Make California Post a Preferred Source NEW ORLEANS — There is no telling the story of Raiders receiver Jack Bech without telling the story of Tiger Bech.
And there is no telling Tiger’s story anymore without eventually finding your way back to Jack.
Brothers by birth, best friends by choice, connected by the unmistakable adoration of a little brother for the big brother he emulated and looked up to, and the pride of an older brother watching his little brother chase dreams that once belonged to both of them.
And nearly two years after Tiger was killed in the New Year’s Day terrorist attack on Bourbon Street, those stories are about to intersect again in the place where everything changed. On Sunday, Jack, who was born and raised in nearby Lafayette, will return to New Orleans with the Raiders to play the Saints, carrying his brother’s memory and an opportunity to create a different association with a city his family understandably connects to its darkest day.
“It will be a little homecoming to rewrite a wrong and put a good taste in our mouth from New Orleans,” Jack said. “Because right now we remember it as the place my brother got killed by a terrorist on New Year’s.”
For Marty and Michelle Bech, the spectrum of emotions Sunday will be almost incomprehensible.
They will walk into the Superdome as proud parents, there to watch Jack return home as a member of the Raiders while living the dream he has chased since he was a kid.
Inside the Superdome, Marty and Michelle will celebrate Jack. They’ll watch their son put on an NFL uniform, run onto a field in his home state and live something he and Tiger once dreamed about together.
Outside of it, only a short walk away, is the place that forever changed their family.
Those emotions don’t cancel each other out. The joy of watching Jack doesn’t lessen the grief they carry for Tiger, just as their grief doesn’t diminish how enormously proud they are of Jack.
Not rewriting what happened in New Orleans. Nothing can do that.
But allowing a city connected to the worst moment of their lives to also become the backdrop for something beautiful.
Nearly two years after New Orleans took on a meaning the Bech family never wanted, Marty and Michelle will return to celebrate one son while carrying the other with them.
“It’s going to be an incredibly emotional day,” Michelle said. “But also one filled with love.”
There is no rewriting Jan. 1, 2025. No catch, touchdown or Raiders victory can change what happened.
Maybe Sunday is about making room for another memory alongside the unbearable one.
“His spirit, the way he loved. The way he always fought for the people who didn’t have a voice,” Jack said. “He was always the person who lit up the room. Always the person who put a smile on people’s faces. Super smart and witty. Just the best big brother you could ask for.”
Tiger was intelligent, athletic, adventurous and fiercely competitive. As Jack put it, Tiger may have had five best friends, “but probably had a hundred people who said, ‘I’m his best friend.’”
David LeBlanc, who coached both brothers at St. Thomas More Catholic High School in Lafayette, remembers Tiger as “one of the fiercest competitors I’ve ever seen.”
There was competition and teasing and all the things that come with being brothers. But Tiger also saw something special in Jack, something worth pushing and prodding and occasionally testing. Sometimes he would take Jack right up to the line, challenging him in ways others might not have. But Tiger seemed to innately understand where that line was — and, just as importantly, that his little brother could handle being taken there.
“There’s no question Tiger pushed Jack,” Michelle said.
Which makes the randomness of how Tiger ended up in New Orleans that night even more haunting.
Tiger had brought his close friend, former Princeton teammate and Seaport Global co-worker Ryan Quigley, home to Louisiana for the holidays. Quigley had never really experienced New Orleans, and Tiger wanted to change that.
“That was the whole reason of them not spending New Year’s Eve with us,” Marty said.
It was New Year’s Eve in New Orleans, after all, and the mother in her worried about all the things mothers worry about when their children head into a crowded city to celebrate.
Anyone who knew Tiger could have predicted his response.
This was a young man with an enormous appetite for life and adventure, one that had carried him to faraway corners of the world and occasionally into situations that tested the boundaries of risk. He wasn’t reckless as much as he was determined to experience life rather than watch it pass by.
That night, he wanted his friend to experience New Orleans.
So Marty and Michelle did what parents sometimes do when their grown children are determined to spread their wings.
Neither could have known they were beginning the final car ride they would ever share with their son.
Or the blessing that car ride would ultimately leave them with.
