A CT football coach’s message after his daughter took her life: ‘Tell somebody. Get help.’
SOUTHINGTON — One day when Bill Liquindoli was working as a judicial marshal, he was walking through the cell block and noticed in one cell that all he could see were the feet of a prisoner.
Immediately, he opened the cell door and grabbed the man, supporting him to try to loosen the knotted shirt with which the prisoner was attempting to end his life. Others came to help.
The prisoner was revived. What he said to Liquindoli that day stayed with him long after the incident.
“After we got him down, we saved him, he goes, ‘Oh man, the minute I stepped off, I was like, ‘What the (heck) am I doing … I’m trying to create an airway … No, no, no, I didn’t mean to do this …’ ” Linquindoli said.
Liquindoli, an assistant football coach at Southington High, has thought of this last year when his daughter, Natalie, who had been a two-sport athlete at Southington, died by suicide on June 27. She was 24 years old and suffered from anxiety and depression.
A mixture of grief, anguish and guilt have run through Liquindoli’s mind since that day, as well as what the prisoner told him. Did she regret it? And could he have saved her somehow?
“That’s what kills me, I’m thinking, ‘Did Natalie think that? Did she have that fear in her before it happened and then said, ‘Oh, what did I do?’ ” he said. “I’ll never know.”
September is National Suicide Prevention Month. Liquindoli wants to share his story in the hopes it will help someone — a kid or a parent or a coach. He has a message for his defensive linemen every week, one that he would like to share with other kids, other football players, athletes, students.
“I’ll say, ‘Guys, if you have something going on at home, something in school, you’ve got to talk about it, tell a friend, tell somebody, get help,’ ” he said. “I don’t want your family and friends to go through what I’m going through. Talk to somebody. I think that’s a huge part of coaching in today’s world. And that’s why I’m still here.”
A ‘free spirit’
Bill Liquindoli is a big guy, 5-feet-11, 235 pounds. He started weightlifting at age 12, played football at Sacred Heart in Waterbury where he grew up, then was an offensive lineman and a captain for the Central Connecticut State University football team, graduating in 1988. He’s coached football for 35 years. He grew up with four brothers who all played football (and one sister) and his dad was in the Army, a disciplinarian who kept his kids in line.
Bill loved Natalie, his youngest daughter, fiercely. She was, as he said, a “free spirit.” She listened to Led Zeppelin and Bob Marley and went to music festivals. She loved animals and championed social justice causes. She rescued two dogs, Cooper and Rusty.
She and her father shared a strong connection through sports: she started weightlifting with him when she was 13. She played softball in Southington until eighth grade, then started field hockey in high school, and track, where she threw the javelin.
Natalie went on to major in environmental studies at the University of Vermont and that’s when Bill became aware of his daughter’s struggle with anxiety and depression.
She tried to tell him. At first, he didn’t understand.
“I said, ‘You don’t have it,’ ” Bill said. “That was my answer. ‘It’s not in my family, it’s not in Mom’s family. You don’t have it. You play sports, you get good grades. You work out, you got a boyfriend. Life’s good.’
“As it came out later, in this email she sent, she said, ‘Dad doesn’t get it.’ ”
Natalie had written a paper for college the fall of her sophomore year. She titled it “Hiding a Voice.” She sent it to her parents, Bill and Ellen.
“It was like, ‘Holy (crap),’ it was the wake-up call, the cry for help,” Bill said. “We got it and we did everything we could.”
That year, in the spring semester, she was accepted to a study abroad program in Botswana and though her parents were nervous about her going, she went. It was probably her happiest time. She and her father talked often on WhatsApp . She told him about living in the bush, having to eat an antelope (which Bill thought was funny because she was a picky eater) and she sent him a picture of herself holding a lesser bush baby, a small lemur-like animal with large round eyes, which was also funny because the animal was peeing on her when the picture was taken.
“What did I miss?”
When she came home, she transferred to the University of New Haven to be closer to her parents. She had a psychiatrist and a therapist and was put on medication, Bill said. Some days, she didn’t leave her room and Bill would be outside the door, holding his breath, knocking gently, trying to urge her to get out of bed, to get outside.
She graduated in 2019, then COVID hit, and she struggled to find a job in her field.
“I would go down the hall on a beautiful sunny day and I would say a prayer before I knocked on her door — ‘Hey, you OK? Why don’t you get up? Come on, let’s go to the gym,’ ” Bill said. “She’d say, ‘No, no, I’m all right, Dad.’ ”
But by the end of 2021, things had improved. She found a job as an environmental chemist in Massachusetts. She had an apartment and roommates.
On June 26, two days after the Supreme Court reversed the Roe v. Wade decision, Natalie went to a pro-choice rally. Maybe that made things worse. Bill doesn’t know. He got a call on Monday morning, June 27, after leaving a conditioning workout on the football field.
“She was getting into photography — ‘You just bought a camera, you just had a new tattoo done the month before …three weeks after she dies, a box comes with her name on it with a bracelet for a hippie fest. I’m sitting there going, ‘What did I miss?’ ” Bill said.
“She didn’t leave a note. That left a lot of unanswered questions. We tried to get in her cellphone, her computer, to see what I missed.”
He couldn’t get in.
He and his wife Ellen and their older daughter Rachel were devastated.
Bill’s old offensive lineman’s instinct — to protect his people — is still there inside him and he had questions. How could he have prevented this? Did he do enough? Was he there enough for her?
The guilt weighed heavily on him and made him angry and lash out at people. He finally went to see a therapist to talk through his feelings.
“I could protect her from anything, except herself,” he said. “And that eats me up.”
Over 600 people came to Natalie’s wake. She is buried in a cemetery a few miles from the Southington football field. Last year, Bill stopped every day before and after practice. He had to.
“I feel like as I drive by and I look and see her headstone, I can hear her voice, ‘Dad, where you going? You didn’t stop,’ ” he said.
He used to kiss her on the top of her head whenever she left home. Now he kisses the top of the headstone when he leaves the cemetery.
“I always end it with, ‘I know you’re pain-free and at peace,’ ” he said.
Bill, who is retired from law enforcement, thought about not coaching football last year but working with the football players has brought him solace.
“I decided it was this team and this staff that was my therapy I needed at the time,” he said. “Coach (Mike) Drury, the whole staff, the gridiron club came together, then coming out and seeing the kids and each one of them hugging me like they are my sons…”
Drury knew Natalie from when he was a weight coach with the track team.
“It was devastating when we found out about it last year,” Drury said. “We knew she was battling some stuff he told us about. It’s a shock when it happens.
“I couldn’t imagine being in his shoes, I have two young boys. Football’s been a great thing for him. When people are going through those things, they need that community around them to rally them and keep them moving in a positive direction.
“He’s done a great job telling her story and keeping her story alive. She had so many great things she brought to the world.”
Bill’s message again: if you have problems, tell somebody — your friends, a trusted teacher or coach or administrator, your parents.
He gets it now, the football guy who never wanted to show weakness because that’s not what football guys do.
“I was a guy playing a tough guy sport,” he said. “I’ve come to learn through Natalie, my whole message on depression and anxiety — it’s a sign of freakin’ strength that you talk about it and you’re getting help so you can live to see another day and get the right therapy. We thought that was all in play, until that day.”
To speak to a skilled, trained crisis worker call 988. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24 hours a day. Find more resources and services in Connecticut at https://rb.gy/i7e44.