UPDATE: Brian Froneyberger, the Fort Zumwalt West father at the center of an inspirational, viral video last month has died. Below is the story from Sept. 10.
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O'FALLON, Mo. — It should be the best of times for Brian Froneyberger of O’Fallon. After years of coaching his son’s little league football teams, Gage Froneyberger is a senior defensive end for Fort Zumwalt West.
“I coached my son all the way through football, all the way up to his high school years. My daughter’s softball, my son’s baseball, my daughter’s soccer, my son’s soccer,” said Froneyberger. “I just love being involved with my children.
I know that I’m not going to be there for my kids. That’s very hard to think about.”
Froneyberger’s bad luck is the worst kind of luck: incurable head and neck cancer. It was almost two years ago when doctors told Froneyberger he had two years to live.
“We've been very scared of what we're going to do, you know, because at this point, knowing that I may have a month, I may have weeks, I may have a couple months,” said Froneyberger, dabbing tears from his eyes. “You don't want to turn your life upside down or turn your children's lives upside down and have to sell the house and have to, you know, find ways to make all this work.”
Medical bills have hit the family hard. One of Gage’s friends, Geo Houston, helped organize a t-shirt fundraiser that’s raised over $10,000. The t-shirts read ‘JAGUARS #BrianStrong.
Enlisted to help was Juan Wilson, diversity coordinator for the Ft. Zumwalt School District. For several days, Wilson videotaped the entire t-shirt fundraiser and created a seven-minute video that has gone viral.
“To see our kids like rally around each other and help each other, then to see the adults feed off of the youth’s energy. I think that's probably the message that people get out of the video,” said Wilson, who was asked by the Froneybergers to shoot additional footage for a longer video just for the family. “My fiancé has three brothers and two of them died from drug overdoses and she got emotional and said that she would give anything to have a video to hear her two brothers’ voices again. So then I started crying and said, yes, I'm going to do the video.”
Gage Froneyberger said he’s amazed at the support he’s received from his teammate.
“We all watched it as a team and I mean it just touched everybody in the room," said Gage. “I broke down and I cried and the whole team broke down and it was just really moving.”
With tears streaming down her face, Donna Froneyberger said the video has affected friends and total strangers alike.
“Watching my husband and my son's reaction to the video and the impact that it made on so many people who've watched it, there was so many emotions. It was almost incredible,” said Donna Froneyberger. You feel sad or you feel happy, you feel joy, and it was just unbelievable to watch him talk about his story and made me feel that he's such an incredible fighter.”
With community support, the Froneybergers continue to fight through the worst days, trying to be strong for each other. #BrianStrong.
“There's no way to describe what that meant to us or what that has done for us,” said Brian Froneyberger. “I mean, just amazing.”
If you would like to donate to their GoFundMe, click here.
