Zachary "Moose" Triplett

This article first appeared in the Magnolia Potpourri, and is written by Allen Jones.

Everyone called him Moose, including his teachers. He even signed his papers "Moose." On Sept. 4 more than 800 people celebrated the boy known to his parents as "Zach," many of them fellow students who in prior days had paid tribute to him with many tears.

The memorial for 13-year-old Zachary "Moose" Triplett was held in Magnolia High School's auditorium. Family and friends remembered Triplett as an intellectual who was also an "absurdist" and was always smiling.
Hymns, prayers and poetry were performed in the aspiring rock musician's honor. Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and a song by the grunge-rock group Green Day were performed by three of Triplett's friends. Several of Triplett's peers wore T-shirts with the words "We love you Moose" printed on them.

"The auditorium was almost full," said Triplett's step-father William Travis Martin. "I didn't even know that many people."

But Moose did.

The day Triplett died, counselors were brought to the junior high campus he attended to handle the mass of students who were having trouble coping with the loss of their peer.

"The counselors spent the entire day over here," said Principal Mark Weatherly. "The memorial service was on a Saturday, and I think it really helped the student bring closure to his death."

Weatherly described Triplett as "a great kid" who was funny and out-going and "made people want to be around him."

"It is a big loss any time something like this takes place, but this kid was special," he said. "He was good ... He was a very special young man."

Linda Hadden, a counselor at Magnolia Junior High School, told The Potpourri that a number of students have cried in her office since learning of Triplett's death. Over and over, she said, students told her how Triplett had a way of making them feel accepted.

"And it wasn't just one group or clique of students," she said. "There was this one new student who said Zach made her feel comfortable and at home on the first day of school. So many of the students told me he made coming to school extra nice for them. I kept hearing these stories over and over from the students. I've done this for 20 years and it is unusual. No one said one bad word about him."

Hadden said there was something about Triplett that made his peers feel comfortable about themselves. She said students often recounted stories of his "unique sense of humor."

"They are stories these students will carry away with them in their hearts," Hadden said. "They all had kind words about him and I don't think it was just because he is gone."

Hadden said that she knew Triplett but that after counseling so many of his junior high peers, she was in awe over the positive impact he had on their lives.
"In my office, students cried very hard and wrote heart-felt letters and made posters," she said. "He touched their lives in so many ways. For some of them, this was the first time they encountered something of this magnitude besides, maybe, the passing of a family pet or a great-great grandparent. There was a lot of philosophical exchange. One day I stayed after school with some students who wanted to make things for Zach's family. I don't feel kids abused the situation. They really wanted to share what Zach meant to them."
Hadden said she tried to reinforce the strong character traits Triplett possessed to those she counseled.
"He had a powerful message he shared with these students," she said.

A little more than a week after his death Moose's Converse high-top shoes sat on top of a dining room chair in his Magnolia-area home. The shoes are brightly colored - one green and the other pink. The green pair is inscribed with the words, "I am Mr. Moose," in permanent marker. They are now his family's reminder of a son who lived life to the fullest despite the physical odds that were stacked against him.

Triplett died Sept. 1 at 12:35 a.m., six days after an Aug. 25 motorcycle accident. The accident is not what claimed his life, said his mother, Trina Martin. It was his asthma, she said.

It was 5:55 p.m. on Aug. 25 and Triplett and his step-father, William Martin, were heading to the 13-year-old's second confirmation at Messiah Lutheran Church in Cypress when the 2005 red Honda Shadow they were riding veered out of control while taking a curve on the east-bound lane of Coe Loop. The motorcycle, driven by Triplett's step-father, crossed into the west-bound lane of the loop and struck an approaching car on the driver's side.

According to Texas Department of Public Safety trooper Sandra Kitchen, an investigator at the accident scene, it did not appear that Triplett's step-father was speeding. Both of the motorcycle passengers were also wearing helmets.

The trooper said although William Martin suffered injuries, Triplett seemed to be fine. According to Triplett's mother, her son did not die due to injuries from the accident, because there were none, despite being thrown from the motorcycle 50 feet.

"I was told he was up and walking around trying to make sure his father was all right," she said. "Then a nurse on the scene told me he suddenly had a severe asthma attack. He lost consciousness. The nurse performed CPR and revived him. When he was put in an ambulance he had to be intubated because he wasn't getting oxygen to his brain. Then his lungs collapsed."

Triplett remained on life support at Hermann Hospital until Sept. 1. He was brain dead.

Trina Martin said making the decision to remove her son from life support was the most difficult one she has ever had to make. Triplett was surrounded by his family, including his mother and step-father and his biological father.

"We were all at his side and we held him as he passed away," she said. "He went quickly. We prayed for a miracle but the miracle for me was that he was able to go quickly. He was ready, or at least his body was ready. He was a blessing every day."

Triplett's mother said he had really connected with his faith over the past year. He received his first confirmation last year at Lord of Life Lutheran Church in The Woodlands. According to his mother, Triplett had made his faith his own.

