Brady Holt an Inspirational Story

Brady Holt to be guest on the Coach Scott Fields Show

Utah State football’s Brady Holt: A gentle giant fighting for his life 

PAIGE CAVANESS on May 18, 2016 at 4:13 pm 

Christy Holt and her youngest daughter, Abbie Holt, were on the freeway in West Jordan on Saturday afternoon when she received a call from her son. Brady Holt had left their house in Riverton to make the trip back up to school in Logan to move out of his apartment and into a new one for the summer. 

The drive from the Salt Lake Valley to Cache Valley was nothing new to Brady — he had made the trip several times since starting at Utah State in January. Each time he arrived at his Logan apartment he would call his parents to let them know he arrived safely.

But this time it wasn’t his voice on the end of the line. It was an officer from the Utah Highway Patrol. “He said, ‘Ma’am, I have your son’s phone; he’s been in a very terrible accident. He’s been seriously hurt and he’s being airlifted to Ogden Regional Hospital,’” Christy said. She pulled the car over into a nearby parking lot and cried with her daughter, who had not heard the phone call but knew that it was serious and that someone in the family was hurt. “I knew it was my brother calling because it was his picture that showed up on my mom’s phone,” said Abbie, who thought her brother was calling to say someone else in the family was hurt. “Then my mom pulled off to the side of the road and I didn’t know what was going on, so I started crying. Then she told me it was Brady and I broke down in tears.”
 “I called my husband and I was bawling,” Christy said. “I told him ‘Brady’s been in an accident and they life-flighted him to Ogden Regional Hospital.’” Christy and her husband, Tracy Holt, arrived at the hospital around 2 p.m. on Saturday afternoon and were told that their son had a spinal cord injury, severe head trauma, and that he was bleeding and possibly had a lacerated liver. Two hours later, the doctors said that Brady had an 85 percent chance of not surviving. “We said we would go with those odds — 15 percent chance of making it,” Christy said. The doctors then did an exploratory procedure and found that Brady’s liver was fine, but that he had a fractured neck and four injured vertebrae in his lower back. The main concern at that time was still his brain injury. At that point, the neck fracture and spine injuries were mostly stabilized by the fact that he was lying flat on his back, but until the doctors knew there was brain activity there was no point in fixing his spine. “The doctor told us at that time to prepare for the fact that our son may never come out of this,” Christy said. “That is the most heart-wrenching news that anybody could ever tell you, to know that your child — and to me he’s still my child, even though he’s so much bigger than me and he’s 21, he’s still my child — that he may never wake up. We got that news and we were devastated.” 

 Christy has spent the past three days in the hospital with her son. Friends and family have stopped by to visit and spend time with the family. Brady played sports all growing up and decided as a junior at Riverton High School that he would play football for Utah State after serving an LDS mission. He returned in November of 2015 and walked onto the Aggie football team this past spring. He has been visited by former teammates and coaches since the accident. Christy said she never knew some of the things that have been shared with her about her son, like how he pranked a former basketball teammate by filling his bed in the hotel room with ice while they were on a trip as a team. In addition to the more humorous stories, almost everyone has shared heart-warming stories about Brady and how he was the first person to reach out to them when they joined his football team or came to his school. “You hope as a parent that you’re instilling those traits in your kids and as parents you think your kids are pretty awesome,” said Christy, who remembered that even from a very young age Brady was kind to his sister closest to him in age, Mikayla Holt. “But to see the outpouring of love and people reaching out to tell us a story or something he’s done for them has been amazing.” “He worried more about everybody else than himself — always,” said Tracy Holt, Brady Holt’s father. “He was always worried about how people were feeling and how they were being taken care of.” 

 Christy worried about telling her husband about the accident at first because she knew he would have a hard time taking the news. She didn’t know if he would even be okay to drive after he found out. She remembered how hard it was for him when their youngest daughter broke her elbow, so she worried that this news would be too much for him to take. According to Christy, Brady gets that same caring personality from his dad. 

 The three other children of the Holt family have been with their parents at the hospital since Saturday. When Abbie first saw her older brother in the hospital bed she could not walk past the door before she was in tears. “That’s not my brother,” she said. The brother Abbie Holt knows is the 6’7” 260 lb. pep-talker who helped her earlier this year when she was struggling with her dance career. According to Abbie, Brady would text her every day for a few weeks and give her a loud pep talk each time he saw her at the house until she got out of her slump. 

The pep talks from Brady were a common occurrence in the family, according to Christy Holt.

Two days after returning from serving an LDS mission in Utica, New York, Brady’s younger brother Justin Holt was playing in the little league football championship game. Toward the end of the game, Justin – who plays defensive end just like his brother – took a hard hit and was on the sideline crying, discouraged by his team’s scoreless game. “Brady knelt down by Justin and looked him in the eye and said ‘Don’t let that kid hit you again,’” Christy said. “He told him, ‘You’ve got this. You’re a fighter, not a crier. You’ve got this, you’re a fighter.” Brady called Justin a fighter, but since he was little, Justin nicknamed Brady “the giant.” According to his mother, Justin couldn’t pronounce Brady when he was a kid, so giant stuck with him, and pretty soon all the neighborhood and family caught on to the nickname. “It became ‘the gentle giant’ because Brady is very loving,” Christy said. “From a very young age he has been.” The family is waiting for now at Ogden Regional Hospital, after MRI’s and CT scans and little improvements, they are hoping the gentle giant will be a fighter, just as he told his little brother to be last November.

