From Love, Zac: Small-Town Football and the Life and Death of an American Boy, by Reid Forgrave ©2020 by Reid Forgrave. Reprinted by permission of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.
Courtesy of the Easter Family
Zac Easter had printed off the 39-page, double-spaced Microsoft Word document and left it in his room, by his desk, before he went to the basement to retrieve the shotgun slug. Titled “Concussions: My Silent Struggle,” his brief autobiography detailed how football concussions had led to his demise—to substance use, to mental health issues, to his later taking his own life with a bullet to the chest, on Dec.