Robert Littlejohn

Robert Littlejohn

Captain Scott

On Saturday , all on-campus housing residents are invited to participate in the 4th Annual Robert Littlejohn Memorial Softball Tournament being held at the Easton Stadium from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The event commemorates the memory of Robert Littlejohn , a former resident assistant of Rieber Hall from 1997 to 1998 , who took his own life in 1998.

Although the event originated as a way for the residential staff to enjoy themselves under the sun , after Littlejohn's death it took on another purpose : serving as a much-needed mechanism to raise consciousness of suicide.

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Beemer , who graduated a year ago , was a program assistant in Rieber Hall in 1997 and personally knew Littlejohn.
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Littlejohn appeared to have everything going for him.He was valedictorian of his class at Damien High School in Claremont , Calif. and received the National Merit Scholarship Award.He also played various sports , which included running cross-country and serving as the captain of his high school tennis team.In 1993 he enrolled in UCLA , following the footsteps of his mother and father who met and got married while they were students here.In December of 1997 Littlejohn graduated with honors with a degree in psychology.

But on Feb. 9 , 1998 , just eight weeks after his graduation , Littlejohn committed suicide.Apparently , he had been battling depression since the spring of his freshman year.

I had no idea that a son who was so well-loved , gifted and talented could succumb to depression , which I now know to be an insidiously dangerous disease , said his mother , Donna Littlejohn.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , the principal federal agency for preserving the health and security of Americans , lists suicides as the third leading cause of death for the 15 to 24 age group in 1998.According to the CDC , roughly 1 , 500 people attempt suicide each day.About 86 of them are successful.