Like most fathers, Scott McGurk loves talking about his son.
How Thomas loved to play sports, and how he especially loved to play baseball.
How he saved the lives of five kids from a burning home.
And how he always made sure everyone had a friend.
Thomas planned a mission trip, loved video games and loved sports. Especially baseball. And his Dad loved to watch him pitch.
“I always used to text him before games,” the elder McGurk said, pounding his chest as he spoke. “Be confident … you are the man on the mound.”
Thomas excelled as a running back on the junior varsity team at Medina, but loved baseball. He was a left-handed pitcher who started throwing in the mid-60s in high school and was in the mid-80s when he left for Murray State on a scholarship in 2010.
He was a lean 6-feet and 170 pounds, with four percent body fat. He earned a scholarship by striking out 30 in 32 innings as a senior at Medina. He was, as Scott McGurk said, “a big-game pitcher with a pro arm,” a belief built on the words of scouts and coaches at clinics, not simply fatherly belief.
This father and son shared a special bond, built by love and forged by the closeness of a family that supported both their sons because, Scott McGurk said, “my family is everything.”
Which is why Oct. 2 will always cause him to have a heavy heart.
On that night in 2010, a nightmare come to life.
On that night, Scott McGurk lost his son.
***
At 1 a.m. that night Scott was awakened by a knock on his door. Ohio State Troopers greeted him saying they had received a call from the coroner in Kentucky near Murray State.
His son’s car had been found after an accident, and they needed him to call and identify the body.
“I IDed him,” Scott McGurk said, “from his tattoos.”
The scene, McGurk said, is “ingrained in my brain.”
He can see the rain falling outside, the troopers at the door, his other son David and his girlfriend sitting on a lower step, both crying. At the top of the stairs was his wife Brenda, sobbing as well.
Thomas had gone for a drive from Murray State on the back roads of Southwest Kentucky. “He loved to go in the car and just drive,” Scott McGurk said.
Nobody knows what happened except that his car hit a woman’s, headlight to headlight.
His seatbelt was on. His cell phone was back in his dorm room so he wasn’t texting. There were no drugs or alcohol in his system.
It was, simply, an accident.
A terribly tragic accident.
***
Scott went to the scene. For closure, he said. He saw the site, the car, talked with the police. But there were no answers, just pain-filled questions.
“We don’t know,” he said. “That’s the thing that drives me crazy. We just don’t know.”
All he knows is that earlier in the day one of Thomas’ teammates at Medina, Jacob Brich, had died in an auto accident and Thomas had gone for a drive around 7 p.m. in rural Calloway County of Southwest Kentucky, near the Tennessee border.
The road looped around from campus and then back. Thomas’ Dodge Neon simply drifted into the path of a GMC Envoy (a 27-year-old woman and her one-year-old daughter were treated for minor injuries).
The tattoos were on McGurk’s chest and arm.
***
Scott McGurk married his high school sweetheart. He and Brenda met as high school juniors, then realized they were in the same class in fifth grade. They had two sons. Thomas was the quiet one who just gravitated naturally to sports.
But he also was the boy who looked out for others.
“He was the champion of the underdog,” Scott McGurk said. “If there was a freshman in gym class, he picked him first.”
He got along with everyone, and his house was the one where all the friends gathered.
One night when he was 16 and on his way home a little before midnight he noticed a house was on fire. He called 911, then learned that five children were in the basement, three of them siblings.
Their father had locked them in the basement and set fire to the house. Thomas, a neighbor and his son broke the basement window and pulled the kids out of the house and carried them to safety.
The fire was less than a mile from his home, but when he got home he never said a word.
“I didn’t even know until Channel 8 came by,” Scott McGurk said. “I had to watch the interview to find out what happened.”
***
Thomas McGurk’s tattoos have become a rallying cry in memory of his son. One said “Carpe Diem” -- seize the day -- and the other was a biblical passage: from Matthew, chapter 19, verse 26: “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
The effect of his death was immense not just on his family, but on the Medina and the Murray State communities. McGurk was in Murray for just six weeks, but he made many friends, which did not surprise anyone who knew him.
The entire baseball team rode eight hours to be at the funeral. They were joined there by the Medina team.
The girls softball team at Murray State made “carpe diem” shirts and sold them out at homecoming. The team hung his jersey in the dugout at every game (nobody wears that jersey now). At Medina, the baseball scoreboard is named after Thomas after the family donated money to build it.
To thank the administration, coaches and students, Scott McGurk established a scholarship in his son’s name at Murray State. The Thomas McGurk Memorial Scholarship was founded to honor Thomas’ determination, spirit, character and work ethic.
The first scholarship was awarded in the fall -- a full-time Murray State student who is a member of the baseball team qualifies.
“The people at Murray State have been great through this,” Scott said. “So supportive.”
***
The scholarships, the honors, the memories, talking about Thomas … it all helps, but the difficulty has not lessened for Scott, who spoke at his son’s funeral and said his angel was with God and that he was upset and it was OK to be angry.
He still cringes when he drives on country roads. Brenda, he said, “cries every day. Still.”
“This is not about me and never is about me, but in down times I get very angry,” McGurk said. “I’m a religious man. I became a Christian when I was about 30. I still believe everything is about God and His plan, but I struggle with the path he has chosen for me and my family.
“I’ve done very little praying since that day.”
McGurk tries to keep busy, to be there for his other son and to carry on. But it has been difficult.
He wears his son’s Phiten baseball necklace every minute of every day, and carries his son’s Murray State student ID.
He has yet to clean Thomas’ room.
“I still have David, and I’m very thankful for that,” Scott said. “but I wasn’t ready to stop being Thomas’ father. I wasn’t ready to stop being his Dad.”
To learn more about the Thomas McGurk Memorial Scholarship or to make a tax-deductible donation, contact the office of development at Murray State University at (270) 809-3940 or visit the development website at www.murraystate.edu/giving and click on “Meet Our Donors” or “Give Now.”
