide and a Path Forward

From Love, Zac: Small-Town Football and the Life and Death of an American Boy, by Reid Forgrave ©2020 by Reid Forgrave. Reprinted by permission of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.

Courtesy of the Easter Family

Zac Easter had printed off the 39-page, double-spaced Microsoft Word document and left it in his room, by his desk, before he went to the basement to retrieve the shotgun slug. Titled “Concussions: My Silent Struggle,” his brief autobiography detailed how football concussions had led to his demise—to substance use, to mental health issues, to his later taking his own life with a bullet to the chest, on Dec.