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Foundation to handle Gfeller memorial fund
Gifts to honor Reynolds football player
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Published: August 27, 2008
Updated:
For a second time since it was founded nearly 90 years ago, the Winston-Salem Foundation has been chosen to accept donations in honor of a Reynolds High School student who died of injuries suffered in a football game.
The family of Matt Gfeller, who died Sunday, has established a memorial fund with the foundation.
A Mass for Gfeller, 15, will be celebrated at 4 p.m. today at Holy Family Catholic Church in Clemmons. Gfeller died of a brain injury suffered in what Reynolds officials called "a routine football play" during the fourth quarter of the season opener against Greensboro Page on Friday.
The charitable purpose of the fund will be determined by the family at a later date, Annette Lynch, the vice president of philanthropic service at the foundation, said yesterday.
"Tragedy tends to motivate people to be charitable, to create a legacy as part of an outpouring of love and respect for the person being honored," Lynch said.
The Gfeller memorial fund comes 85 years after the creation of the Leo Caldwell Memorial Student Loan fund in 1923. Caldwell died after his neck was broken in a game between Reynolds and a Charlotte high school.
According to the foundation, a letter sent anonymously to the Twin City Sentinel called for contributions to a loan fund for college students be set up in honor of Caldwell. About $10,000 was received, which served as pivotal seed money for student-aid funds, considering that the foundation was established just four years earlier with a $1,000 gift.
"The fund in Leo's memory still exists, and basically launched the foundation in the student-aid business, which has grown tremendously over the years," said Scott Wierman, the foundation's director. "We now administer more than 100 student-aid funds."
Wierman said he was unsure whether the Caldwell fund played a role in the Gfeller family's establishing a similar fund. The foundation has other funds with ties to Reynolds High School.
The foundation has also received donations for scholarship funds honoring at least two other local high-school student athletes who died at a young age.
The Edward Kent Welch Memorial Fund was established in honor of Welch, a 2000 graduate of Mount Tabor High School and a 2004 graduate of UNC Chapel Hill. Welch, 23, died in November 2004 of injuries suffered in a car accident in Prague, Czech Republic. A $1,500 scholarship is given to a Mount Tabor student who attends UNC Chapel Hill.
The Brevard Hoover Jr. Leadership Award was established in May 2007 in honor of Hoover, who died in a canoeing accident in May 1951 -- a month before he would graduate. Hoover was a fullback on the Reynolds football team, a basketball player and also was student-body president. A $1,200 academic scholarship, based on merit, is provided as part of the leadership award.
The likely cause of Gfeller's death was the force of a block to the chest, the chairman of neurosurgery at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center said Monday. Dr. Charles Branch Jr., who operated on Gfeller, said that the force of the blow probably whipped Gfeller's head backward, causing both a key blood vessel to tear and his brain to swell.
Officials at the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research in Chapel Hill had said Monday that Gfeller was the first football player in North Carolina to die of a head injury since 1981.
But the center acknowledged yesterday that it had not accounted for the death last October of Will McLeod, an eighth-grade football player at North Lincoln Middle School.
According to comments yesterday from McLeod's uncle, Rick Hallman, and news reports at the time, the 13-year-old player was tackled from behind in the fourth quarter of a game on Oct. 10.
The back of his head hit the ground, and he collapsed on the sideline after walking off the field. He died the next day.
The state medical examiner determined that the cause of death was similar to Gfeller's -- ruptured blood vessels in the brain.
■ Richard Craver can be reached at 727-7376 or at rcraver@wsjournal.com.
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