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Accident while boating kills Peace Corps volunteer Justin Brady
By GWYNETH GIBBY
Gazette-Times reporter
A life of adventure and generosity that began in Oregon ended on Sunday in the West African country of Mali when Justin Wesley Brady, 27, of Philomath, was killed in a boat accident.
Brady was an Oregon State University graduate and Peace Corps volunteer. He left for Mali in January 2005, full of anticipation.
“I can only hope to contain some of the excitement I feel,” he wrote on his Web site, “now that I am finally following through with something that I have wanted to do for such a long time. I am an inspiration to myself.”
After graduating from OSU in June of 2004 with a degree in engineering, Brady went to work for a partnership of construction companies building the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
Brady had a choice of assignments in the Peace Corps. He could have gone to the Caribbean immediately after graduation, but he chose to wait six months and go to Africa.
“I want to know what it is like to live, and work, and eat, and smell, and sleep in a place that is outside of everything I have known so far,” he wrote to the Peace Corps.
It was typical of Brady to choose the unknown, says Tianna Silen, Brady’s mother.
“He was an explorer,” Silen said. She thinks if he lived in the 1400s, “he’d say, ‘I want to go and see if the world is flat.’ ”
In 2001, Brady took his bicycle to the Pacific Ocean and began a cross-country solo ride. Fifty-one days later he arrived at the Atlantic. He averaged 80 miles a day, camping along the way. He told his mother the scariest moment on the trip was in his tent in the middle of nowhere when he smelled a skunk investigating his campsite.
“I knew if I got sprayed my trip was over,” he said to her, because no one would allow him near them. He was more afraid of having to end his trip prematurely than of any robber or violent person he might run across.
Silen worried, but Brady never seemed to.
“He didn’t live life like that,” she said. “He didn’t live in a box. He probably did in 27 years what most people would in 100.”
Greg Baker, one of Brady’s teachers at OSU, agreed.
“He was a unique guy,” said Baker, an assistant professor in construction management. “He was technically savvy and knew some computer programs better than any other student I’ve had before or since. But he wasn’t a techie or a nerd. He was a people person.”
In 2004, Brady and five of his classmates won a national construction management competition in the field of roads, bridges and dams. The team put together a bid for a project and presented it to judges. The lead judge offered them all jobs on the spot.
“Justin was the brain behind the presentation,” Baker said.
He was also generous. When contestants were having computer problems, Brady fixed his own team’s computer and then went from room to room helping other teams with theirs, too.
“He was one of those kids that people remembered,” Baker said.
In Mali, Brady worked in the village of Dontieribugu, population 500. Members of each of the major families in the village collaborated with him in building new wells, latrines and hand-washing stations. He also helped a group of 200 women begin a gardening project to raise their incomes and improve their families’ nutrition.
On Sunday, Brady and three of his Peace Corps colleagues set out for a day of fun, traveling in their homemade catamaran down the Niger River.
When they sighted rough water ahead, the young men decided to pull into a tributary and get some local expertise, according to Peace Corps press director Barbara Daly. The mast of their boat hit a low-hanging electrical power line. A witness on the riverbank saw a blue arc of electricity that seemed to blow Brady and his friend Matt Costa into the water.
The other two men jumped out. Their injuries were not life-threatening. But Brady and Costa, 24, were killed instantly.
Silen was at home on Sunday morning when the call came. It was a woman from the Peace Corps, and she asked Silen if she was alone.
“I got the fear,” Silen says.
“There’s been an accident,” she heard next. She waited for the words that would reassure her that her son was OK. In December, Brady was hit by a motorcycle in Mali. His leg was broken, but he came home for Christmas and healed. Then he went back to Africa.
This time it was different. Silen can’t remember the exact words that followed, but she heard enough to know that her son was dead. She handed the phone to her husband, David Silen, and then wandered the house crying.
“We hope it was like, snap! That quick,” she said, “and Justin and Matt didn’t suffer.”
A memorial service for Brady and Costa was held Tuesday night in Mali. Their bodies were scheduled to be flown back to the United States.
A funeral service for Brady will be held at 1 p.m. Monday at DeMoss-Durdan Funeral Home in Corvallis.
Brady is survived by his father, Roger Brady of Bend; mother Tianna Silen and stepfather David Silen of Philomath; two sisters, Amber Toedtli and Cherish Brady; and two brothers, Wesley and Nathan Brady.
On one of his first days in Africa, Justin Brady wrote on his Web page:
“As I wrap it all up for today, I’m thinking of two things. One is just how long the next two years, two months, and three weeks is going to be. I have been here for one week and it feels longer than the past six months. Second, is just how hard this is going to be.
“Even still, I would not wish to be anywhere else.”
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