Related Issue
June–August 2025
Ever True
Circle of Support
When young parents Nate Poole ’04 and Tamara Lam-Plattes ’04 found their lives upended by a serious injury, Brown friends rallied round.
By Ivy Scott ’21.5 / June–August 2025
June 16th, 2025
The number four has always held great significance for Nate Poole ’04 and Tamara Lam-Plattes ’04: the pair met mere weeks before graduation on April 4, 2004.
They were married ten years to the day later, in 2014. And while they had always envisioned celebrating the 20-year mark at their campus reunion with the same friends who first introduced them, the couple’s anniversary in April 2024 took a painful turn toward the unexpected.
One month earlier, on March 4, Nate was playing softball with some parents from his kids’ school in San Francisco when he leapt up to catch a fly ball whizzing toward a fence in the outfield – “a play I’ve done a million times,” the former Brown football quarterback says.
But as Nate hit the fence mid-air, he felt a strange sensation above his shoulders, and his vision went dark. When he regained consciousness, he was lying on the ground with a fractured C3 vertebra, paralyzed from the neck down.
“It was a Monday night. I had picked up my kids, picked up my wife from work, we had dinner, and just said goodbye to everybody,” Nate said through tears at Spaulding Rehabilitation Center in Cambridge last fall, as Tamara reached for tissues to dry his eyes. “And then, in an instant, everything changed.”
What followed were four “dicey” weeks in an intensive care unit in San Francisco before Nate was airlifted to Craig Rehabilitation Center in Denver with Tamara by his side, the day before their 10th wedding anniversary.
Nate and Tamara on a recent visit to campus with their kids.PHOTO: courtesy Tamara lam-plattes ’04
The next day, April 4, an incredulous nurse arrived at Nate’s door to let the couple know they already had a package waiting for them.
“We were like, what in the world?” Nate said in awe. “And it was from our wedding party”—“a lot of Brown people,” Tamara interjected—“and they had put together such an amazing gift for us: a big blanket with a collage of all our photos, and then a montage of videos and pictures from our wedding day, and of each of them,” Nate continued, his eyes again welling with tears. “All that support. It was amazing. I was waterworks that day, it was crazy.”
That overflow of love and support was neither the first nor the last the couple would receive from the Brown community in the weeks and months after the accident. Their friendships from campus clubs, teams, and Greek life are now stronger than ever, they say, evidenced by the swift and enduring response from a friend group forged over two decades ago that has only continued to grow.
“There’s this massive group of people — including, of course, lots of Brown folks — who just adore them,” says Bridget Stokes-Manhanga ’04, who set the pair up at a party two decades ago, after which their friend groups quickly merged. Friends married other friends, became bridesmaids and groomsmen in each other’s weddings, and kept the group chats alive with plenty of texts and FaceTimes, even as people started families or moved farther apart.
“Very early on, we just all kind of saw each other as family,” Bridget adds. “And so we make those same efforts that you’d make for your family.”
It was only natural, then, for those same friends to flock to Nate and Tamara after the accident, offering their encouragement and assistance at every turn. One cluster of friends quickly launched an online fundraiser. Another threw an event at Fish Co., the Providence bar and restaurant where the pair first met. Two other friends ran a marathon together, with funds to be donated to Nate’s recovery. The current coach of Brown’s football team even sent a care package with handwritten letters from every player and a helmet for the couple’s 8-year-old son.
“Very early on, we just all kind of saw each other as family. And so we make those same efforts that you’d make for your family.”
As Nate continues his rehabilitation at the Spaulding Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the tide of care and support has not ebbed. Every gesture has felt deeply meaningful, Tamara says, but perhaps none more than the day she and their two children moved into their new home in Massachusetts, close to Tamara’s family and renovated to accommodate Nate’s wheelchair. Three massive waterproof containers filled with all the family’s belongings had been sitting in the yard for weeks, waiting to be unpacked.
“It was super daunting… I was like, I don’t know how I’m gonna do this,” she recalls. “But my best friend lives in Boston, and I was like, can you just see if anybody’s available?”
By the time Tamara pulled up to the house, roughly a dozen of Nate’s former teammates and their friends were waiting out front.
“I started crying immedi-ately,” she says. “Some of them I probably hadn’t seen in over 10 years, and they were all just standing there, ready to work. And it was like nothing — they gave me big hugs, said ‘Let’s do this,’ and in under two hours, everything was in the house.”
Jermaine Griffin ’05, a former Brown linebacker and close friend of the couple, says that as Nate continues to heal, their circle of friends is committed to supporting him as his needs evolve, and to helping him establish a new normal at every step of the way — whether his recovery is on its fourth month, fourth year, or fourth decade.
“Brown is just a special place, and Nate and Tamara are special people,” he says. “It’s easy to rally around and want to help them, and we will continue to do that through this entire process as much as we can.”
In the months since the accident, Nate has already made significant progress. In his hospital bed at Spaulding in September, he gingerly waved one arm and described sensation slowly returning to his right leg. By the following spring, he was fully settled into the family’s new home and regularly attending physical therapy, with the goal of getting off his ventilator and breathing on his own this summer. He’s found a go-to barber shop, and in the family’s new BRV (“big red van”) he can attend his kids’ extracurriculars and even get to a Bruins’ game with
Tamara for their 21st wedding anniversary. And as their new life begins to take shape, the couple remain staunchly optimistic that, with the help of great doctors and good friends, recovery is possible.
“It means a lot, being one step closer,” Nate says. “And everybody doing all sorts of little things, all the support they’ve shown since the injury… it just adds up. We’ve been completely overwhelmed by what these guys have done for us.”
