By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Stone Foltz was a hero in life and in death.
That’s how his parents, Cory and Shari Foltz want people to remember him.
The Bowling Green State University sophomore died earlier this month, the victim of an alleged hazing accident.
When Bowling Green police arrived at his off-campus apartment where he’d been dropped off after a Pi Kappa Alpha event on March 4, his heart had stop beating. They’d brought him back to life and he was breathing through a ventilator, his parents said in a telephone interview Wednesday (March 24).
By the time his parents made the two-hour drive from Delaware, Stone was being place in a medical helicopter to be transported to a Toledo hospital.
He was kept on life support until March 7, when his organs were donated. He’d signed up to be an organ donor when he first got his license , his parents said.
“We knew all along that’s what Stone would want,” Cory Foltz said. “The doctors had told us that there was catastrophic damage. That he may not come back.”
On Tuesday, Stone’s parents learned the details about who benefited from their son’s generosity. His father said that Life Connection of Ohio gave them information on the transplant recipients: his right kidney was transplanted into a teenage girl; his left kidney went to a preteen girl; his liver was transplanted into a man in his 50s; the double lung recipient was a man in his 50s; and his heart now beats inside a woman in her 20s. Also, his tissue donation could help up to another 125 people.
“Through all of this darkness, we are still looking for these little wins, hearing that he’s able to help so many other people,” his father said.
“Stone helped so many people before his passing. He continues to be a hero. … It helps us that we know he’s still living on, and he’s done these heroic deeds,” Shari Foltz said.
And after his death they learned these were not the only people he helped.
A letter to the family from a fellow student at Buckeye Valley High recounted how Stone stood by him when he was bullied. “He is one of the reasons that I am still alive today,” the friend wrote. “He stood up for me when I was severely bullied in high school. He was one of three people who was by my side with everything I went through. … Just know he had a hand in saving my life when I was about to give up. He’s a hero.”
Three years ago, Stone lost his best friend Jake in a car crash. Their habit had been to go to the friend’s house every day after school and do their homework in the kitchen. Stone continued to do that for a month after Jake’s death. It helped him heal and it helped Jake’s family heal. And when Jake’s sister was studying to be a nursing assistant in downtown Columbus, Stone would always call her to make sure she got home safely. “He was filling that big brother void, and protecting Lexi,” Shari Foltz said.
And he was a hero to younger brother and sister, she said.
Stone did the right things, and now his parents want others to step up and do the right thing. That’s why they spent hours on Wednesday conducting media interviews.
“The past two days have been extremely exhausting,” Stone’s mother said. “We don’t want to be here, but I made a promise to Stone. We want to get our message across. We don’t want this happen again. What we went through is indescribable. We want all universities, the BG president, national fraternities to stop all fraternities. We want no more hazing to go on. We don’t want anyone else to go through this.”
They want fraternities to be shut down until they have in place zero tolerance policies addressing hazing, Cory Foltz said. “Because if you look at it right now there’s spring pledging going on. We could have this same issue tonight, tomorrow, next week. We need the universities and the national fraternities to understand they need to change and they need to change today. … Until a fraternity can show that they are doing the right thing on a campus they should not be there. Once you show you have zero tolerance (for hazing) then that’s when they come back.”
“They’re the ones that have the power to stop it,” Shari Foltz said.
She wants parents of students heading to college or those currently pledging at a fraternity to “have that open dialogue.”
“If hazing is going on, speak up and get out,” she said. “You have a choice.”
Shari Foltz said that Stone’s decision to pledge at Pi Kappa Alpha (known as PIKE) “caught me off guard. It was out of the blue.”
As a first year student, he had considered joining a fraternity, and did research, consulted with them and other family members. “He could not find the right fit for him so he chose in his freshman year not to join,” his father said.
Then in early February, he informed his parents he was going to pledge at PIKE. They had questions, but he reassured them. Several members were from Delaware, including his “big brother” with whom he played basketball. Stone knew he’d have that friendship. And the fraternity offered networking opportunities. “I knew he was looking at it in the right direction,” his mother said.
He had some simple “duties” to perform as a pledge. Cleaning the house, serving as a designated driver. Then there was the weekend when he was supposed to come home to help his parents, but he was late leaving because he was up until the early morning hours trying to recite the preamble of the fraternity’s constitution to his would-be fraternity brothers’ satisfaction.
Shari Foltz asked if there were any more of these “duties.” He mentioned a drinking ritual. She questioned how good fraternity it was if that was part of it. But he tried to reassure her. All fraternities have these rituals. “Be smart about it,” she told him. She sent him a text that night and asked about it. It didn’t start until 9, he said. She “jokingly” said she’d text him a 10. He laughed it off. “Oh great, ha ha ha.” She never called him.
Then hours later they were woken by calls from Bowling Green. She knew something had gone wrong.
No one should go through this, his parents said.
Shari Foltz said she is “definitely not” satisfied with the university’s actions to date.
“They are making strides,” Cory Foltz said, but not enough. “It is needs to stop now. If we wait one day, if we wait one week, who says we’re not going to hear a story about another Stone Foltz. We need the campus president to help us make a change, so we can help him protect his students.”
They’ve been in touch with the parents of Collin Wiant, a student at Ohio University who died in 2018 in a hazing accident, Shari Foltz said.
A bill named for him was introduced in the Ohio House last session. It would have made hazing a felony, but the legislation stalled out in the Senate Education Committee. A new version of the bill has been introduced in the Senate this year.
Now, Stone’s parents are talking to the media.
The Wiants didn’t want to see another hazing death, and now they’re reliving it through Stone’s death.
“We don’t want to live through this again,” Shari Foltz said, “and we don’t want any family to go through it again.”
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Click for story on University response.
Click for story on Greek activities suspended.
Pi Kappa Alpha statement on the death of Stone Foltz.
