Standout brother

Marty Burlsworth helped create foundation to honor sibling’s memory.

It’s a day he can’t forget; one he has played over and over in his mind in the years since his younger brother’s untimely and tragic death. For Marty Burlsworth, April 28, 1999, was the “worst day ever.”

It was on that date that Brandon Burlsworth, a star of the Razorbacks football team, was killed in a car wreck while driving home to Harrison from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He had been drafted into the NFL just 11 days earlier and was preparing for a career as a starting offensive lineman for the Indianapolis Colts. He was 22 years old.

“It was bad, bad, bad,” Marty says, recalling the shock and devastation he and his family and others experienced in the aftermath of the accident.

In addition to being his big brother, Marty was his agent and promoter — his No. 1 fan. Marty and his wife, Vickie, had devoted their lives to helping Brandon build a career where he not only could excel as a football player, but also continue to inspire others with his strong character, devotion to faith and his phenomenal work ethic.

Although his life ended, Brandon’s impact would not, thanks to the work of Marty and Vickie, who created the Brandon Burlsworth Foundation. Nearly a quarter of a century later, at age 62, Marty is serving as president/CEO of the foundation, which according to its website is a Christian organization with a mission “to support the physical and spiritual needs of children, in particular those who have limited opportunities.” In other words, Marty is leading a foundation to help children just like himself. And Brandon.

LIFE IN A SMALL TOWN

Marty was born and raised in Harrison, in the heart of the Ozark Mountains, where he still lives today. He was the oldest of three sons born to Leo and Barbara Burlsworth. His father was a professional musician, playing music at local and regional venues. When Marty was about 3 years old, the family moved for a while to Osage Beach, Mo., a resort and entertainment area similar to what Branson is today. His father performed there and also at Lee Mace’s Ozark Opry at the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. Marty recalls that his father couldn’t afford a quality instrument, so Mace bought him a new banjo at the local music store in Harrison to help entice him to join the Ozark Opry.

“He was a real good musician,” Marty says. “But he got tired of doing the same old show, two times a night, all summer long.”

Leo was also offered jobs by popular country/western stars Marty Robbins and Tom T. Hall, and perhaps others, which he declined. “He was just that good, but

he was a perfectionist,” Marty says, adding it was a trait that both he and Brandon shared with their father.

Leo eventually “burned out” on music as a career, Marty says. He took a job at a die-cast plant, starting at a local one in Harrison and later at another plant in Green Forest. He would still play some small, local shows, including celebrations for July 4. Leo was also a troubled man who suffered from alcoholism, which affected the whole family.

Despite his family’s problems, Marty loved growing up in Harrison. “It was great,” he says. “It was just a small town. We walked everywhere.”

He especially loved spending time with his maternal grandparents, who greatly influenced him with their kind and humble ways, strong faith and devotion to family. He and his friends would go to movies at the one-screen theater on the Town Square and he would mow yards for spending money. He also loved athletics and played basketball, football and baseball. “I wasn’t great at anything,” he says, but he absolutely loved baseball.

“It’s kind of frustrating when you work all off-season and you go out there the first day and the guy that hasn’t picked up a bat gets a hit right away; just a natural,” he says. “I did not have any of that. … I just couldn’t let it go.”

Like his father, Marty also loved music, and started playing guitar with a band when he was 10, continuing until high school.

Even though he loved baseball it became clear to him that he didn’t have the talent to make it a career. He also liked photography and thought that could be a career option, especially after receiving encouragement from a high school teacher who was an amateur photographer with a dark room at home. Marty bought a small camera, the kind with square, sit-on-top flashcubes, and set up a photography “lab” in his mother’s kitchen. “I don’t know why she let me do that with all those chemicals, but she did,” he says. “I was just tinkering all the time.”

After graduating from Harrison High School, Marty attended the School of the Ozarks at Hollister, Mo., where he studied photography. “I wanted to be a Sports Illustrated photographer, but I didn’t know how to do that,” he says. “And I liked living here.”