Utah Representative Mike Noel commenting on the Brain head fire

I love the honesty here....



Last week my wife and I drove from Kamas to Tabiona Utah. It is a beautiful drive if you have never taken it. It was amazing to see many areas that 60 -75 % of the trees were dead due to beetles and such. The forest is tinder dry and my wife made the comment if there is ever a fire here it will be devastating.
This is exactly what happened to the Brian head area. Several years ago we were at Brian head and could see the devastation the the beetles had on the trees. Locals and others wanted to go into and remove the fall, but were opposed by many of the "tree huggers, bunny lovers and rock lickers" that representative Noel so eloquently described.
Its time we took control back from special interest groups and agencies like the BLM and others that restrict the commonsense and good people that it impacts the most.

Incase you missed it

Incase you missed this historic speech... May God Bless America




A poll conducted Tuesday night showed that most Americans had positive reactions to President Donald Trump’s Tuesday address to joint sessions of Congress in which he proposed increasing defense spending, building a wall on the United States border with Mexico and repealing and replacing Obamacare.
 The CNN/ORC poll found that 57 percent of those who watched said they had a “very positive reaction to the speech,” according to CNN. An additional 21 percent said they felt “somewhat positive” about Trump’s speech. Only 11 percent responded that they felt “somewhat negative” about the speech, and an additional 10 percent said they felt “very negative” in response to the speech. After the speech concluded, nearly 7-in-10 of those who watched (69 percent) said they believe Trump’s proposed policies will lead the country in the right direction, compared to 26 percent who responded that they believe Trump is headed in the wrong direction.
Most viewers also agreed that Trump’s proposed priorities are on track. Almost two-thirds, 63 percent, indicated they believe Trump has the right priorities for the country, compared to 36 percent who did not believe his priorities were on the right track. Those who were polled agreed with Trump the most on his proposed economic policies, with 72 percent saying his economic ideas were on the right track. And even after Trump’s harshly criticized immigration executive order and travel ban, 70 percent who watched said they believe Trump’s proposals to combat terrorism were on the right track.
On the subject of immigration, 62 percent believed Trump’s proposals were on the right track. And 64 percent agreed with Trump’s proposed tax policies.
The poll surveyed 509 Americans who watched the speech, and included 33 percent who identified as Republicans, 28 percent who identified as Democrats, and 39 percent who identified as independents. The margin of error was +/- 4.5 percentage points.

What Do you think?

Hot spots

We're on it

02/12/2017 West Valley City Firefighters battled a blaze at the Aspenwood apartments Sunday morning. When the fire department arrived smoke and flames were visible from the roof and second story. Crews worked quickly to contain the fire. An offensive strategy was used to attack the fire. Crews worked from the front and rear of the building to stop the fires progress. After the fire was contained and the bulk of the fire was knocked down crews went to the roof to work on the attic which sustained most of the damage. A trench cut was utilized to access an area where they were able to continue to work in coordination with other crews on scene to extinguish any remaining hot spots. Investigators were called to determine the cause of the fire. Before firefighters left they blankets the area with a foam solution to aide in cooling and extinguishing anything that might be suspect to smolder.

Drain the swamp! Eight and out.

Dear Mr. President,
America has become a festering political cess pool. Everything in our daily lives seems to be political. #Celebrities think that they have the answers, #Conservatives won't listen to or work with Liberals. #Liberals that won't work with or listen to Conservatives. #Moderates that can't figure out what the hell they stand for. The #republican party has become a joke and the #democratic party has become a travesty. Media that has no friggin clue as to what news is, or where truth lies. Opinion has become the standard for ratings, and politicians seem to have a tenure that cannot be broken. Social media and the internet have become a source of information that is unverified, unvalidated, and seems to be taken at face value for the gods honest truth no matter how ridiculous the claim. Good is evil and evil is good. It is a completely upside down picture of America, or at least the America I love and long for.

So with all that rant said. I am giving you a chance. Its been a very long time since I felt good about the #potus. Some were honorable, but couldn't get the job done. Some were charismatic but couldn't define the word, is. Some wanted to fundamentally change the country, and have brought us to the precipice of hell, and now we come to you. As with all of our presidents I will give you a chance. I will watch to see how you work to make changes, to correct our path.

I will hold you to the #constitution that in January you took a sacred oath to protect and defend.
One promise that you made in your campaign, that you mentioned in your speech on inauguration day and that I believe will have the greatest impact on securing our nation as a true representative government is to #draintheswamp. So Mr. President. Please keep that promise. You will have at least four years, maybe eight to do what you can. In my humble opinion eight years should be the maximum time any politician should hold office.
May God Bless and direct you Mr. President. May we once again be the United States of America. May we re learn how to work together, to lift those around us, and to not be so damn selfish.

Suck it up Buttercup.... Cowboy Poetry at its best

Jeff Carson says it best.