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 Joan 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.”
LeAnn said she shared Jack’s sentiments.
“That wasn’t part of our thing — blaming or being mad at somebody for letting that happen,” she said.
Coping with tragedy
The Hammontree family received hundreds of cards, plants and other condolences after Blake’s death.
Jack said they received about $10,000 and put the money into a scholarship fund. Each year they give an OU-bound Medford High School graduate a $1,000 scholarship.
“Our criteria’s pretty loosey goosey, but we’re going to give it to ... kind of the underachievers we know can make it,” Jack said.
“The ones like him, not the top, they’re going to get their scholarships. Not the low and the poor because they’re going to get their help, too, but those in the middle like we were.”
LeAnn said giving the scholarship has helped her deal with the loss of her son. But that loss is still too difficult to talk about.
“It feels good to do it, but I don’t talk about it,” she said.
Jack wrote a book he gave to LeAnn for Christmas that he calls “The Blakester,” his nickname for Blake.
“That helped a lot,” he said. “It’s kind of like therapy. Other than that, the football season’s cool for me. It’s hard, but it’s cool.”
Jack said he still feels the closest to Blake when he attends OU football games. LeAnn just tries to get through each day, she said.
“When you ask about what we’ve done the past five years, it’s more a matter of survival,” she said. “Ask your mothers if they can imagine just suddenly you not being here.
“I have thought I would have to move away to start over, and that is why I think we ended up in Medford those few years before he had to leave, so I could start over,” she said.
LeAnn said she still does not like going back to Enid and rarely does.
“I can’t do it,” she said. “I think I was sent to Medford for a way to help me survive.
Click here to view the Blake Adam Hammontree special section.
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michaelmcp1 2 years, 7 months ago
I am so sorry for the unfortunate death of Blake Hammontree's due to alcohol poisoning in 2004 at the Sigma Chi Fraternity House at OU.
I am in agreement that Blake should be remembered for the kind of young man his parents described as "sincere, genuine and just fun!!!!
However I would like to say that we should not continue to punish the OU Sigma Chi Fraternity because of this terrible tragedy that happened in 2004.
As one commented earlier the Sigma Chi who are currently members do not know about what happened in 2004 at their house and should not have this stigma placed on them.
I was not in a fraternity at OU but I am a third generation OU Alumi and wanted to tell you about 2 young men that I have had the pleasure of knowing for the last two years. I also hired one of them and was instrumental in getting the other one hired at my company Linn Energy.
They also happen to be graduates of OU and members of the Sigma Chi Fraternity.
DJ Cherry, Jr. graduated in May of 2008 and Hagen Vasek graduated in May of this year.
I have been with DJ and Hagen to OU football games for the past two years and have had the opportunity to meet a lot of their Sigma Chi brothers and everyone of them are the best group of guys I have ever had the pleasure of being around.
DJ and Hagen are two of the kindest, sincere and polite young men I have ever met and I have seen that they would do anything for any of their fraternity brothers.
If I had had the opportunity to join a fraternity at OU I would have been honored to be a member of the OU Sigma Chi Fraternity.