A break from the silence: Sisters honor their lost sons with Brother’s Run

The unimaginable pain of losing a loved one is a kind of suffering many people choose to go through in silence. Yet, sisters Angela Wiese and Erin Hawley have used their grief for their children, who died by suicide, as a way to help others. 

In 2019, Weise founded the Brothers’ Run nonprofit foundation, which raises money to provide suicide prevention efforts in schools. Hundreds of people attend the sisters’ 3K run event every September. 

In the years since Weise founded Brothers’ Run, the foundation has raised over $160,000 toward suicide prevention efforts in and around Lexington. 

On the morning of Sept. 7, 2024, the energy of the people gathered to race at Woodford County High School was anything but melancholy.  

There were kids seen in track uniforms eager to outrace their friends while their parents run alongside, people holding signs and telling the runners to keep going, and just next to the start/finish line was a tribute wall for others who have also died by suicide.

Their pictures were displayed with honor as loved ones ran in their name. The reasons for running may be grim, but the joy of keeping memories alive was the only thing felt. 

“There is a lot of good people out here supporting a great cause and bringing awareness for mental health. It affects more than likely everybody in some capacity,” Blythe Brown, a runner and the partner of Adam Connors, a sponsor, said on race day. 

In early 2015, Wiese’s oldest son, Mason, died by suicide at the age of 19. He had just graduated from boot camp for the Navy Reserves. 

Weise said she mourned the loss of her child and struggled to come to terms with how he died. 

“We have peer support groups specifically for suicide. That is where I found comfort in the beginning. Just being around other survivors of suicide who know the way you feel,” Weise said. 

As Weise was processing her trauma and grief of losing Mason, she said she was also helping her other kids, Ethan and Erin, through their emotions. What she didn’t know at the time was that Ethan was struggling as well. 

“He was 16 when that happened, and we did not know at the time that Ethan was more at risk than anybody else in the family because of his association with being his sibling,” Weise said. 

In the spring of 2017,  just shy of his eighteenth birthday and high school graduation, Ethan Wiese died by suicide.

Weise discovered her son while her daughter was in the other room. She tried giving CPR, but it couldn’t save him. 

“As a teenager, it was really hard to get him (Ethan) to express his feelings. He didn’t want to go to counseling. He would talk to his dad, he would talk to me sometimes. I think he felt like he would make me upset if he talked about Mason. We were all trying to come to grips with the loss,” Wiese said. 

Wiese decided the best way to honor her sons’ memories was to start Brothers’ Run, with Hawley by her side every step of the way. 

“We knew it was going to be a big project and with what she had been through losing both Mason and Ethan and just the time and energy it was going to take,” Hawley said. “Also we were a little concerned about dredging feelings and we weren’t really sure how it was going to impact us.” 

A group of their friends came together to form a committee which helped take the stress off of the sisters. 

Unfortunately for Wiese and Hawley, tragedy struck again. In December of 2021, Hawley’s daughter, Myra, died by suicide at the age of 13. Hawley said the pain was difficult to process and that the overwhelming experience of going through both the trauma and grief of the loss affected her both mentally and physically. 

“You have trauma and then there’s grief. They are two different things, but they mesh together really well,” Hawley said. “Some people describe it sometimes as sort of like a rock in your shoe. Sometimes it gets in that spot that just hits and hurts really bad, and then other times it’s in a place where you know it’s there but you can tolerate it.”

Brothers’ Run is a great way to connect people in the community who are struggling and need support. 

“Just show up for people and always tell everybody you love them. Just let people know that you’re there,” John Couch, a Brothers’ Run participant said. 

“It [Brothers’ Run] honestly makes me feel less alone in my struggles. It makes me feel like people actually care about this issue and that they are here for me and not gonna judge me,” said Lilly Zaparanick-Brown, a junior at Woodford County High School supporting her dad during the Brothers’ Run race. 

Zaparanick-Brown is one of many teens who want to help spread the importance of suicide prevention and mental health resources. Ethan Hudson, a freshman at Woodford County High School and a runner at the Brothers’ Run event, had a similar sentiment.

 “I hope people know that suicide awareness is important and that it’s a fun thing to spread awareness. They can just have a good time, hang out and then run,” Hudson said. 

Weise and Hawley are continuing to keep their nonprofit local to not only keep their children’s names alive but to help their community in any way possible, with much of their focus being on helping kids in schools through their donations to Sources of Strength, a research-based program that provides peer-to-peer training in mental health resources.

 “We need superintendents, we need the Kentucky Department of Education really pushing programs like this for mental health in the schools and just making sure it’s being talked about and focused on every day,” Hawley said. 

Since starting Brothers’ Run, Wiese and Hawley continue to advocate for teens and young adults struggling with mental health and want to let parents know that this is a battle they might not know their kids could be going through. 

“When a death by suicide occurs, the support for other people such as kids in schools, there’s a lot to be learned,” Hawley said. “Parents need to know that death by suicide is very different than death in any other way. It was very important for me that other families knew that Myra did die by suicide, to help them understand how to support their children.”

The sisters often receive flowers and anonymous donations from families in the community that have experienced the same traumas.

 “It’s just one of those feelings of ‘wow,’” Hawley said. 

Their impact is felt in the community all year round, not just in September for their race. 

For more information on the Brothers’ Run nonprofit foundation, go to BrothersRun.com and if you are struggling call the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.