Youth Suicide Baffles His Family and Friends
RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. – Friends and family thought Eric Fadeley had everything – looks, popularity, and talent. But in his suicide note, the Little League baseball pitcher said he couldn’t handle the stress, he was ugly, and no one liked him.
Eric, 15, who pitched his team to victory at the Little League Senior Division U.S. Championship, was buried yesterday with a baseball signed by teammates.
Classmates from Torrance High, cheerleaders, and teammates wept and hugged each other among mourners who overflowed the 300-seat Green Hills Mortuary Chapel.
His father, Fred Fadeley, addressed the question on everyone’s mind.
“Through this whole thing, the main question to ask is ‘Why?’ Nobody will ever know for sure, “ Mr. Fadeley said. “But I do know and will tell you that if he knew, really knew, what he was about to do, he would have changed it.”
Eric shot himself last Thursday with a family handgun. His father found him dead in his bedroom. In a note he said he loved his family but felt ugly and bad and felt the intense burden of making the grade.
“He was a perfectionist. Everything always had to be perfect,” said his mother, Kerry.
“He couldn’t live up to his own standards,” said his sister, Julie.
Eric was a top baseball player on both his Little League and high school teams and a 3.8 – grade-point-average student who tutored math.
The night before he died, he and his Central Torrance Senior Little League team were honored by the California Angels.
“As far as the family knows, there was nothing wrong,” said his brother, Dean.
The family never pushed Eric to excel, his brother said.
“He didn’t need any pushing, he was self-motivated. That’s something for parents to watch for kids putting too much stress on themselves,” he added.
Eric’s favorite sport was basketball and he hoped to play for Michigan State and then as a professional, his family said. He was buried in his Torrance High School basketball uniform.
“His tenderness, his kindness, his caring for his friends and his fellow teammates, that I remember – not winning and not going 100 percent on the basketball floor, but showing up with a smile,” said Abe Rivera, his basketball coach.
“Yesterday, Eric was ours, a wonderful boy, a heart the size of a lion,” Mr. Rivera said. “Today, he is God’s.”
Last month, Eric’s team won the Senior Little League U. S. championship after seven weeks of competition and then placed third in the Senior Little League World Series behind Taiwan and Dominican Republic.
“Every kid at some time in their life thinks of something like this,” said Jerry Musick, a family friend. “I hope that other kids will see, through him, the futility of this…that it won’t solve their problems.”
From “Family, Friends Bury Little Leaguer,” The Sun, September 16, 1992