Billy Ray Wheeler, Jr. was born in Ashland, Kentucky at King’s
Daughters’ Hospital on January 5, 1967. He went to Eastern
Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky for a degree in Police
Science. He was a good person. He was a police officer for
University of Kentucky, an EMT, First Aid Instructor, a CPR
Instructor, and RAD instructor (women’s self-defense), and loved
to work the Special Olympics. He also was a very good artist.
Whenever he got a chance, between jobs, he would visit
hospitals to draw
cartoons for sick children. I lost Billy Ray, my beloved son,
on July 27, 1997 to suicide. He got his gun and put into his
mouth and killed himself.
Suicide hurts the family. His family had always been there for
him, but for
some reason he chose not to let us know how depressed he was.
He had met this woman on the Internet, got rid of all his
possessions, quite his job, sold everything he had, and left his
family and three daughters to go to Florida to start a new life
with this woman he met on the Internet. He was so excited when
he left Lexington, Kentucky to go to Florida to be with this
woman. We do not know what happened to him while he was in
Florida. He was only there for five months. We love and miss
him so very much and our entire family has been suffering with
terrible guilt. Of all people, for Billy Ray to do this is
something that everyone is having a very difficult time trying
to figure out why? He always volunteered to help others, never
giving himself enough time for just him. He had so much to give
to this world. He had three daughters, twins (Jessica and Sara) he adopted that
were his x-wife’s, and Lauren his biological daughter whom he
loved dearly. Billy Ray had to be feeling a pain that was so
foreign to him that he couldn’t find the words or a way to reach
out to the people he knew loved him so very much. I believe
that if he had been able to think more clearly he would have
never intentionally hurt his family or himself. Something, I
know, scared him to the point where he just decided to end it
all, and what that is I will probably never know, but I still
try to figure out why. We just have to accept the fact that we
may never know what he was thinking or experiencing the five
months before he decided to take his life in the manner he did.
He was a religious person, and I don’t understand why he chose
to commit suicide. He had to think that at that time, he had no
other choice. Something happened to him while he was in
Florida. We love him so very much and miss him terribly. Life
for our family has forever changed.Billy Ray Wheeler’s Mother
