Alabama high school football player who died after suffering game injury is remembered

SELMA, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama high school football player, who died after being critically injured during a game, was remembered at a Monday memorial service as a caring and talented athlete who accomplished much in his 16 years.

Morgan Academy quarterback Caden Tellier died Saturday after being injured during the school’s Friday night game against Southern Academy in Selma. Tellier, a 16-year-old junior, suffered a brain injury, according to a statement from the Alabama Independent School Association.

Students, parents and teachers, wearing school colors of maroon and gold, gathered at a memorial and prayer service held in the gym of the small private school. Members of his family sat in the first row of the memorial service.

“There has been an outpouring of love that we have received from everyone in this room, people across the country,” Jamie Tellier, the teen’s father, told the community that gathered in the gym.

“I could tell you a lot about who my son was, who my son is,” said Tellier. “My son was an exceptional athlete. But the thing he loved the most was to talk about Jesus.”

He told the school’s football players that he would still be around because, “Caden is not going to want me to stop doing things.”

“Caden was only here for 16 years. But my son accomplished so much. He accomplished so much. He loved,” said Tellier, though tears.

The second oldest of nine cousins, Tellier would always go out of his way to play with the youngest in the group, even when his peers were around, his grandmother, whom he called Mimi, said. Before he died, Caden was teaching his 4-year-old cousin how to throw a baseball, she said.

“We could call him and say, ‘Can you come help us’ and he was there,” his grandmother, Dale Dobbs, said. He would never accept money or allowance for the work he did for the family, she added.

Outside the school, flowers, balloons with his 17 jersey number, and notes were placed in the student parking lot in remembrance of Tellier. “Miss U Buddy,” was scrawled in chalk next to a heart.

Tackle football, at the professional, school and youth league level, can cause injuries that damage the brain, leaving parents and families to balance the risks against the opportunities and benefits.

Tellier's parents indicated in a social media post that announced their son’s death that he would save lives through organ donation. Morgan Academy Headmaster Bryan Oliver confirmed to al.com that Tellier was an organ donor.

“Everyone who knows Caden has known kindness, generosity and love, and true to his nature, he is giving of himself one more time. Lives have been touched by the way he lived and now lives will be saved through his passing,” his parents wrote in a social media post that announced his death.

The school is canceling all sports activities for the coming week, including this Friday’s scheduled football game at Wilcox Academy.

“The story is not about an injury on the field, the story is that we loved Caden, and he loved the lord,” Oliver said.

Students, teachers and community members pack the Morgan Academy gym to honor Caden Tellier, the football player and high school student who died from an injury in a game Friday night. The memorial service opened with one of Caden's favorite songs in Selma, Ala., Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Safiyah Riddle)

A memorial for 16-year-old Caden Tellier is seen in the parking lot of Morgan Academy in Selma, Ala., Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Safiyah Riddle)

A memorial for 16-year-old Caden Tellier is seen in the parking lot of Morgan Academy in Selma, Ala., Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Safiyah Riddle)

This undated yearbook photo provided by Total Image shows Caden Tellier, a 16-year-old quarterback at Morgan Academy in Selma, Ala., who died Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024, after being critically injured during a football game the night before. (Total Image via AP)

Jamie Tellier, father of Caden Tellier, hugs a student after a memorial service for Tellier's son in Selma, Ala., Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Safiyah Riddle)

Students, teachers and community members pack the Morgan Academy gym to honor Caden Tellier, the football player and high school student who died from an injury on a game Friday night. The memorial service opened with one of Caden's favorite songs in Selma, Ala., Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Safiyah Riddle)

Jamie Tellier, father of Caden Tellier, hugs a student after a memorial service for Tellier's son in Selma, Ala., Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Safiyah Riddle)

Aircraft assembly workers walked off the job at at Boeing factories near Seattle and elsewhere early Friday after union members voted overwhelmingly to go on strike.

Boeing is just the latest business to grapple with union workers over issues including wages and benefits like health care.

Here's a look at some recent company negotiations with their unions.

Late last year the United Auto Workers union overwhelmingly ratified new contracts with Ford and Stellantis, along with a similar deal with General Motors, that would raise pay across the industry and force automakers to absorb higher costs.

The agreements, which run through April 2028, ended contentious talks that began in the summer of 2022 and led to six-week-long strikes at all three automakers.

