Alabama’s Henry Ruggs finds guilt, motivation through loss of best friend

If I’d just gone to the game sick, Rod would be OK.

Henry Ruggs’ grief process was a slow one, in part because it began ensnared in thoughts like those. A determination to confront his grief privately slowed it down even more. Of all the students who took advantage of the grief counseling made available at Lee High, Ruggs wasn’t among them.

He’d leave home often with no explanation, spending up to 10 hours a week in the cemetery at Scott’s grave. When he wasn’t there, he retreated to his bedroom. He would come out to eat but was otherwise reclusive and refused to discuss Scott’s death even with family. Kevontae would try to coax his brother out of his room with pick-up basketball invitations, but to no avail.

“Who am I going to talk to?” Ruggs said, rhetorically, during a conversation at the Alabama football offices earlier this summer. “Rod was it. I didn’t have another friend like that. Rod knew things my brother didn’t know. Things my parents didn’t even know. I didn’t even tell my family how many scholarship offers I had, but Rod knew it was 23.”

Ruggs returned to school after a week but slept through classes and blew off track practice. When his grandmother died, he’d witnessed his mom grieve privately as well — self-contained and stoic — and because she wanted to be left alone in her time of grief, she respected Henry’s wish for the same.

Just when Ruggs began to exit his shell, a frightening brush with his own mortality set back his progress. About a month after Scott died, Kevontae convinced his brother to come out of his room for a trip with a few friends to Cinnabon at Montgomery’s Eastdale Mall. On the way back, Henry hit the gas while merging onto the highway when his right rear tire spun and caused his black Dodge Durango to swerve. He overcorrected with the steering wheel, and his truck spun three times around, the second of which put him, for an instant, face to face with an 18-wheeler. A head-on collision was missed, Kevontae said, by inches. The careening Durango finally came to a stop sitting sideways on the road, intact but for a minor scratch from contact with a highway guardrail.

As with Scott’s accident, a steady rain had worsened driving conditions.

As with Scott’s accident, three friends were in the backseat.

The similarities shook Henry’s confidence as a driver and unraveled what little progress he’d made in getting over the tragedy. He had his brother drive him home from there and wouldn’t get behind the wheel at all for another two weeks. When he did, he’d tremble visibly enough for his brother to notice. He’d avoid driving altogether if there was any sign of rain.

“That spin-out traumatized me again,” Ruggs said. “When we got home, I was shaking and said, ‘I’m sorry’ to everyone, went in my room, locked the door and laid down.”