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Article published Jul 5, 2009 Remembering Tanner: Family seeks answers about teen's death following collapse at game
By Darren Dunlap of The Daily Times Staff
Flowers line the sidewalk and front porch of the house, fresh mulch and creek rock surrounding lilies and petunias and other flora that Tanner Lee Jameson planted with care.
The flowers bloomed recently, one of many reminders of a beloved 13-year-old who collapsed on June 26 at an Eagleton Middle School basketball game.
His family doesn't know the cause of his death yet and is awaiting the medical examiner's conclusions. It typically takes two to three months, his mother, Rhonda Harrill, said she was told.
Harrill recently took a reporter and photographer on a tour of the family home, showing the extensive gardening work he'd done before his death, work they plan to honor soon. There's an unfinished flower bed at the back of the house beneath his mother's bedroom window as well, one he was working on late June 25, the night before his last game.
"He loved his flowers," she said.
From that window, she can see the fence line they cleared together, the brush piled high in a trailer nearby, and stacks of firewood that Tanner arranged neatly under a shelter in the backyard. The shelter sits at the edge of a neighbor's field where he and his brother, 15-year-old Cameron Jameson, crossed on their way to Eagleton Middle School for the game on June 26. Their mother offered them a ride, but they wanted to walk.Brothers close
The brothers were always together, "24/7," she said.
Rhonda Harrill gets out pictures of the two from a summer baseball tournament. They were on the same team, the Blount Storm Traveling Baseball Team. They were even close together in the batting order.
The thought of it makes her recall a hard line drive Tanner took at third base in a game earlier this year. He was playing for the middle school then. He stayed in front of it, and she was sure it might have injured his hand. If it hurt, he didn't fuss about it. Tanner Lee Jameson wasn't one to complain about pain, according to his mother.
On Friday, June 26, he took a seat on the bench at Eagleton Middle School's basketball court. He had said he wasn't feeling well and, at one point, grabbed his stomach. At the start of the fourth quarter, another player grabbed him by the arm and said, "C'mon Tanner, let's go," his mother said. Tanner slumped to the floor.
Her son, Cameron, called, and she went to Blount Memorial Hospital where Tanner Lee Jameson was pronounced dead.
The wait for his cause of death has the family thinking about the hours before the game. Did he complain of anything? Any pain? He seemed fine much of the day, according to his coach. He didn't have a history of health problems, his mother indicated, nothing that explains his collapse. He had a healthy appetite and was very active.
"Never ever sat around," she said.
He was skinny, a build that earned him the nickname "Bonz." His coach, Jerry Jones, memorialized the nickname and boy in several lines of prose and a picture that he gave to the family.
On Monday they saw what Tanner meant to the community at a receiving of friends at Smith Mortuary in Maryville.
After three hours of greetings from parents, former teammates, friends of Tanner's, and friends of the family, the line still wound out the door and around the building. The funeral service started 30 minutes after it was planned, and not everyone had been greeted.
"So many people," Rhonda Harrill said.
A thousand or more people, she was told. She wears a reminder of that day. A necklace from a friend of Tanner's, with his name and a single blue stone.
She has her son's class ring, too. He wanted one for middle school. She wears it now.