"And my son idolized him," Tucker said. "They act alike. I was just telling one of the officers who's driving us around today that my brother was not the only crazy one in the family. David's really going to miss him."
Tucker said that when she spoke with her brother on the afternoon of Dec. 31, he told her he didn't feel like going to work. "But he said, `I may as well go because if I don't I'll mess someone else's night up,'" Tucker recalled. "That was the last conversation I had with him."
Brooks was on the phone again later that evening, before midnight, with his Uncle Derek. "He told me he thought I'd be sleep by midnight, so that's why he was calling now," Derek Brooks said, managing a laugh. "He was busting my chops, so we exchanged a few unpleasantries. We got the call about the accident about 40 minutes later."
Family members congregated quickly at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where they learned that Brooks had not survived.
"He did not deserve to die that way," his uncle said. "I feel I lost a son."
Beyond the messages of condolence from police officers from around the country - about 1,000 of whom are expected to attend the funeral - Brooks was particularly touched by the Transportation Authority's decision to post a guard around the clock by his nephew's body.
"Now that we've gotten through the initial shock, we're involved in this overwhelming task of putting this funeral together," said Brooks, a planner for Becton, Dickinson and Co., a medical technology firm. "The law enforcement community has been amazing about that."
The family's emotions are fragile, he said. He acknowledged breaking down Friday while driving on the Baltimore Beltway when he saw a lighted highway sign warning drivers to expect delays during the funeral procession today. Brooks also became upset when reading messages posted for the family on the Web site of Officer Down Memorial Page Inc., a nonprofit organization that honors the country's 18,000 fallen law enforcement officers.
His nephew's passion for Notre Dame football - which extended to a house full of memorabilia, including Notre Dame bedsheets for his son - had apparently been inspired by the 1993 film Rudy, in which a pint-sized small-town boy from a steel-mill town, played by Sean Astin, yearns to play football at Notre Dame, and eventually does.
"On a Sunday, Courtney and I would be in the man-cave, smoking cigars, drinking a beer and watching the Ravens," Brooks said. "He was like a big kid."
