Utah household honors son who died by suicide with Valentine’s custom

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SALT LAKE CITY — Wednesday was an enormous day for the Obray household. They delivered roses to a number of excessive colleges on Valentine’s Day, in honor of their son who died. The household from Monroe, Sevier County, misplaced their son, Dexton, who died by suicide when he was solely 14.

The household, together with his mother, Britney, and his dad, Karl, honors him on Feb. 14 by delivering flowers, the best way he as soon as did.

“One yr he mentioned, ‘Mother, Dad, like, I do not need any women to not have a valentine,’ and he wished to offer one thing to them,’ Karl Obray mentioned. “So we mentioned, ‘How about flowers?’ So we obtained him flowers and he simply beamed and was so proud and he handed these flowers out.”

Dexton’s mother and father mentioned that act of kindness got here full circle the Valentine’s Day after Dexton died.

“Proper after we misplaced Dexton, all the women from his class got here to our home on Valentine’s Day they usually all gave us roses and mentioned some kind of factor that Dexton did for them,” Karl Obray mentioned. “And it simply touched us and from that time, that is once we determined that we had been going to do flowers yearly for all the women in his faculty.”

The custom started and the household created a GoFundMe* and a Fb for his or her trigger. This yr, the Obrays raised sufficient cash to get roses for the women at six excessive colleges.

“We had been in a position to get donations, and it helped us attain 2,000 women and that totaled to be six colleges. It was all form of central and southern Utah,” Britney Obray mentioned. “We went to Kanab (Excessive Faculty), my household was in a position to assist us down there …. after which we did Beaver (Excessive Faculty), Richfield Excessive Faculty, South Sevier Excessive Faculty, South Sevier Center Faculty, after which North Sevier Excessive Faculty.”

The Obrays spent all morning delivering the roses to totally different colleges.

“All day immediately, we have been getting messages about the way it’s simply touched their daughter and simply made their day and I can see Dexter’s smile simply beaming, figuring out that his legacy’s persevering with, and we simply felt him with us all day,” Britney Obray mentioned.

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They’re hoping to unfold what they name Dexton’s gentle. The Obrays mentioned Dexton was an enormous child with an enormous coronary heart. That they had no concept among the inside struggles he was going through. Since his dying, the Obray household realized that Dexton suffered largely because of the results of adverse social media.

“We did not know Dexton was battling despair as a result of they use Snapchat and it deletes the conversations. Once we did a cellphone verify, we did not know. You recognize, we checked out his texts, they did not say something,” Karl Obray mentioned.

It wasn’t till later they discovered issues he’d seen or saved on totally different social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok.

“Dexton was wanting up miserable issues like he was addicted virtually to that,” Karl Obray mentioned. “Social media knew that addicted him and that was what he wished they usually fed him increasingly and extra.”

That is why after all the flower deliveries, the Obrays went to the Utah Capitol to talk to legislators about SB194, a invoice that regulates social media use for minors.

“With out social media, we’re 100% positive that Dexton would nonetheless be right here,” Britney Obray mentioned. “There was no different purpose for him to take his life, apart from what he was being consumed social media.”

“He was liked, he was by no means bullied, he was the preferred child within the faculty virtually, he had the life. He obtained all the pieces he wished, and social media robbed it from him,” Karl Obray mentioned.

The invoice focuses on a number of areas of privateness and supervision for teenagers. It requires default privateness settings for minors, age verification for minors, it prevents social media firms from utilizing their knowledge and permits a supervisor account for minors that may oversee all the pieces.

The Obrays mentioned they might have been in a position to intervene for his or her son if the data had gotten to them.

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“However it by no means obtained to an grownup. It by no means obtained the place it wanted to go. And so the laws is an enormous one, simply mother and father with the ability to log in, management what they see,” Karl Obray mentioned.

Whereas they did their finest to watch his cellphone and set boundaries for social media use, they want that they had recognized extra.

“I used to go right down to Verizon shops and we had set laws for Dexton in order that he solely had an hour a day of social media. You are able to do all these issues,” Karl Obray mentioned. “You may lock it down so you may’t get on the web and all that. However these social media apps, there is a one-size-fits-all. It is an grownup account and that is it. The issues that TikTok was feeding Dexton was pure poison, and we’ll speak about that on the laws immediately. It was pure poison, and it was mainly telling him to take his life.”

The Obrays had been grateful for the “step ahead” legislators had been taking to carry social media firms accountable.

“I do know that they’re making an attempt to make a distinction and they’re occupied with our youth the place social media is just not,” Britney Obray mentioned.

They’re working to start out a basis in honor of Dexton that gives a spot for youth to spend their time “being children” as a substitute of on social media.

“So these social media giants, they know what they’re doing to our youngsters,” Britney Obray mentioned. “They’re addicting them. They’re grooming them, no matter you need to say. Children are simply not allowed to be children anymore, and that is the place a whole lot of the psychological well being points are coming in. It is simply the pressures of what everybody’s wanting like on social media, what your life ought to appear like.”

The opposite a part of that basis can be for adults, offering them assist and training on the tough issues children are going through particularly with social media and psychological well being.

“We simply really feel like if we may help assist them and allow them to know that, you understand, tales like ours should not occur and hopefully we are able to save a pair lives and inform mother and father in order that they know what to search for,” she mentioned.

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Sadly, we weren’t educated on all this till we misplaced Dexton.

–Karl Obray

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“Sadly, we weren’t educated on all this till we misplaced Dexton,” Karl Obray mentioned. “We needed to be taught it the exhausting means. We simply don’t desire different folks to have their mother and father to really feel the ache that we really feel on daily basis. And that is what we’re doing. We’re simply making an attempt to unfold a narrative and attempt to carry that focus so one other mum or dad’s not shocked within the morning after they get up.”

The Obray household is sharing their story in hopes of serving to different households forestall related tragedies. They need to unfold “Dexton’s gentle” and encourage others to do the identical. Their efforts are shared on a Fb web page referred to as Dexton’s Story.

If you wish to donate, the hyperlink to the fundraiser – which is a GoFundMe*, is linked right here. They mentioned any donations might be used for subsequent yr’s flower fund, they’re hoping to make it their largest yr but.

*KSL.com doesn’t guarantee that the cash deposited to the account might be utilized for the advantage of the individuals named as beneficiaries. In case you are contemplating a deposit to the account, it’s best to seek the advice of your individual advisers and in any other case proceed at your individual danger.

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