Posted on 03/19/2005 8:30:22 PM PST by My Favorite Headache
Mom Tries to Rationalize Prodigy's Death
By SHARON COHEN He started reading as a toddler, played piano at age 3 and delivered a high school commencement speech in cap and gown when he was just 10 - his eyes barely visible over the podium.
Brandenn Bremmer was a child prodigy: He composed and recorded music, won piano competitions, breezed through college courses with an off-the-charts IQ and mastered everything from archery to photography, hurtling through life precociously. Then, last Tuesday, Brandenn was found dead in his Nebraska home from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.
He was just 14. He left no note.
``Sometimes we wonder if maybe the physical, earthly world didn't offer him enough challenges and he felt it was time to move on and do something great,'' his mother, Patricia, said from the family home in Venango, Neb., a few miles from the Colorado border.
Brandenn showed no signs of depression, she said. He had just shown his family the art for the cover of his new CD that was about to be released.
He was, according to his family and teachers, an extraordinary blend of fun-loving child and serious adult. He loved Harry Potter and Mozart. He watched cartoons and enjoyed video games but gave classical piano concerts for hundreds of people - without a hint of stage fright.
``He wasn't just talented, he was just a really nice young man,'' said David Wohl, an assistant professor at Colorado State University, where Brandenn studied music after high school. ``He had an easy smile. He really was unpretentious.''
Patricia Bremmer - who writes mysteries and has long raised dogs with her husband, Martin - said they both knew their son was special from the moment he was born. The brown-haired, blue-eyed boy was reading when he was 18 months old and entering classical piano competitions by age 4.
``He was born an adult,'' his mother said. ``We just watched his body grow bigger.''
He scored 178 on one IQ test - a test his mother said he was too bored to finish.
Brandenn was home schooled. By age 6, when many little boys are learning to read, he was ready to tackle high school. He enrolled in the Independent Study High School in Lincoln through the University of Nebraska, taking most of his courses by mail.
``He was such a breath of fresh air,'' recalls Lisa Bourlier, associate principal at the school. ``It's unusual to find a student 6 years old willing to shake hands with adults and say, 'Hi, my name is Brandenn, this is what I want to do.'''
In a college preparatory program, Brandenn took his classes in clusters - all science at one time, all social studies at another - and ``zipped through,'' said Bourlier.
His mother said his mind was so facile that if a topic interested him, he could complete a semester's work in 10 days. She sometimes worried she couldn't keep pace with her son's intellect, and the family hired tutors.
``He set the pace,'' she said. ``We only did what he wanted. (We might say) 'Instead of taking three classes, why don't you take one?' We let him make his own choices from the time he was an infant. ... He always made good choices.''
For his senior class photo, Brandenn temporarily darkened his hair, wore a red cape and round wire-rimmed glasses and posed with a suspended broom - the spitting image of Harry Potter.
At age 10, he became the youngest graduate of his high school and he delivered a commencement speech, saying he was so unusual he practically ``qualified for the endangered species list.''
``He carried himself very well,'' recalled Bourlier. ``He did just a very nice job for being 10. During the ceremony, he gave this excellent little speech. He was just so composed. ... Then afterward, he was running around with his nieces and nephews just a few years younger than him.''
Brandenn was taking biology at Mid-Plains Community College in North Platte, Neb., and had recently decided he wanted to become an anesthesiologist. He also studied for years at Colorado State, polishing piano skills that had won him state competitions and a table-full of trophies.
Brandenn turned away from his classical roots and started writing his own spiritual, New Age-style music, passing on a demo of one piano piece to the musician Yanni at a Nebraska concert. He released a CD called ``Elements'' and gave concerts in Colorado and Nebraska. He was booked for a concert in Kansas next year.
His music will live on - the Bremmers plan to release his second CD for fans who range from nuns to cancer patients to the owners of a New York restaurant where diners can listen to the soothing melodies of Brandenn Bremmer.
His family, meanwhile, wonders why he is gone.
``We're trying to rationalize now,'' his mother said. ``He had this excessive need to help people and teach people. ... He was so connected with the spiritual world. We felt he could hear people's needs and desires and their cries. We just felt like something touched him that day and he knew he had to leave'' to save others.
And so, she said, Brandenn's kidneys were donated to two people, his liver went to a 22-month-old and his heart to an 11-year-old boy.
Patricia Bremmer said in the days since her son's death, she and others have felt his presence. Her husband, she said, was comforted to find a message under his computer mouse pad their son had written six years ago: ``I love you dad. No matter what happens, I'll always love you.''
She wished that she, too, could have that sort of solace. She started rummaging through drawers to stay busy and came across five handmade cards from Brandenn with the same loving message.
Finding them, she said, ``just made it so much easier.''
03/19/05 13:45
So incredibly sad. So much God given talent. Just so incredibly sad. Loving God, please have mercy on this poor child's soul.
It sounds like he lived a lifetime in 14 short years.
Gifted indeed, only thing is no one wants to befriend a know it all type of person. Children with high IQ's are usually ostracized in school and friends are rare to come by..So sad! Loniless could be such a killer! This 14 year old had such potential, perhaps he could've discovered the cure for cancer or something like that. I feel for the young man's parents!
Parents claim much credit when they achieve (as they should get some credit). It's only fair to bring it up when things go badly as well.
Eiher way, I don't think such youngsters in question are properly recognized/condemned individually. Soldiers credit their training for what they do, but they alone pay the price or feel victory in the end, not their drill instructors.
Sad story. But it appears that it turns out that the kid was not as smart as people thought.
Home-schooled an issue, you say? Sounds like he was "well-schooled" to me. But your sample size is 1. Increase your sample -- and sample both home and public schools. Then redraw your conclusion.
~*ping*~
As cruel as it may sound, but self-murder has no forgiveness. It is only damnation. It was a ton of God-given talent, all wasted in the end.
What in the AITCH would that have to do in this instance; with this over-the-top gifted child?
Doesn't sound like he had much time to be a "kid", does it?
I am not going to place blame except for letting him be able to get ahold of a gun--(if someone wants to die bad enough, they will find a way, though)
I just felt more sad for the boy than impressed when I read his history---maybe he felt SO much pressure to "find the cure for cancer" or something equally as "brilliant" that he just let himself get sucked down into the deep, deep hole of depression--
The poor poor thing--such sad news all over the place today, with Jessica, Terri, and now him...
The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very very brightly.
As an anesthesiologist, I can only say that I would have been honored to work with him...but what is disturbing is that the suicide rate among anesthesiolgists is among the highest when looking at physicians as a group.
Oh shut up.
I agree,the problem could have been the peer group. Age 14 it rotten enough for most kids,they all want to be alike and "cool"---If he had made it through adolescence he would have been okay.
The family must be heartbroken--I would have a really tough time dealing with it.
I owned a .22 rifle and a 20 gauge shotgun when I was the same age, as I suspect many Freepers did. There's nothing wrong with a 14 year old having his hands on a gun.
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