WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — Sunday marks Overdose Awareness Day and the start of Overdose Prevention Week. A Peninsula mom is hoping her fundraiser at the end of the week will help other families avoid the painful loss she’s lived through for more than six years.
Ryan Taylor, a Tabb High School graduate, was only 21 years old when he died of an overdose in 2019.
“It feels like yesterday, I mean every day, I still wake up and I’m not sure if it was a nightmare or a bad dream,” said Taylor’s mother, Mary Brown.
Mary Brown
Brown tells News 3 her son’s drug addiction took him out of college and in and out of various treatment plans. She says he was in a sober-living facility when she found Youth Challenge of Hampton Roads. A faith-based addiction treatment program that requires those in treatment to live at the facility for months to a year.
Taylor’s family had hope that it would be the program that could finally free him of his addiction, but he never made it. He died a few days before he was supposed to enter.
Since then, Brown has made it her mission to support the program she says was ready to help her son, no questions asked.
Now called Faith Recovery, the facility moved from Newport News to just outside Williamsburg and Brown’s annual Ryan Taylor Golf Tournament has raised tens of thousands of dollars to support scholarships there.
“We decided to use our grief for the betterment of other people. This golf tournament, 100 percent of the proceeds go straight to Faith Recovery and I think it’s made a huge difference to those who can’t afford it,” she said.
The tournament is happening once again on Friday, September 5. Brown says it honors her son who loved to laugh, dance and play sports, especially golf.
A shotgun start is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. at Ford’s Colony Country Club in Williamsburg and individuals and teams can sign up until just before. The cost for an individual ticket is $165.
Brown tells News 3 she’s hoping this will be the biggest fundraiser yet, with even non-golfers donating what they can to a great cause. She’s set a goal of $30,000.
