by Dennis Dalman
Greg and Debbie Bearson helped break ground for three basketball courts that will honor the memory of their deceased son, Tom, who was murdered in Moorhead almost eight years ago.
In a northern portion of Sartell’s Pinecone Central Park, the Bearsons were joined by Sartell Mayor Ryan Fitzthum and city-council members Tim Elness, Jeff Kolb and Jill Smith. Wielding spades, they dug into the soil and overturned it onto the ground.
The site will become a constellation of three courts to be known as the Tom Bearson Memorial Courts. Funded by $150,000 from the Tom Bearson Foundation and $75,000 from the City of Sartell, the project gained final approval from the council at its April 25 meeting. The Bearson Foundation is still raising $100,000 of its share through an ongoing fundraiser.
There are two ways to donate to the Tom Bearson Memorial Basketball Courts project. A check can be sent to Tom Bearson Foundation, P.O. Box 351, Sartell, MN 56377. Online contributions via Paypal can also be made by going to tombearson.org/memorial-basketball-court and then scrolling down to the yellow Paypal “Donate” button.
After Tom’s shocking death, his family and friends started the foundation as a way to promote safety, to give scholarships and to do other good deeds, including an ambitious renovation of the gym at St. Francis Xavier
School in Sartell, where Tom loved to play basketball when he was a student there.
Bearson was a superb basketball player who had a charismatic personality that attracted many friends and well-wishers. A graduate of Sartell High School, he had just begun studying at North Dakota State University when he went missing. His body was found days later, Sept. 20, 2014, at an RV business lot in Moorhead. He had been asphyxiated, a murder that remains unsolved. Bearson had planned to become a nurse anesthetist.
Bearson so loved basketball since he was a toddler that he practiced constantly at his home, lobbing shots at the basketball hoop by the driveway. That very same hoop will be installed at one of the courts of the Tom Bearson Memorial Courts.
At the April 23 Sartell City Council meeting, Greg Bearson said that after Tom’s death, the devastated family kept asking themselves, “Why Tom?” That incessant question, he said, caused them to question the meaning of their lives. Support from people in Sartell was crucial for their healing process. Bearson then listed some of the things the family learned: that Sartell is a wonderful community, that compassion is so important for hearts that hurt, that giving to others is the much-needed nourishment for people’s souls and that “happiness can be found in the darkness if only one learns to turn on the light.”
The courts, Bearson concluded, is one way to give back to a community that helped the family deal with their sorrow.
The three courts will be constructed in phases over the next three years, with the first phase starting this summer.
