‘Silent Thunder'
Ex-Sooner shares his story of a rough life
Former Sooner tells all

By Jenni Carlson

Published: June 24, 2008

Eric Thunander walked into the drug house and stepped into his past.

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Everywhere the former Oklahoma football player looked, people were doing meth. The couple who lived in the house was smoking it, but so were their grown children.

It was 3 a.m. on a Wednesday.

It was a shot of reality.

Thunander had grown up around drug users — his mother, his step-fathers, their friends — and he had vowed to be different. Clean. Sober. Better.

For years, he had been. Thunander, who is deaf, landed a football scholarship at OU, played as a true freshman, then earned a ring as a defensive end on the Sooners' 2000 national championship team.

And yet, there he was only a few years later looking for a hit.

Was his past going to be his future?

"It's time,” he thought, "to get help.”

Three years have passed since that jarring early morning revelation and Thunander's past looks nothing like his future. He is clean and sober. He is a college graduate. And now, he is an author.

Today marks the national release of "Silent Thunder,” a book Thunander wrote about his life. It details his difficult childhood, how he dealt with being deaf and how he found strength in football. It also chronicles the injury that forced him from football and the struggle that followed.

"For a few years, I took that dark path and acted like I didn't want to exist,” Thunander said. "I was so sad all the time.”

He shook his head.

"I'm just so happy to be happy again.”

• • • •

Everything changed for Eric Thunander inside the Cotton Bowl that first October Saturday in 2000.

And it had little to do with the outcome.

During the third quarter of a 63-14 victory that served notice of the Sooners to the college football world, Thunander took a blow to the head.

He felt something pop, and as he lay on the turf feeling dizzy and disoriented, he thought he'd suffered a concussion.

The dizziness didn't go away.

Even after the Sooners won the national title, Thunander was still enduring headaches and nausea. Doctors finally determined he had a hole in his ear canal, an injury made worse by stress and strain of football.

His career was over.

"I always thought when football was over,” he said, "my life was over.”

Thunander tried to cobble the pieces together, marrying his high school sweetheart, moving back to the Kansas City area where he'd gone to high school and going to work for his father-in-law's electrical business.

It wasn't what he had hoped. It was a fall-back plan.

Before long, the fall-back started falling apart.

Thunander split with his wife after less than a year, then quit his job with his father-in-law. With few family or friends in Kansas City, Thunander slipped into depression.

He started drinking.

And doing drugs.

And slipping deeper and deeper in the hole.

"I was thinking about ending it all,” Thunander said.

His present looked grim, and his future seemed bleak, yet it was his past that pushed him to the brink. Thunander witnessed so many horrors as a child. Drug use. Sexual abuse. Physical violence. Extreme poverty. He pushed away every memory. He boxed up the pain. He stored away the trauma.

He always knew he needed to talk to someone about those demons, but finally, he realized that he wanted to do it.

• • • •

Eric Thunander kept in touch with Greg Vollmer after leaving Norman. The two met during Thunander's freshman season when Vollmer was the community police officer assigned to the OU athletic department. Over the years, Thunander shared some of his struggles.

Still, Vollmer realized he didn't know half the story when Thunander called one day in the fall of 2003.

"I could tell that there was a problem,” Vollmer said.

As a crisis negotiator with Norman SWAT, he knew anyone who endured three major hardships in a short amount of time was susceptible. Thunander had recently divorced and quit his job, and when he started talking about his childhood horrors, Vollmer knew the problem was serious.

He stopped by the football offices later that day.

"I don't know if you've talked to Eric lately,” he told Bob Stoops and Brent Venables, "but he's having a really bad time in Kansas City. I don't know if there's anything you can do for him.”

Not long after, Stoops called Thunander.

"Why don't you come back to school?” the coach asked.

"That's great,” Thunander said, "but I can't afford it.”

"Don't worry about it. I'll put you back on scholarship.”

Thunander returned to OU in the spring of 2004, but his demons weren't far behind. He went days at a time without sleeping. He spent hours on the couch, watching television, never leaving his apartment.

Then, the drinking and the drug use started again.

Not until he found himself inside that drug house at 3 a.m. on a Wednesday did he decide to get help. He spent a week in detox, then started taking medication to help him sleep.

His condition improved slowly but steadily, and after missing a year of school, Thunander started taking classes again at OU and working toward his communications degree. That's about the time he started thinking seriously about writing a book.

"My mind was stuck in the past,” he said. "I thought, ‘Maybe if I write it down, maybe I can just read it, put it aside and be ready to move forward.'

"I wrote the book for me first and then eventually for others.”

• • • •

Eric Thunander isn't sure what his future holds.

But he's excited to find out.

He has already sold nearly a thousand books doing signings and appearances around the state over the past few months. He is also giving motivational speeches at schools and churches.

"Psychologically for him, it helped to be open about the situations he'd been subjected to in the past,” said Vollmer, his police officer friend. "It kind of takes a burden off your shoulders.”

Thunander said, "Every time I talk about it, I feel better.”

He has even talked to a few folks tied to the movie industry. He'd like to make his story into a movie.

Thunander wrote "Silent Thunder” for many reasons. As a man who attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and drug rehab support groups, he wrote it for the addicts and users who need hope.

As a child of abuse, he wrote it for the abused who need courage. As an American who is deaf, he wrote it for the millions like him who need encouragement.

"I'm not the only one,” he said. "There's so many other people out there. That makes me want to keep going.”

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