The new contract agreements were widely seen as a victory for the UAW. The companies agreed to dramatically raise pay for top-scale assembly plant workers, with increases and cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into 33% wage gains.

Top assembly plant workers were to receive immediate 11% raises and would earn roughly $42 an hour when the contracts expire in April of 2028.

Under the agreements, the automakers also ended many of the multiple tiers of wages they had used to pay different workers. They also agreed in principle to bring new electric-vehicle battery plants into the national union contract.

UPS workers that are members of the Teamsters union approved a tentative contract with the package delivery company last year. The run up to the approval was not smooth though, with contentious labor negotiations that threatened to disrupt package deliveries for millions of businesses and households nationwide.

After negotiations broke down in early July 2023, Atlanta-based UPS reached a tentative contract agreement with the Teamsters just days before an Aug. 1 deadline.

At the time the tentative agreement was struck, full- and part-time union workers were set to get $2.75 more per hour in 2023, and $7.50 more in total by the end of the five-year contract. Starting hourly pay for part-time employees also got bumped up to $21, but some workers said that fell short of their expectations.

UPS said at the time that by the end of the new contract, the average UPS full-time driver would make about $170,000 annually in pay and benefits. It was not clear how much of that figure benefits accounted for.

As part of the deal, the delivery company also agreed to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a full holiday, end forced overtime on drivers’ days off and stop using driver-facing cameras in cabs, among a host of other issues. It eliminated a two-tier wage system for drivers and tentative deals on safety issues were also reached, including equipping more trucks with air conditioning.

Earlier this month video game performers reached agreements with 80 individual games that have signed interim or tiered budget agreements with the performers’ union and accepted the artificial intelligence provisions they have been seeking.

The performers had been striking for over a month.

Members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists began striking in July after negotiations with game industry giants that began more than a year and a half ago came to a halt over AI protections.

The interim agreement secures wage improvements, protections around “exploitative uses” of artificial intelligence and safety precautions that account for the strain of physical performances, as well as vocal stress. The tiered budget agreement aims to make working with union talent more feasible for independent game developers or smaller-budget projects while also providing performers the protections under the interim agreement.

Last month thousands of hospitality union workers on the Las Vegas Strip reached a tentative deal with the Venetian and Palazzo resorts, a first for employees at the sprawling Italian-inspired complex that opened 25 years ago.

The Culinary Workers Union announced on the social platform X that the deal came together after a year of negotiations. It covers over 4,000 hotel and casino workers, from housekeepers and cocktail servers to bartenders and porters.

Bethany Khan, a union spokesperson, said the deal mirrors the major wins secured in recent contracts awarded to 40,000 hospitality workers at 18 Strip properties owned or operated by casino giants MGM Resorts International, Caesars Entertainment and Wynn Resorts.

Those wins included a 32% pay increase over five years, housekeeping workload reductions and improved job security amid advancements in technology and artificial intelligence.

The bump in pay under those contracts will amount to an average $35 hourly wage by the end of the contracts, according to the union. Workers at these properties were making about $26 hourly with benefits before winning their latest contracts in November.

Unions representing 85,000 health care workers reached a tentative agreement with industry giant Kaiser Permanente in October 2023 following a strike over wages and staffing levels.

The deal included setting minimum hourly wages at $25 in California, where most of Kaiser’s facilities are located, and $23 in other states. Workers would also see a 21% wage increase over four years.

The lead up to the tentative agreement included a three-day strike involving 75,000 workers in multiple states.

The tentative agreement also included protective terms around subcontracting and outsourcing, as well as initiatives to invest in the current workforce and address a staffing crisis.

Hollywood’s actors voted to ratify a deal with studios in December 2023 that ended their strike after nearly four months, bringing an official finish to a labor strife that shook the entertainment industry for most of last year.

Members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists approved a three-year contract.

Control over the use of artificial intelligence was the most hard-fought issue in the long, methodical negotiations. The contract called for a 7% general pay increase with further hikes coming in the second and third years of the deal.

The agreement also included a hard-won provision that temporarily derailed talks: the creation of a fund to pay performers for future viewings of their work on streaming services, in addition to traditional residuals paid for the showing of movies or series.

Boeing Machinists Union members Steven Wilson, left, Dave Hendrickson, center,, and Mark Erickson, right, wave to passing traffic while on the picket line at the Renton assembly plant, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024, in Renton, Wash. (AP Photo/John Froschauer)