"It was not just us," she said. "He went to confirmation camp and he was a junior camp counselor at Messiah Lutheran and he touched all those children's lives. He wanted to work for all of these five and six year olds because they called him, 'Mr. Moose.'"

Moose was a nickname he adopted simply because his small stature was the exact opposite of the animal. According to his step-father, the nickname was similar to calling a very large bald man "Tiny."

"People would call and ask for Moose and I would say, 'Who?,'" Trina Martin said.

His step-father said he thinks the nickname empowered Triplett.

"That name set him apart," he said. "He wasn't Zach because there are 100,000 Zachs out there right now. He was Moose. It was his way of being his own being."
Triplett was born Dec. 10, 1990 in Fargo, North Dakota. According to his mother, Triplett was born eight weeks early and had a number of birth defects.

"They told us he had a 50-50 chance to live," Trina Martin said. "We had to baptize him the second day he was alive. His lung had collapsed and he just had so many problems."

Trina Martin said her son was "extra large for his age but his lungs were extra small." He spent six weeks in the hospital after he was born. He was also diagnosed with cerebral palsy, a chronic condition that affects motor skills and is caused by damage to the brain.
"He got out of the hospital two week before he was supposed to because he was such a little fighter," Triplett's mother said.

Trina Martin said she was told her son would never learn to walk or write very well due to the brain damage. And when he was a year old, he was hospitalized again. This time for asthma.

"His lungs were always weak," Trina Martin said.
His mother was still in college and holding down a job when Triplett was born. She later went through a divorce. She relied on the help of friends to raise him.
"For the first three years of his life it was college kids and Zach," she said. "I had amazing friends."

Triplett, however, defied his doctor's expectations and began talking when he was nine months old. He didn't walk, though, until he was two.

"He was always brilliant and always insightful and we always talked to him like he was one of us and I think that influenced him," Trina Martin said. "We never did baby-talk."

Triplett's mother later remarried. Her current husband, William Martin, said the college atmosphere may have contributed to his step-son's ability to overcome his health problems.

Although he said Triplett had a slight "side-gait," most people probably wouldn't have realized that the boy suffered from cerebral palsy.

"There was his speech, but he was so insightful and smart and funny that you would have never thought something was wrong with his brain," William Martin said. "And his walk, it could be construed as a young person's strut in some way. He just kind of walked slow and took his time and wavered back-and-forth. An outsider looking in could have thought of it as kind of a skate-punker's walk."

A surgery at the Shriner's Hospital for Children in Houston loosened some tendons in Triplett's legs that helped him walk a little better, said his mother.
"He really had to think about walking," she said. "It was not a subconscious thing like it is for you and I. He had to think 'heel-toe, heel-toe' to walk."

His health problems were not his most important aspects, his mother said, adding that "he was just one of those kids that never judged other people." Triplett seemed to like everyone for who they were.

"He had so much respect for kids who were true to themselves," she said. "We had long talks about what makes people different. He struggled when he was younger about being handicapped and we had decided that we wouldn't look at it that way. I think that taught him to treat everyone the same."

Trina Martin said her son had a good grasp of the "Golden Rule - treat others the way you would like to be treated."

"He knew that from the start," she said. "That was what he was about. I think that is why he had so many friends. He didn't turn people away.'

William Martin said although he only knew Triplett when Triplett was age six to 13, some life lessons seemed to be naturally born in him.

"He just got it," William Martin said. "He had the mind-set naturally."

During his last few years, the couple said Triplett began to discover his musical talent. His step-father taught him to strum a guitar. Soon, said his mother, Triplett was playing along to his favorite bands such as Green Day and Weezer while listening to their CDs in his bedroom.

"I am reminded of how I was told he didn't have good motor skills and here he could play right along with those bands," Trina Martin said.

For a boy that was born with brain damage, he was a gifted and talented student during his elementary school years. In junior high, he was taking pre-Advanced Placement courses.

"He beat every odd against him," his mother said.

Now his organs are helping other children to overcome physical odds. Triplett's organs were donated to the Houston-based Life Gift.

"Our hope is that with Life Gift, they do this organ donation and they keep tabs on who gets them, and one day we may be able to look at this child and see our son's eyes," Trina Martin said. "We tried to do what our son would have wanted."

-Cindy Lauper

You with the sad eyes
don't be discouraged
oh I realize
it's hard to take courage
in a world full of people
you can lose sight of it all
and the darkness inside you
can make you feel so small

But I see your true colors
shining through
I see your true colors
and that's why I love you
so don't be afraid to let them show
your true colors
true colors are beautiful
like a rainbow

Show me a smile then
don't be unhappy, can't remember
when I last saw you laughing
if this world makes you crazy
and you've taken all you can bear
you call me up
because you know I'll be there

And I'll see your true colors
shining through
I see your true colors
and that's why I love you
so don't be afraid to let them show
your true colors
true colors are beautiful
like a rainbow