Former Alabama football player and Philadelphia Eagle Siran Stacy shared an inspirational message with supporters of Palmer Place, the Talladega County Children’s Advocacy Center, at a fundraiser at the Ritz Theater Friday evening.
On Nov. 19, 2007, Stacy was in a van with his wife and all five of his children. Less than a mile away from home when the family’s van was struck by a vehicle driven by a 27-year-old man dying of AIDS with more than twice the legal limit for alcohol in his system. He had apparently tried to run several other motorists off the road earlier in the evening.
Stacy’s wife and four of his children, between the ages of 18 and 2, were killed outright. Stacy and his surviving daughter sustained serious injury, and the driver of the other vehicle died the following day.
Shelly, the surviving daughter, was airlifted with at least five potentially life threatening injuries, and was not expected to survive.
Stacy was in a coma immediately after the accident, and his memories during the next several months remain vague when he has any at all.
Stacy’s friends and church family “all started praying for me, and some of you may have been praying for me,” he said. “You are looking at the fruit of those prayers now. I’m no hero, it’s just prayer. Just open your heart and ask God to help you…I am here with my daughter because Jesus loved us and redeemed us.”
Stacy does vaguely remember the funerals for his family members. “I remember Coach Stallings and Coach Curry and some NFL people coming in and out, and I saw my 18-year old and my 9-year-old. I remember the cemetery, and I remember going to Geneva for the other funerals. They took me to the funeral parlor in the town where I was born and raised. The pastor told me they were just shells, but I saw my 2-year-old in a little casket. I was dealing with something I can’t describe, I just remember going home and crying all night, asking God to bring them back…I kissed the lips of my wife of 14 years, and they were ice cold.”
Eventually, Stacy began to meditate on the writings of Paul. “Paul asked God to remove this thorn from his flesh, and God told, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee.’”
The first step to recovering is to forgive, he said. “It’s not easy, but you have to. He murdered my wife and my son and daughters. But you can’t stay in a place of anger. The power comes after forgiving the individual who took my family.” The man’s family never contacted him either, he said. “But I’m no longer bitter,” he said. “A bitter person never gets better. You won’t get to the place God called you to, even if it is just. It’s not about them, it’s about you.”
“You can’t be in denial,” he continued. “For days and months, I was in denial. Everything was going so good, this can’t be happening.”
Citing Luke 6:45, Stacy said, “What’s in you will come out. Good men do good things, evil men do evil things. The mouth speaks what’s in the heart. Cursing and verbal abuse can be devastating, too. Death and life are in the tongue. Teens are killing themselves over words.”
As the months after the tragedy passed, Stacy found his bearings more and more centered on faith. “You have to accept that once God touches your life, you are a new creature. He makes everything new…David asked for a new heart, because his was filled with drinking, adultery and cursing. You can get a clean heart tonight. But it has to come from you. I am what God says I am, and what God says I can be. God can overcome anything, he redeemed us from loss, sin and death. We weep in the night and laugh in the morning…death is not the end. He can change the unchangeable.”
Stacy concluded, “I still miss my family terribly, but my heart is healed. Get your heart right, be honest. I made mistakes as a husband and a father, and I deal with those memories. But most I think of the ones that are blessed, the good things, trips to New York and Disney World, our wedding, my daughter’s scholarship. Work on your heart, cry out like David cried out. Go to church and open your voice. I screamed out over and over and over. Go to church, and be transformed.”
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