Mini Four, Andrew Damiter

It takes a lot of work to make a name for yourself in any field, which makes it all the more difficult to watch someone falter as they near the later stages. My half brother, Brian, experienced such a stutter. It wasn't that he fell at the finish line, it was that he was denied access to the final qualifying heat. An unfortunate series of circumstances, some under his control and most not, led him down a road he was not prepared for. I don't think anyone expected him to go from potential sports star to Reiki master.

Brian was sports. Basketball, baseball, football and what have you. He was an all-around athlete. Though I was very young when he was in high school, and can still remember all the fervor surrounding his trip to Philadelphia to play in a championship basketball game in the early '90s. He planned to play baseball in college and had scholarship offers from a number of schools. Unfortunately, none of these schools were up to the standards set by his father. If he wanted to pursue his own dreams, he'd be doing it with his own money.

His father was and still is quite wealthy but was always extremely stingy, which has led to the formation of all sorts of malicious nicknames amongst my mother's side of the family. He insisted that Brian go to Seton Hall, and eventually Brian complied. He hated it. He spent most of his time just trying to survive mentally. After a year he had had enough and transferred to Penn State, where most of his high school friends were, through loans. By this time most of his sporting ambitions had been put aside long enough to no longer be of much importance to him. In short, his spirit had been crushed.

Add to this the constant on-and-off relationship he had with his high school sweetheart, who spent most of her life in and out of hospitals with kidney problems. He endured it for good reason, as they eventually married. They moved to Michigan for his job, she took up Reiki and began teaching. Perhaps if one event had ended differently he would have ended up playing ball with one club or another, but he never got the chance. He certainly had the natural talent to become famous in that regard.

I had the opportunity to speak with him briefly over the phone, and he told me quite plainly that he never gave it a second thought. "It's not something I think about," he said. "I never got the chance to take it very far and after that first year [of college] I pretty much lost interest." Asked if he thought he could have ended up famous he said, "That never really occurred to me. I just liked to compete." With three kids and ventures in business, fighting fires and exploring spirituality, he certainly has managed to maintain that competitive drive. Is he using it the way he thought he would? No, but then again, who does?