Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron's mother Dee Dee Bonner still feels those sickening emotions when she recounts her son's brush with death more than 15 years ago.
“They told us he wouldn’t live,” she said after a pause to compose herself. “You think after all this time you wouldn’t be so emotional.”
That day, Sunday, August, 4, 1996, is somewhat of a blur to Bonner. She got a call from her ex-brother-in-law telling her to go to the University of South Alabama hospital -- that there had been an accident. She thought AJ had fallen and bumped his head, maybe while climbing on or off the new Jet Ski. It wasn’t until she was led into the area for trauma patients that she understood the seriousness of the matter.
“I walked around the corner and he was on a backboard with the neck brace on with blood and I could tell his face was crushed in -- the left side of his face,” she said. “My knees went weak"
