Special Section
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2009
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Student’s death five years ago still resonates on campus HAILEY R. BRANSON Projects Editor
‘A hall party, in essence, out of control’
The memory is fading from the OU campus. It is an effect of time, an effect of an ever-changing presence on a four-year campus. But that memory of what happened five years ago today is far from gone. Early Thursday, Sept. 30, 2004, OU freshman Blake Adam Hammontree, 19, was found dead in the Sigma Chi fraternity house at 1405 Elm Ave. Hammontree, a Sigma Chi pledge, died of alcohol poisoning, the medical examiner ruled, according to Norman Police Department Capt. Leonard Judy. “It, to me, was one of the most difficult things I’ve gone through as president of the university,” OU President David Boren said last week. “It was so painful.”
The night before Hammontree was found, the fraternity was having its big-brother, little-brother party, an event during which pledges were matched with older members as mentors. The event became a raucous party, and alcohol was served out of members’ rooms, according to an affidavit written by Detective Jim Parks of the Norman Police Department, and cited in The Daily in October 2004. An anonymous student cited as “a former Sigma Chi pledge who wished to remain anonymous” told The Daily that pledges were pressured to binge drink during such parties. “It was a hall party, in essence, out of control,” Boren said last week. “And the whole scene was such that it reflected the
chaos of what had gone on.” At some point, Hammontree laid down in a second-floor bedroom belonging to his Sigma Chi older brother, John Frame, a sophomore. Hammontree was believed to have been drinking beer and Hot Damn, a cinnamon schnapps shot, Tim Kuykendall, the district attorney at the time, said a week later. Hammontree had been helped to a bathroom, where he vomited multiple times, according to the affidavit. At about 10:30 a.m. the next morning, Sigma Chi members found Hammontree “cold, stiff, purple and beyond resuscitation,” the affidavit stated. Norman police received a call from the house at 10:48 a.m. Thursday morning for a “possible medical call,” according to the police incident report filed afterward. Police found FIVE YEARS CONTINUES ON PAGE 2
PHOTOS SUBMITTED
Blake Adam Hammontree is shown in family photographs with his father, Jack; his mother, LeAnn; his sister, Olivia, and as a child. Hammontree died at age 19 as a freshman at OU in September 2004.
Remembering a Son ‘He was sincere, genuine and just fun’ JAMIE HUGHES Editor-in-Chief
In September 1997, the OU football team defeated Syracuse University and won its first home game in nearly two years. The crowd stormed the field, and, in the process, Jack Hammontree lost his 12-year-old son. Jack searched for a few hours before calling the OU Police Department. “[I] said, ‘I think I lost my son,’” Jack said recently. “They said, ‘You wouldn’t be Mr. Hammontree, would you?’ And he was in there playing ping-pong and eating donuts.” Seven years later, in the same month, Jack would lose his son, Blake, again at OU. But this time would be different. There would be no happy reunion in the police department.
High school Blake Adam Hammontree never had to try hard in school. He tested well but never wanted to be in the gifted and talented programs his elementary schools tried to place him in. “He hated that stuff,” Jack said. “He would test off the charts on all the verbal stuff, but it wasn’t important to him to prove it to anybody.” Blake’s younger sister, Olivia, now 19 and an education sophomore at Northwestern Oklahoma State University, also said school came naturally to Blake. “School was easy for him and a little tougher for me,” she said. “[We were] just complete opposites.” Still, Olivia and Blake were close friends, even if they did fight like brothers and sisters do. Blake finished his sophomore year at Enid High School before he and his family moved to Medford, a small town just north of Enid. His mother, LeAnn, said she and Jack had told Blake he could commute to Enid High School every morning, but he passed on the opportunity, LeAnn said, because “he wasn’t much of a morning person.” Blake was not a serious athlete, but he played almost every sport until junior high school. When he arrived in Medford, he started playing baseball again. A lot of his friends talked him into playing again, Jack said, but it was a light-hearted game for him. “They had a good time,” Jack said. “They teased him about having the record for walks.” “It was more to just have fun,” LeAnn said.
Becoming a Sooner Blake took the residual ACT at OU and made a 24, which was then the qualifying score for acceptance to OU. “He got exactly a 24,” Jack said. “He was so excited it was funny.” Nearly three decades after his father had done the same, Blake moved into Walker Center in fall 2004. “It was like a time capsule,” Jack said. “We’re talking 30 years, and it was just like the same. A little bit of paint here, but just the same.” Blake never got to declare a major at OU. He had thought about law school but did not get a chance to commit to it. “We always knew if he decided he wanted to be a lawyer, he could do it,” LeAnn said. “He just wasn’t real serious about it yet.”
A wealth of friends Blake was known for making friends easily. That is what his family remembers most about his high school years. When his family moved to Medford, he “made every friend over there,” LeAnn said. She said she couldn’t pinpoint exactly what drew people to Blake but that he made friends wherever he went. And when he came to OU, that did not change. “He just attracted friends,” LeAnn said. “He was sincere, genuine and just fun.” Blake’s parents knew his outgoing personality would draw him to a fraternity. LeAnn was a member of the Delta Gamma sorority while she attended OU, but Jack never joined a fraternity. “We assumed he’d do a fraternity, but we never knew which one,” Jack said.
The call In September, Jack was preparing to visit Norman for Dad’s Day festivities. Blake’s fraternity, Sigma Chi, had a father-son Atari tournament scheduled. Jack had mastered Atari in law school. But a tragic turn of events would bump up his visit by a week. Jack was at his office in Medford, where he is an associate district judge, when a family friend called to tell him Blake was found dead in the Sigma Chi house. “I got a call from Dennis McIntyre,” Jack said. “His son was Blake’s longtime friend, and David’s the one who found Blake. His first comments were, ‘Jack, you need to sit down.’
“Then he said, ‘They found Blake at the fraternity, and he’s dead.’” Jack said the feeling was surreal. LeAnn had been to the doctor earlier that morning for a blood test and decided to return home because she had a sore throat. She was starting to get into bed when the home phone rang. It was Joan McIntyre, Dennis’ wife. LeAnn said she does not remember the details of the conversation, but she said Joni kept her on the phone. She told LeAnn to get dressed and pack a bag. Jack came home shortly after he was called. He and LeAnn still had to tell Olivia. “We got her out of school and just headed out,” LeAnn said. Blake’s family arrived at the roped-off Sigma Chi house in about two-and-a-half hours. They spent the night in the Sooner Hotel and Suites, about a block east of the fraternity house. The next morning, LeAnn collected Blake’s belongings from his dorm room. Blake’s parents decided to bury their son outside Medford but had his funeral service at Central Christian Church in Enid. “I’ve always been happy with that choice because that’s where Blake grew up,” LeAnn said. But the church was not big enough to hold all the lives Blake had touched. “Between Enid and Medford people and people at OU, it was overflowing,” LeAnn said.
No bitterness The Hammontrees did not want to have a large part in developing OU’s alcohol policy, which was implemented as a result of Blake’s death. “It was very traumatic because the drinking policy was so drastic,” Jack said. “I mean, oh my gosh, people were upset. In all honesty, Blake wouldn’t want to be the poster boy for sobriety. He’d want to be responsible about it, nobody getting hurt, everyone having a good time.” He was surprised at his feelings toward those involved with his son’s death, he said. “I never had any of that bitterness,” he said. “That’s amazing I didn’t, probably. It was funny — I guess because I’m a judge everybody just assumed there’d be a big lawsuit, but it was never a consideration.” REMEMBER CONTINUES ON PAGE 2