A phone call on August 5, 2005 changed NYU basketball alum Sean Dillon’s life forever. The call was from his father letting him know that Dillon’s stepbrother Tad had taken his own life the previous day.

If you are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.

“I was working at Bear Stearns (then an investment bank and financial company in New York City) when my dad called,” Dillon recalled vividly. “He was very upset and finally got the words out that Tad had died. I was sharing an office with another lawyer and trying to process what my dad was saying. I asked what happened and when he told me Tad killed himself, I said, ‘I’m coming up’ and I left.”

GROWING UP IN VERMONT

Dillon’s parents divorced when he was six years old, and he and his older sister Heather lived with their mom. At the age of 10, he, his father, future stepmother, and Tad all became a family.

“Even though we were six years apart, we were very close,” Dillon remembered. “We lived on a horse farm. We didn’t have cable television and we weren’t gaming, so we had nothing to do but play outside all the time. We played wiffle® ball endlessly.”

Dillon also grew up playing basketball and was named the Vermont Gatorade Player of the Year in his junior and senior years in high school, 1989 and 1990. He was recruited by several NCAA Division I and II schools. “I was recruited by UPenn (Division I and Ivy League school University of Pennsylvania). I had my heart set on them, but their heart was not set on me,” he laughed.

When a friend connected him with then NYU assistant basketball coach Edgar De La Rosa, Dillon made a visit to New York. “I fell in love with the place. I knew I wanted to leave the horse farm,” he commented. “I loved Greenwich Village and I wanted to be there.”

NYU

His time at NYU was something he still cherishes. “Being part of that team was fantastic. I made lifelong friends and got to visit cities I had never been to,” he stated. “The concept of the UAA was great and the team chemistry was like nothing I had ever experienced.” He even brought his teammates back home one time to ride horses and go skiing.

Dillon and his teammates led NYU to great success, posting an 86-23 record over four years, winning two UAA titles, and culminating with a controversial loss in the NCAA Division III Men’s Basketball Championship final in 1994.

Though he was sure he wanted to play basketball, he wasn’t as confident about what he wanted to do with the media ecology degree he was earning. “My dad was in public relations so I decided to do something in mass media communications,” he said. He took a public relations job at Edelman worldwide after graduation, but that lasted less than a year. He returned to NYU as an assistant sports information director (SID) and served as the school’s head sports information director for five years.

During his time as SID, Dillon met his future wife Jessica Bryant, who had been a dancer on scholarship at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater before injuring her knee.

“I still didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I had considered law school after undergraduate school and I still had that itch,” expressed Dillon, who began attending Brooklyn Law School in 1999. “I gave it a try. I still had no plan.” He graduated from law school and married Bryant in 2003.

Dillon acknowledged that his move to NYC changed his relationship with Tad. “We would still hang out whenever we could. He would come to visit me in New York and we always had fun,” he recollected. “I didn’t realize he was struggling.”

A SUICIDE SURVIVOR

In the ensuing years after Dillon graduated, he didn’t make it back to Vermont very often. Tad was working at his father’s bagel shop outside of Burlington, a job he held for many years. On that fateful day in August 2005, Tad cut his lawn, cleaned the house, and did the laundry. He then retired to the woods and ended his life with a self-inflicted gunshot.

“It was so hard to see my stepmom when I arrived there after I found out. He was her only natural child and she was understandably distraught,” Dillon remarked. “I hid in the basement and wrote her a letter telling her she was a great mom and that the suicide wasn’t her fault. Then I shut down.”

At that point, Dillon admits part of that shutting down was due to the stigma associated with suicide. “I didn’t want anyone to know how he died. His obituary just said he died suddenly,” he revealed. “I couldn’t even talk about it and I asked friends not to ask me about it.”

Dillon stayed in that mindset for several years, but things started to shift when he found a charity bike ride in Connecticut to raise awareness about suicide and suicide prevention. “I had just started getting into biking, which had been an important release for me. I thought this was a great event and I wanted to be part of it,” he articulated. “My dad, my sister, and some friends showed up. Hearing people talk about the stigma helped me decide that I wanted to be part of this. I realized I had been having a really hard time dealing with Tad’s death.”

He started volunteering for the Westchester County chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. He met other survivors through the organization’s International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day, often referred to as “Survivor Day.” “I met so many people who had suffered loss. I met one woman who had lost her husband and her son to suicide,” he recounted. “I joined the Westchester chapter’s Board of Directors and started to speak at walks, raise money, and get involved.”

BEING AN ADVOCATE

On May 6. 2017, Dillon participated in AFSP’s Hike for Hope in Yorktown Heights, New York. “As I got more involved, I was sent to a couple national conferences. I participated at a survivors’ conference in Chicago. I was looking around and thinking that everyone in this huge ballroom had lost someone to suicide,” he stated. “That was really powerful. To have that common bond that nobody wants, but everyone understands, made me want to be more engaged or committed.”

Sharing his personal story of loss has only gotten slightly easier over time. “It is very emotional. I can usually get through it without crying now, but that took years,” he remarked. “If you go to one of the conferences, it is a given you will end up crying.”

Dillon finds that he isn’t reliving Tad’s passing each time he tells his story as he did in the beginning. “Now I am usually thinking if I can get through to one person, my talk is a success,” he explained. “To keep talking about suicide is the number one way to destigmatize it. Anyone who is thinking about suicide is not alone in those thoughts. You have to have that conversation so people feel comfortable. Someone said no one flinches when you say you hurt your knee, so why is ‘I am depressed’ so different?”

After living in New York since leaving for NYU, Dillon has now returned to Vermont with his wife and their two daughters, ages eight and seven. “It was really Jessica’s idea. She thought it would be best for our girls to grow up here,” he said. In fact, she has started her own dance company called YouBeYou, which teaches girls to dance with a focus on self-esteem and empowerment in a fun way, using elements of dance they may have learned before.

Although he has not yet shared the story of Tad’s passing with his daughters, he has brought up his name and eventually will tell them. “It is all part of having important conversations. We want our girls to know how to say they need help,” Dillon related. “I am trying to unlearn how I grew up and seeing that it is OK to share my feelings.”

Once he returned to his home state, he reached out to the AFSP’s area director in Vermont. “I told them my story and how I have been involved,” he described. “Then I asked how I can help.” He joined others in going to the Vermont State House in Montpelier to talk about suicide awareness and traveled to D.C. for an annual national advocacy forum, listening to panels and talking to legislators.

“It was incredible to network with hundreds of people advocating for the same thing,” Dillon commented. “We need more funding and more support for mental health issues. It sounds like a cliché, but it is true that if we can save one person’s life, it will affect that person’s loved ones for generations.”

In 2017, more than 47,000 deaths were reported as suicide. It ranks as the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. with an average of 127 suicides per day. For more information, check out the AFSP’s statistical report.

Today, October 10, 2019, is World Mental Health Day with a focus on suicide prevention. Check out the World Health Organization’s “40 seconds of action” flyer.