In Memoriam
Braylon Meade
Washington-Liberty High School
Braylon Meade seemed to have more hours in his day than the average human. On weekdays he would arrive at school a little after 8 a.m., having already knocked out two hours of basketball training at a gym in Alexandria. He took a full IB course load at W-L and participated in two varsity sports—football and basketball. He coached youth basketball, volunteered in the food pantry at his church and helped organize his school’s annual Hoops for Cancer charity fundraiser.
“He was the busiest of all of us and somehow always had time for the people he loved,” says Christine Wilson, his girlfriend of almost three years. “He had so much energy.”
On and off the basketball court, Meade’s work ethic was infectious. During Covid, he kept his fellow teammates active and motivated by organizing workouts on Zoom or outdoors in local parks. His default was to go above and beyond, always with a positive attitude and a mischievous grin.
“He changed how I viewed basketball—and life in general,” says his friend and teammate James McIntyre. “He showed me that you have to work hard to be good at something. You can’t just go through the motions.”
Meade had just made W-L’s varsity basketball team for the second year in a row when he was hit and killed by a drunk driver in November 2022, a few weeks shy of his 18th birthday. Friends and teachers remember him as unselfish, driven, inclusive, kind, and a role model to many.
“Braylon worked hard in anything he put his mind to,” says his computer science teacher, Paul Bui. “He came into the classroom super-positive, sat in the front row, never cut corners, always added to the conversation. He knew how to work on teams and was just as much there to support his classmates as he was to learn.”
He was funny, too. Friends laugh recalling the “absurd” nonsense language Meade created—a lexicon that made its way into his daily conversations. And his cheeky essay about navigating the world as a “ginger” that earned him a spot at his dream school, the University of Michigan, where he’d hoped to study computer science.
While so much of his story is left unwritten, it’s clear that his was a life of extraordinary meaning and purpose.
—Adrienne Wichard-Edds