NFF Gold Medal Recipients
Biography
When the situation called for it, Jason Seaman's instincts as a former defensive lineman kicked in.
"My actions on that day, in my mind, were the only acceptable actions I could have done," Seaman told CNN. "I deeply care for my students and their well-being. So that is why I did what I did."
On May 25, an armed student entered Seaman's classroom at Noblesville West Middle School in Noblesville, Indiana, and started firing. Seaman, a science teacher and eighth grade football coach at the school, lunged and tackled the assailant, receiving three gunshot wounds in the process. A 13-year-old student was also injured in the shooting and has since recovered. There were no fatalities. If not for Seaman's heroics, one student told reporters: "More of us could have been injured, for sure. We could have been killed."
Since his heroic act, Seaman has deflected praise, instead giving credit to others, including the wounded student for being brave and fighting for her life after being shot. Seaman visited the young girl every week she was in the hospital to offer moral support for her and her family.
"People just want to say thank you and be nice," Seaman told the Indianapolis Star in an exclusive interview in June. "I don't like the attention. It's not that I'm not receptive to it. I'd rather be the guy who just moves around and nobody notices. But it's just people being nice, so I think I can be OK with that."
Seaman's humility and selflessness are not an act according to those who know him best. That is just the way he was raised by his hard-working parents, Bob and Kristi. Everyone describes him as kind, quiet and selfless.
An all-state football player at Mahomet-Seymour High School in Mahomet, Illinois, Seaman went on to letter four years as a defensive lineman at Southern Illinois University from 2007-10. An academic all-conference selection, he accumulated 88 career tackles while helping the Salukis to two conference titles and three playoff appearances. He was recruited to SIU by then head coach Jerry Kill, who is currently the school's acting athletics director.
"Someone asked me if I was surprised by what he did, and I said 'Absolutely not,' he was our type of kid," Kill said in an SIU release the day of the shooting. "That's what he stood for. He's a great young man."
Current SIU defensive line coach Austin Flyger, who was Seaman's position coach at SIU for two seasons, told KFVS, "He was a selfless person — from my experience with him he would have given the shirt off his back."
His Noblesville West co-workers say he is always one of the first people to lend a helping hand, with fellow teacher Kaitlin Koons describing him as "just a protector" to the Indianapolis Star.
Seaman's selflessness has been an inspiration to many, perhaps most of all to a Noblesville High School student named Jackson Ramey. Ramey started a GoFundMe to help raise money to support Seaman's medical bills despite never having him as a teacher.
"I was like, 'I feel so helpless right now I need to do something to help him out,'" Ramey told the Indianapolis Star. "These are just seventh graders.… He was the first and last line of defense. If he were to get past him who knows what could have happened."
Through Ramey's thoughtfulness and the generosity of strangers, the GoFundMe page had raised more than $107,000.
"I can't really fathom how someone I have not personally met would do such an act of kindness," Seaman said during a press conference. "And how the Noblesville community has been so generous in their response to it."
When Ramey finally met Seaman, the teacher told him that the monetary value he raised did not matter to him. What mattered to Seaman was that Ramey had given the community something to rally behind.
He will never say so, but it is Seaman who gave his community something to rally behind. And as he returns back to his normal life teaching, coaching and spending time with his wife, Colette, and his two young children, his act of heroism should continue to be an inspiration.
"There is no need to wait for something bad to happen in order to do something good," Seaman said when being honored by the Indianapolis Indians, a minor league baseball team. "Reach out, find a cause and support it."
