If Brandon Kapelow’s life had been different, his speech might have been about the magic of childhood moments.

He might have opened it with the morning he woke, the lingering fog of deep sleep hugging him, softening the folds of his vision. How before him lay a carpet of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Doritos – more than any 12-year-old could ever eat – left by his father, who cleaned out the shelves of several stores.

But this is not the speech Brandon had to write. He had a more important story to tell.

Brandon’s father is dead. He killed himself two months after he surprised his son, now 14, with his favorite foods on the bedroom floor.

And that is the speech Brandon wrote.

Brandon’s journey creating what would be an award-winning original oratory for this year’s high-school speech and debate season started in spring 2002 when Brandon was 8. That was the first time his father tried to kill himself.



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His father, Stephen, put a .22-caliber rifle in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Brandon didn’t understand when his mother, Loren Kapelow, tried to explain how his father had shot himself because he was sick.

Dads were supposed to be invincible.

Brandon celebrated his ninth birthday while his dad was hospitalized for his second suicide attempt. His father admitted trying to buy a gun to kill himself. In the hospital, he refused to eat, hoping to starve to death.

Brandon began to understand bipolar disorder and how people who loved life could be so sick they tried to end it, when his father made a third attempt. Loren tracked him to Carbondale, Colo., by intercepting the trademark suicide notes he sent by FedEx. He was in a storage unit, his wrists slit, trying to asphyxiate on carbon monoxide from the running car and barbecue grills he had lit in the small space.

After Stephen’s fourth attempt was thwarted, when he had planned to jump off a building in Indianapolis, it was beginning to seem like routine.

It was a good thing dad wasn’t a good shot, the family would say.

And then everything changed.

Brandon and his dad were planning a family vacation. The day before the trip, Stephen drove to Idaho. He secretly signed up for a shooting lesson. The instructor left to change the large bills Stephen, 64, had paid with when Stephen grabbed the gun and shot himself.

According to the police report, Stephen was found on the ground missing most of his face. He was put on life support in Salt Lake City.

Brandon wasn’t worried when he heard his dad shot himself again.

“It almost was like, ‘He’s done it again, what a rascal,’” he said.

Brandon didn’t know this time it was with a 12-gauge shotgun.



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In a large room in the Kapelow house are the family archives. On the top shelf, far beyond reach without the aid of a tall ladder, is a bin with a black T-shirt and a tiny rip.

Brandon was wearing the shirt months after Stephen died when he noticed the rip made in the Jewish tradition of tearing clothing when someone has died.

Everything flashed back.

The mound of blankets in the hospital room that was his father, covered so Brandon wouldn’t see the gaping wound dying the bed crimson every few minutes.

The arm, the only recognizable piece of Stephen.

The coldness of the hospital’s intensive-care unit numbed his fingers. His body stiffened, void of emotion, until a flood of grief, the kind that cannot truly be described other than by a racing heart and spinning world, doused him.



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There is a natural reaction to talk about death in hushed voices, tip-toeing around gruesome details. A person “passed” or is “no longer with us.”

Not with Brandon. Even in the high-school library, where he practices for speech and debate, his voice projects – a trait that probably has earned him points in competition.

“My dad shot himself.”

In his first year of speech and debate, Brandon competed in public forum, poetry and student congress.

By the end of his season, he wanted to try original oratory, in which students have 10 minutes to speak on a topic of their choice.  

They are judged on thought, composition and delivery. Competitors choose their topic but must present it in an intelligent, original and interesting manner. Emotional appeals are allowed, but statements must be supported by logic and evidence.

Brandon wanted to talk about suicide. He just didn’t know how.

His first speech was clinical, full of statistics. Mark Houser, his coach, knew Brandon would have to add emotional gravity to the story to be competitive. But Houser, who coincidentally is a member of Teton County Suicide Prevention and had a friend who killed himself, stepped back. He saw Brandon’s speech wasn’t just about trying to win ribbons. This was a kid on a journey who needed to go at his own pace.

Brandon comes from a family that believes in honesty and openness. Their home on Fall Creek Road – which his father, an entrepreneur, designed when the family moved to the valley in 2000 – has no doors in the family living area, not even on the bathroom. Stephen didn’t believe in those boundaries with families.

At a time when children try to sever all ties that link them to their parents, Brandon strains to find similarities.

Father and son both skipped fifth grade. Both were good at math.

But his mother sees another similarity. Stephen was shockingly honest, even telling people about his suicide attempts.

“[Brandon’s] father was very much a man who didn’t like stigmas of any kind,” she said.

And Brandon took on a stigma, talking about suicide.

Yet he knew he wasn’t really talking about it with his facts and figures. Midway through the season, he reworked the piece, including the story of a high-school student who killed himself. His scores were higher.

He felt himself further absorbed into the speech as he practiced.

Brandon has known about mental illness since he was young. He remembers his father talking to people who weren’t there and the sudden mood changes. He understands his father wanted to live.

