Finally, little 11-year-old Ty Smalley had had enough. He had been bullied relentlessly for two years, suffering the horrors in silence the whole time, but this time, May 13, 2010, he retaliated. And because there was a zero tolerance policy at Perkins (Okla.) Intermediate School, he was suspended.
His mother Laura, who used to work in the cafeteria, took him home. She had to return to work because they were shorthanded that day.
“She came home at 2:38 p.m. and found out he hadn’t done his homework,” Kirk Smalley said over the phone. “He had killed himself in our bedroom.”
Kirk Smalley, a foreman back then for a sheet metal company called Matherly Mechanical, was working an hour-and-a-half away at Tinker Air Force Base. He is the father.
“It’s something I’ll never forget,” he said in his soft-spoken way. “I got the phone call at 2:39. It was Laura. She was just screaming. I finally screamed back at her. She had to tell me what was going on.”
The tragedy is compounded by a cruel irony: Ty would take a beating on the bus standing up for his third-grade buddy Zethin. He would go out of his way to look after Miss Lila, his 85-year-old neighbor, pulling up the pine cones in her yard so she wouldn’t trip on them.
Three months later, Kirk and Laura Smalley would summon the strength and courage to give their first Stand For The Silent (SFTS) presentation, an anti-bullying campaign that has grown largely out of their own pockets into a worldwide non-profit crusade aimed at saving lives.
“We won’t turn anybody down,” Kirk said. “We always try to find a way.”
Smalley, 46, has spoken about the burgeoning evils of bullying in this social media world, about respecting others, about never having to feel helpless or alone, in schools and summer camps and community groups and religious gatherings and corporations all across the country, and in Australia and Canada and Nova Scotia. He hopes to accept invitations from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Seoul, Puerto Rico and Brazil. Recently, he spoke at a women’s maximum security prison in Missouri.
“Our main goal is to teach these kids they are somebody,” Smalley said. “We’ve trademarked it — I Am Somebody. We give out wristbands that say that. It’s trying to teach them they have a right to be here. We love the somebody they are exactly the way they are.”
When you talk about the Yankees, you talk about Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio and The Mick and Yogi and Jeter and those 27 championships. And you should talk about HOPE Week now, too — a championship community outreach program that one day will be remembered as the model for how a professional franchise can rally together to Help Others Persevere and Excel.
The Yankees are flying the Smalleys to town this week, and he will speak Friday at noon at The Great Hall at Yankee Stadium. Yankee players will be there with the children to listen.
“Right now, 25 percent of babies in America will have a plan on how they can take their own life,” Smalley said, “before they can graduate from high school.”
The emails and text messages and Facebook messages and letters Smalley receives after one of his speeches are both chilling and gratifying:
“I was going to kill myself tonight until I heard you speak,” read one.
Smalley has delivered his message to no fewer than 702 schools and 700,000 students, parents and teachers. Yankees Director of Media Relations & Publicity Jason Zillo, who started the award-winning HOPE Week initiative five years ago, has hit another Bambino home run by finding and honoring Smalley and shining a spotlight on his inspirational story.
“Pretty amazing a team like that would do what they’re doing for us.” Smalley said. “We were floored.”
His 90-minute presentation begins with five life-size photos of children who have taken their lives because of bullying placed on easels behind five empty chairs. Student volunteers read aloud their stories as written by their parents. The children then introduce Kirk, who gives 2-4 presentations daily, wherever he is at the time. His 22-year-old daughter Jerri Dawn is the schedule coordinator.
It is understandably painful for Smalley to relive that fateful day over and over and over when he tells Ty’s story. He tells it because he knows there are other Ty Smalleys out there.
“I hope it makes our boy proud of us,” Kirk Smalley said.