CHANNELING HER GRIEF: Mom organizes benefit in honor of son who died of overdose

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GREENFIELD — The month of February can be heartbreaking for Dana Brown, a longtime waitress at Lincoln Square Pancake House in Greenfield.

It marks the anniversary of the day her son Cord Tucker died of a heroin overdose in her Greenfield home in 2017, as he was getting ready to go to church.

Rather than get bogged down in a fog of grief, Brown channels her energy into planning the Heroin S.O.S. Benefit, held each February at the restaurant where she’s worked since it opened in 2011.

Cord worked there as a server, too. Having struggled with addiction, he seemed to be getting his life back on track when he succumbed to the drug he found impossible to quit.

The month of February always brings those painful memories of losing her first-born child into sharper focus, but Brown finds comfort in organizing the annual fundraiser, which has raised $19,000 over the past three years. All money raised goes to local nonprofits and community causes.

“If I didn’t keep myself busy, I probably wouldn’t get out of bed all month” said Brown, who has been busy preparing the upcoming benefit, to be held from 5-8 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 8.

All money raised is through good-will donations, a bake sale and raffles.

This year’s event features a buffet of Italian and Greek foods donated by Lincoln Square’s owner, Costas Stylianou, and a lineup of speakers sharing what various community agencies are doing to help those with addictions.

This year’s proceeds will go to The Landing Place and Zoey’s Place Child Advocacy Center.

“It gets bigger and bigger every year,” said Esteban King, Lincoln Square’s general manager and Brown’s friend.

The close-knit restaurant staff rallies around Brown at each year’s event, just as they did when Cord died three years ago, when they showered the family with donations of cash, gift cards and meals. Stylianou has provided the restaurant space and food for the memorial benefit each year.

“Anything I ever need, Costas is always right there to provide it. He’s a great boss and very supportive,” said Brown, 48.

After Cord died, her friend and co-worker, Angel Brown, gave her a necklace with a heart-shaped charm engraved with her favorite picture of her and her son, looking happy and healthy at a Christmas gathering in 2014. She has never taken it off.

King said that losing Cord not only brought the staff closer together, but it educated them quite a bit about the addiction issues that can hit close to home.

“I was pretty ignorant of drug use. The whole experience just really opened my eyes,” said King. “It’s taught me that addiction affects a wide range of people, not just one socioeconomic class. It happens in all walks of life.”

Hearing the stories and statistics shared at the annual Heroin S.O.S. benefit helped him understand the local issues, he said.

Greenfield’s mayor and police chief are slated to speak at next week’s benefit about the work being done locally to combat the heroin crisis.

“There will be info booths and grief counselors and various groups all there to connect people within our community,” said Brown. That might mean connecting volunteers to service groups, or connecting struggling families with counselors or support groups.

The Wellspring Center, God’s Open Arms Ministry, The Landing Place, Healthy Hearts, Zoey’s Place, the Talitha Koum Recovery House and Mental Health Partners of Hancock County are among the agencies to be represented.

“When you lose your child to addiction, you’re at a loss. You feel alone. You don’t know what to do. We want to let those people know that they’re not alone,” said Brown, who is currently writing her testimony to share at her church, Brandywine Community Church in Greenfield. She also goes to a Celebrate Recovery group for people with “hurts, habits and hangups” at the church each week.

If nothing else, Brown hopes she can use her own painful experience to help and comfort others.

Sharing her story is the best way to help addicts and the families who love them, she said.

“As a mother who loses your child to addiction, you think, ‘What did I do wrong?’” said Brown. “We all come to the realization that a lot of people are affected by addiction in some way, whether it’s you or someone you love. If we don’t do something about it, we’re going to lose more people.”

Through the annual benefit, Brown hopes the local community has gotten a lot more educated about opioid addiction since her son overdosed three years ago. Heroin is part of that category of highly addictive drugs.

Cord, the oldest of Brown’s five children, died on Feb. 5, 2017. He was 28.

It was a Sunday morning, and he and some other family members were getting ready for church. Brown was working the breakfast shift at Lincoln Square.

Cord had just suffered a relapse and had come back to live at his mom’s house.

“He had just come back, but we knew he was back to using. At home, we made sure there was always somebody watching him,” she recalled.

He went upstairs to his room to get dressed. When he didn’t come back, his stepdad, Dave Brown, went up to find him unresponsive in his room. He and Brown’s other son worked frantically to revive him until paramedics arrived.

Cord’s death certificate listed sub acute fentanyl poisoning, said Brown, which means the heroin he was taking was laced with fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine.

Brown said other than taking medication to block heroin cravings, her son was doing so many things right to beat his addiction — completing in-home rehab, seeing a sponsor, going to church, taking part in support groups and surrounding himself with family who supported him.

Brown wishes Cord had been on a drug designed to block heroin cravings, but those types of drugs were still in their infancy when he died. They’re more widely used now, she said.

The first Heroin S.O.S. Benefit in Cord’s memory, quickly put together just weeks after his death, raised $10,000 that went toward funding the Heroin Protocol program that supports opioid-dependent offenders in Hancock County.

While organizing the benefit is a lot of work, Brown says there’s no other way she’d want to spend her time in the weeks leading up to the anniversary of the hardest day of her life.

“It’s why we do this in February, because it keeps us going. It’s what gets me up. Instead of laying in bed all month I get up and focus on this,” she said.

Brown wants to remind people that the benefit is not for her son or her family, but for all families who struggle with addiction. “The benefit is in memory of Cord, but it’s for the whole community and for all of those who struggled like he did, and for all the families who feel alone,” she said.

The fourth Annual Heroin S.O.S. Benefit in Memory of Cord Tucker is at 5 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8, at Lincoln Square Pancake House, 118 W. Main St., Greenfield.

There will be buffet-style food and drinks along with a bake sale and raffles throughout the night for prizes. Matt Wortman will provide music and entertainment.

Everything will be free will donations except the raffle. Greenfield Mayor Chuck Fewell and police Chief Jeff Rasche will speak at 5:15 p.m., and there will be other speakers throughout the night.

Donations will be split evenly between The Landing Place and Zoey’s Place Child Advocacy Center.