Faith runs deeply through the Bech family. Marty, Michelle and Jack are devout Catholics, and Jack’s relationship with Jesus is central to his life. Tiger wasn’t as outwardly religious.
But during that drive, the conversation turned to a family friend who was a priest and would soon visit New York, where Tiger lived. Marty mentioned giving the priest Tiger’s number so Tiger could show him around New York.
Then Tiger unexpectedly told his parents something they had never heard him say so plainly.
As Marty remembers it, Tiger said something that caught both parents completely off guard.
“I just wanted you guys to know I believe in God,” Tiger told them.
At first, knowing Tiger’s mischievous personality, they almost waited for the punchline.
Under the surface, Marty and Michelle might as well have been exchanging air high-fives.
Their son, who had never been as outwardly demonstrative about his faith as the rest of the family, had just given them something they had long hoped to hear.
A few hours later, those words would mean everything.
Marty and Michelle were asleep when the doorbell rang.
Waiting outside was a friend of their daughter, Ginnie, who immediately handed Marty her phone.
Eventually, they learned he had been critically injured and was undergoing surgery at a New Orleans hospital.
So Marty and Michelle raced to separate cars and headed toward New Orleans again.
Hours earlier, they had made essentially the same drive with Tiger beside them, taking their son into the city for a night out with his friend.
Now they were racing back without him, desperately hoping they would arrive in time to see him again.
The drive from Lafayette takes roughly 2 hours, 30 minutes.
More than two hours in which a mother and father were forced to contemplate something neither was prepared to comprehend.
And somewhere along the way, dread began overtaking hope.
“Not hearing from him … you kind of knew,” Marty said.
Tiger was still alive when they reached the hospital.
“It was bad,” Michelle said. “You almost feel like the hospital made an effort just to keep him breathing so we could get there.”
And because Jack and his sisters couldn’t be there physically, Marty and Michelle brought them into the room the only way they could.
They got Jack and his sisters on FaceTime and gave each of them the opportunity no sibling should ever have to receive.
But Marty has never doubted that his son knew they were there.
“Tiger heard them,” he said. “I know he heard them.”
And maybe that is why the conversation from only hours earlier has become so precious to Marty and Michelle.
Their final car ride with Tiger could have been filled with nothing more than small talk. Football. Work. Plans for the night. The ordinary conversations families have and forget almost immediately.
For two parents whose faith was about to be tested in the most unimaginable way, Tiger had left them with those words only hours before they would hold him for the final time.
They had tucked them away without realizing their significance.
Then life demanded something almost incomprehensible from Jack.
A month after Tiger’s death, Jack went to the Senior Bowl wearing No. 7, Tiger’s number at Princeton. After an outstanding week, Jack caught the game-winning touchdown with seven seconds remaining and was named the game’s MVP.
“Everything he’s pointing to and trying to do to glorify Tiger and God, it just makes me so proud,” LeBlanc said. “This could have been a huge negative for Jack, and it could have derailed him.”
Instead, LeBlanc said, Jack turned the grief into fuel.
And the Bechs have tried to turn their grief outward as well, using their platform to remember not only Tiger but everyone affected by the attack.
“This was something that didn’t just happen to us,” Jack said. “There were many people and many families affected by this.”
It’s an extension of what Jack loves about Louisiana — a place that has endured more than its share of tragedy but repeatedly responds by pulling together.
“The people of Louisiana as a whole, we fight for each other and love each other,” Jack said. “That’s what makes it such a special place.”
And Sunday, Louisiana will wrap its arms around Jack.
“The whole Lafayette community and Jack have had this game circled for a while,” LeBlanc said. “It’s going to be a special game.”
Jack doesn’t need the winning touchdown. He doesn’t need 100 yards. As LeBlanc said, it doesn’t matter if he is targeted once.
Family and friends will surround him. People who loved Tiger and love Jack will be there to lift him up and, when necessary, help carry the weight.
Because nearly two years after the Bech family left New Orleans with an unimaginable loss, Jack will return carrying something with him.
The big brother spent a lifetime helping lift the little brother toward his dreams.
Now the little brother carries the big brother as he lives them.
Only one Bech brother will physically run onto the field Sunday.
