“My son is represented up there,” Denning said of his prayer tie on the teepee without a cover, adding that the incomplete teepee represents how it feels when we lose someone.
His son, Sawyer, was a bright, young man who did well as a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Denning said Sawyer was a good student throughout high school and hadn’t been exposed to drugs. But, at college, someone gave him an anti-anxiety drug to help step up his studying. Sawyer would then drink alcohol to help himself level out, so he could sleep after long study sessions fueled by the drug. He started to crash and struggled with addiction.