But it was in his research on the piece where Brandon garnered a deeper understanding of his father’s bipolar disorder, caused by head injuries when he was younger.

He started to know his father in a new way.

Weeks before the national qualifying meet in Jackson, Brandon wrote a new speech. One telling the story of “the perfect guy” whom everyone loved, who was successful, educated and had a family.

“But all that came crashing down the day he died. … Stephen Kapelow, my father, joined thousands of other Americans to have claimed their own lives.”



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Changing the piece so late in the season was a struggle. Brandon worried about using his dad’s story. He didn’t want sympathy points.

He felt unprepared the first time he presented the speech, at a meet in Rock Springs.

He felt exposed when he nodded, “Judge ready?”

He broke into finals for the first time.

The judges’ comments read:

“Excellent grasp of facts and statistics.”

“Good use of personal story without making it a pity party.”

“You have the ability to make a difference concerning suicide because of your insight and because of your excellent communications skills.”

With weeks before the national qualifying meet, Brandon took on extra practices with an interpretive coach, choreographing each gesture, step, pause and the pacing of the piece.

Houser rattled off advice the week before the competition.

Talk slowly.

Don’t panic if you draw a blank.

And then, an unusual reminder. This speech is about more than the score.

“Your dominant connection should be with your judge. But don’t ignore others in the room. This message is for them. Don’t let them look away.”

Brandon used to pray every night with his mom and dad. First, his dad would ask if he wanted to hold his hands palm to palm or interlock his fingers. They thanked God for the blessings of the day and each other. They asked for the chance to live happily ever after.

Brandon doesn’t pray at night anymore. The tradition fell to the wayside with high school.

But the night before the meet, he lay in bed, nerves prickling his skin. He wanted to connect with his father. He found himself talking to him.

“I want to do this for me, for you, for mom.”



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Students compete in rounds at speech meets. Brandon likes to go at the end of the round. He thinks judges are more likely to remember him. He silently goes over his speech and scrutinizes his competitors for flaws. If someone stutters and he can get through his without stuttering, he thinks he’ll have an edge.

Sometimes he worried he might cry while performing. He channeled that energy into the piece.

Finding an outlet for emotions is part of healing, said Stephen Lottridge, a licensed clinical psychologist in Jackson. People have no control when a loved one kills himself, but if they can put a form to their feelings it offers a release and creative control, he said.

“In giving it a form, you are putting it outside yourself,” he said.

A year ago Brandon couldn’t have seen himself in this place, exposed to his peers and telling them how living with a suicidal person impacted him.

“Frequently, after each of his attempts, he would ask us: ‘Why did I do that? I don’t want to die, I love my life.’ I frequently asked those questions myself. Why would he do that? Why did he want to die?” Brandon says in the speech.

Brandon never hid the fact his dad killed himself. But he never had announced it to a group of strangers.

The first time he delivered his speech, he felt a weight he didn’t know he was carrying lift from his chest, as he bowed his head to the judge and said thank you.

Losing a father to suicide is something Brandon probably will never fully recover from, his mother said. Instead, he must learn to cope.

Through speech, Brandon was coming to terms with his father’s suicide. His mother knew he was healing or he wouldn’t have decided to talk about it publicly day after day, she said.

Brandon didn’t let his mother see or even read his speech during the season. He worried it would make him too nervous. She saw it during a speech-night presentation for families and friends. She labored to control her breathing through the tears. But she nodded as Brandon welcomed his audience to talk about suicide.

Brandon’s no-holds-barred message has an unquantifiable potential to touch lives, Houser said.

Stigma is the biggest issue with suicide, leaving survivors feeling alone and preventing people from getting help, he said. It inspired Houser in his own prevention efforts.

“If there is a teenager that can be so brave, I should try to work through some of my own barriers,” he said.



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The moments Brandon misses his dad the most are random. Sometimes, it’s when he walks into the house. It radiates Stephen’s aura. Love notes between his parents, reading “U R The Best,” are still taped in closets. The neon birthday sign Brandon and his mom made for Stephen days before he died still hangs in his study among family photos. One is of Brandon, his mom and his sister. They are smiling, but there is an exhaustion in their eyes. It was taken the day Stephen came home from Colorado after trying to kill himself.

If Brandon’s life had been different, his speech would have been, too. He wouldn’t have taken a deep breath and told strangers who he is.

“I am a survivor,” he said.

His speech is not just about how losing a father changes the life of a son. It is a call to action.

Be aware. Talk about the taboo. Break the stigma.

In the hallway of Jackson Hole High School, during the national qualifying meet, a girl stopped him. Brandon would go on that weekend to earn an alternate spot to the national meet – a rare feat for an underclassman. But what the girl said to him was more important than the judges’ comments.

She wanted to thank him. She was depressed. She had seen his piece in Rock Springs. She realized she wasn’t alone.

The statistics he knew so well, the numbers he could spout on command, melted away in the form of her face. She would be OK now, she said. His speech – his life – had changed hers.

And what could Brandon say?

Nothing other than what he says to the judges at the end of a performance.

Thank you.