As he continued to learn about photography, he began taking photographs of locals at family events and gatherings. Word spread, establishing the foundation for a local photography business he would later establish.

‘THE FORMIDABLE DUO’

One day in 1981, Marty stopped at the local McDonald’s for lunch. Instead of driving through, as he often did, he decided to go inside to order. He was hoping to see a young woman who worked there and had caught his eye. “I don’t know, but somehow I just knew she was there,” Marty recalls, adding that he went to the counter where she was taking orders. “I ordered a quarter-pounder with cheese, no onions, fries and a Coke, and I said ‘why don’t you give me your phone number?’ And she actually did.”

The young woman was Vickie, his future wife. “I had never done that before,” she says.

Their first date was a matinee movie at the local theater, and it wasn’t exactly a stellar experience. The movie featured female mud wrestlers, not the perfect movie for a first date. “We only had two screens at the theater,” Marty says. “There must have been something really bad on the other one.”

The relationship stalled for a few months until Marty asked her to help him with a photo shoot. “I needed a model for this shot I was wanting to do,” he says. “She agreed, but she thought it was a setup. But it wasn’t.”

Setup or not, the couple had become smitten with each other. “After that, we were inseparable,” Vickie says.

Vickie, who is three years younger than Marty, considered going to college at Harding University in Searcy to study accounting. When it came time to go, Vickie decided to stay instead. “I couldn’t leave him,” she says.

Instead, she and Marty established a photography business with a studio in downtown Harrison. They would marry three years later and operate the photography business for 26 years.

“We both were really strong willed, opinionated, and we just jelled together,” Vickie says, adding that Chuck Barrett, the announcer for Razorbacks football games, calls them the “formidable duo.” Another important connection they had, and still have, Vickie says, is “a passion for Bran [Brandon].”

TEAM BRANDON

When Marty and Vickie got married, Marty’s little brother, Brandon, was only 6 years old. By that time, they had already been spending time with Brandon and providing him with support and encouragement while his mom ran a daycare to make a living. Brandon would go on trips with Marty and Vickie, and Marty taught him how to play baseball. “He was a chunky kid,” Marty says, adding that he wasn’t sure he would succeed.

As a youngster, Brandon was immature and often unmotivated, Marty says. “I was always telling him at that young age that it’s not going to get better until you accept responsibility,” he says. “You’ve got to make it happen. I said there’s no blame game.”

Marty set goals for Brandon as his junior high baseball coach, including losing weight, and Brandon met them. The brothers would spend hours playing catch in the front yard, often into the night, using car headlights to see by. When he was 14, he had improved to the point that he made a baseball All-Star team as a pitcher and traveled to Wyoming for a national competition.

Although he loved baseball, he became more interested in football and after a slow start, eventually excelled at it, becoming a star player for Harrison High School. When it came time for college, he had not heard from the one school he most wanted to attend — the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. That’s when Marty went to work. On the advice of a friend, he called Harold Horton, the recruiting coordinator for then Razorbacks Coach Danny Ford, and convinced him to take a look at Brandon. Horton invited them for a recruiting visit and offered to help Brandon financially with grants and other assistance, but not a scholarship, for the first semester.

“He [Horton] says ‘once he gets here, he’ll know and we’ll know,” and I said, ‘Coach, he ain’t going down,’” Marty recalls.

Brandon didn’t “go down” or leave UA. Instead, he so impressed the coaching staff with his tenacious work ethic and strong character, he earned a scholarship in his second semester. He would go on to become an All-American and garnered many other awards. He has been called the greatest walk-on player in college football.

During Brandon’s college career, Marty was on the sidelines at the games, taking photos for the Harrison Daily Times sports section. A favorite memory for Marty is the first time Brandon dressed out in his uniform. “I wanted a picture with his name on the back in the Razorback uniform,” Marty says. “That, and seeing his locker for the first time with his name on it. I thought, ‘well, you’ve arrived.’”

