Anniversaries are often a time for celebration and reflection, and that is exactly what David and Shelia Wilbanks will do today as they remember their late son Walker Wilbanks. Today is the one-year anniversary of tragedy striking their family.
A campsite at Sardis Lake just outside of Oxford is where Walker Wilbanks’s football journey began. After attending an Ole Miss football game with friends and camping at Lake Sardis, the Wilbanks family decided to buy a camper of their own.
“When we started camping, Walker was five years old and Landon was three,” David Wilbanks said. “From that point on, it was all Ole Miss.”
As lifelong Rebels, Walker and the rest of the Wilbanks family spent most of their weekends in the fall attending games. It became a tradition to camp, go to the game and have family fun on Sunday.
“Across the campground at Sardis, there’s a football field with goalposts, and we couldn’t leave on Sundays until Walker, Landon and I played football on that field,” Wilbanks said.
A few short years later, Walker found himself playing on a bigger field for his high school team, the Jackson Prep Patriots, in 2013. After making it a goal to get in top shape the previous summer, Walker found himself starting on the defensive line for the Patriots’s season opener against Oxford High as a junior.
As the game wore on, Walker began suffering from what seemed like cramping. After being treated at halftime and beginning to experience a severe headache, the team doctor sent Walker to the hospital, fearing that it might be something more serious.
Soon after arriving at the hospital, Walker fell into what doctors thought was a seizure, but was later discovered to be a stroke, and lost consciousness.
After three days of severe brain swelling and little brain activity, Walker Wilbanks died on August 25, 2014 from hyponatremia: a rare disorder that stems from an imbalance of sodium and water in the body and can cause massive brain swelling.
The loss left a family, as well as a community, searching for answers.
“It’s complete shock. There is no way that this can be happening,” Shelia Wilbanks said, describing the first moments after their son’s death.
“Nobody saw this coming,” Jackson Prep athletic director Will Crosby said. “I think one of the things that made it so difficult is that it was just hard to wrap your brain around it when it all happened.”
Hundreds of students attended prayer vigils at Jackson Prep coming together in fellowship and to pray, and thousand of community members attended his funeral.
Amidst tragedy, a grieving community led by the strength of the Wilbanks family rebounded.
“They were dealing with it on a totally different level than we were,” Ricky Black, Jackson Prep’s head football coach, said. “Our pain was great, theirs was unbelievably awesome. But they were thinking about us, wanting us to continue, wanting our guys to get back into a routine.”
He said the family’s recognition of the importance of the upcoming season was very impactful on the team.
“You look at it, and you think they’re going through something so much worse than I’ve ever gone through and probably will ever have to go through in my life, and look at how they are handling it. What a great example,” Crosby said. “There are people around here that are living better lives and are better people because they have been able to witness how the Wilbanks family have gotten through such a tough tragedy.”
Sports have a way of bringing people together and helping people cope with tragedies. That has been the case with the Wilbanks family, but it’s the people in sports that make this possible.
It was two rival schools, Jackson Academy and Jackson Prep, coming together to mourn the loss of a dear friend. It was the more than $1,200 raised in the Walker Wilbanks Memorial Baseball game that will be added to a scholarship fund in his name that now sits at over $105,000; a game in which the teams sported the rival teams’ colors.
It’s two parents coping with the loss of their son and gaining a family in the process.
“We weren’t a Prep family or a JA family, we were a Jackson family,” David Wilbanks said. “For me, being around those guys was like being around Walker. I could go to the games and practices. And yeah, it hurt not having Walker out there, but I knew they had Walker in them. I now have 80 new sons, I’ve got seven new brothers and I have a new father in Coach Black.”
Walker Wilbanks left a legacy, both on the field and off, that won’t soon be lost or forgotten in the Jackson community and beyond.
“He was a giving guy,” Black said. “Walker was always encouraging you to do better. He was kind of a mentor even to his age group.”
Walker continued to give even after his death. There are five people living today because Walker approached his parents one day about becoming an organ donor.
“I’m 50 years old, and Walker did more in 17 years of life than I have,” Wilbanks said. “He’s led people to Christ. And he’s gone now, but yet he is still planting seeds for folks. He’s still bringing people together.”
As the anniversary approaches, it will be a tough day for a community that is still healing, but they will be healing together and remembering the legacy of number 65.
“I want it all to be positive because it’s not a sad day,” David Wilbanks said. “Walker’s life brought people to Christ, and that’s what we are most proud of.”
