In Memory

The names that brought us here.

Approximately two thousand young Americans die of sudden cardiac arrest each year. We cannot name them all on this page. We can name the ones whose loss has shaped this foundation's work — and whose families have stood with ours.

Chase.
July 1, 1996  —  May 20, 2013

Michael Chase Morris was sixteen years old when he died on the night of May 20, 2013. The cause of death was hypertrophic cardiomyopathy — a thickening of the heart muscle that had never been diagnosed. He had played at the Oklahoma state tennis tournament two weeks earlier. He passed every sports physical he ever took. He was, by every visible measure, a healthy young athlete.

The foundation that bears his name exists because of that contradiction. The condition that took Chase is one of the most consistently detectable causes of sudden death in young athletes. The screening that should have happened did not happen. The work the foundation has done in the years since has been to make sure, in his name, that the screening happens for as many other Oklahoma students as we can reach.

Read Chase's full story →

Chris.
— September 20, 2014 —

Charles Page High School, Sand Springs  ·  Tulsa Tech

Chris Hanna was a senior at Charles Page High School in Sand Springs and a third-year student at Tulsa Tech, where his class voted him shop foreman in his electrical technology program. His teachers described him as well-liked and always smiling — a student, his principal said, "who made you enjoy coming to work."

On Saturday, September 20, 2014, Chris was eating dinner at a Tulsa restaurant with his mother, his girlfriend, and family friends. He walked a friend to the car. He came back inside, sat down at the table, and collapsed. His fists clenched. His eyes rolled back. Paramedics could not revive him.

The clinical signs witnesses described — sudden collapse, no warning, seizure-like presentation, unresponsive — are the textbook field presentation of sudden cardiac arrest in a young person. Chris's death came four months before the foundation's January 2015 screening at Booker T. Washington High School, where the Hanna family stood with the Morris family and a memorial display for Chris was placed beside the foundation's display for Chase.

Two grieving Oklahoma families, in a Tulsa Public Schools gymnasium, on a Wednesday in January, with the legislation that would become the Chase Morris Act about to move through the state Capitol. The Hanna family did not have to be there. They came anyway.

The bigger picture

Two thousand a year.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that approximately two thousand young people in the United States die each year from sudden cardiac arrest. The peer-reviewed surveillance literature, including the 20-year NCAA athlete cohort published by Dr. Drezner and his team in Circulation in 2024, documents both the scale of the problem and the racial disparities — Black athletes face a relative risk of sudden cardiac death roughly 2.8 times that of white athletes; male athletes face a relative risk roughly 3.8 times that of female athletes; basketball players face the highest event rate of any major college sport.

The foundation does not memorialize on this page every young Oklahoman who has died of sudden cardiac arrest. We could not. We do not have those names. But the foundation's work — the screenings, the legislation, the public education, the partnerships — is done in their memory as much as in Chase's. Every student we screen who is found to have an undiagnosed condition is a future that does not become another name on a page like this one.

"Every heartbeat is worth protecting."
If you have lost someone

We would be honored to hear their name.

If your family has lost a young person to sudden cardiac arrest in Oklahoma, and you would like their name and story to be remembered on this page, the foundation would be honored to hear from you. Please contact us through the channels listed on our Contact page. We add names only with the explicit written consent of the family.