But there was more to come. Marty would end up studying and passing an exam to become Brandon’s NFL agent. And Brandon would be drafted by the Indianapolis Colts. The sky was the limit.

DARK DAYS

While Brandon was excelling on both the football field and in academics (he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in business administration), the Burlsworth family was experiencing some difficult times. In 1997, the brothers’ father, Leo, died of cancer. Then, Vickie’s mother was murdered, a victim of domestic abuse. Next, the brothers’ beloved grandmother died. And then the unimaginable happened.

It was April 28, 1999, and Brandon was on his way home from Fayetteville where he had had lunch with a friend. He had also been doing work on the university’s famous senior walk, where graduates’ names are engraved on campus sidewalks. At 11:30 a.m. that day, Brandon called Marty to tell him he had lost a hubcap and needed a replacement. Marty responded that he would take care of it. Brandon said he would be home later to take his mother to church.

Marty then went about his day.

About 4 p.m., Brandon was heading along a winding highway toward Harrison when his Subaru collided with a tractor-trailer rig. He was killed instantly.

“He was here the night before and he was studying something and we said to him ‘be careful,’” Marty says. “We still do not know what happened. You didn’t have to tell him anything because he is going to take care, he was not going to do anything stupid. I just wonder if he got sleepy. I don’t know, but he was staying up a little later than he normally did.”

Sadly, and ironically, his mother had given him her regular admonition to “watch out for old big trucks and pray,” just as she had done since he was small, Vickie says.

DOING IT THE BURLS WAY

For Marty, his grief was beyond devastating. He says he felt like going to the funeral home and asking for “the regular” because he had made so many recent funeral arrangements. He adds that he even began to feel like his family was cursed. Although his faith wavered, he did not lose it, he says. And he knew he had to keep Brandon’s memory alive.

“He worked so hard and did so much in a short period of time; we could not let it end like that,” Marty says.

After the initial shock wore off, Marty and Vickie turned their grief into action as they began to look for ways to honor Brandon’s memory and help others. To do that, they formed the Brandon Burlsworth Foundation. The motto of the foundation is “Do It the Burls Way,” a saying from Houston Nutt, who became the Razorbacks football coach in Brandon’s senior year. According to the foundation’s website, it means “do it the right way, even when no one is looking.”

Starting in 2000, the foundation began the Burls Kids program to provide underprivileged youngsters free tickets to Razorbacks home football games. They established a similar program in Indianapolis for Colts games. To be a Burls Kid means that you get a special T-shirt with Brandon’s No. 77 imprinted on the back and lens-free plastic eyeglass frames in Brandon’s signature black horn-rimmed style.

In addition, the foundation offers football camps for students ages 7-15 each spring; the Eyes of a Champion program, in partnership with Walmart vision centers and independent optometrists, that provides free eye exams and eyeglasses to children who cannot afford them; academic and athletic scholarships; the Burlsworth Character award for students; The Burlsworth Trophy to honor achievements and successes of walk-on athletes; and the Burlsworth Legends Award. Established in 2010, the Legends Award is presented each year to an Arkansan who has made a significant positive impact on the state. Kevin Scanlon of Little Rock, a former Razorbacks football quarterback, will receive the award at a dinner/fundraiser Sept. 28 at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock.

The foundation also promoted the foundation and Brandon’s extraordinary life by helping with a book written in 2001 by Jeff Kinley, which led to a movie based on the book — “Greater: The Brandon Burlsworth Story,” which was released in 2016. Marty is currently working with ESPN to create a documentary for its “SEC Storied“series about Brandon’s life.

Kevin Trainor, senior associate athletics director at the University of Arkansas and a Burlsworth Foundation board member, says Marty’s devotion to the Burlsworth Foundation has helped keep it thriving when many other foundations have gone by the wayside, victims of fading memories and insufficient resources. And because of that, Trainor says Brandon’s “story continues to live on in Arkansas and all around the world.”

“I was always telling him at that young age that it’s not going to get better until you accept responsibility. You’ve got to make it happen. I said there’s no blame game.”

(Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Sheila Yount)