But then around his freshman year, he realized he wasn’t doing too well in school and his GPA was low, so he decided to start working harder and turn things around.
Just then, the dog he had since he was born passed away, which “really struck him.” Tipton had no idea that in the next few years, he would lose two grandfathers and a grandmother.
Early junior year, things were going well for Tipton, even though he had experienced a few losses. He joined ROTC, cross country and track, was on the school’s news team, Bible studies, Future Christian Athletes (FCA), and in a school play. He had people to pick him up and help him in different situations.
But his mother’s progressive disease was worsening. His mom, Tika Tipton, started having more regular hospital visits and the family knew “she is almost gone.” She died of multiple sclerosis in November 2023. Then just over a year later, adding to the pile of shocks, Tipton’s dad, James Tipton, passed away in January after cardiac arrest.
“When you have that many losses in such a short span, it really just makes you unsensitized to it. It’s like I’m starting to forget things about them because the fact that I’m just so used to not having that now. I’ve gone weeks now without parents or anything,” he said.
Losing his parents made Tipton focus on his academics, to get more experiences, aiming to get into college and get financial help.
He said his mother’s death pushed him to want to do better at everything.
“I didn’t want to be a bad kid, a failure kid. That was something that kept popping in my head. I was like, my mom didn’t pass for this. My mom didn’t teach me this way. That’s one of the big things that’s carried me through everything.”
Tecumseh schools Superintendent Paula Crew praised Tipton, and the people who surrounded him.
“Chase is an amazing senior ... The amount of support he received from the community was amazing, especially his fellow cadets in the ROTC program,” said Superintendent Paula Crew. “He addressed the full auditorium (this month) at the conclusion of the ROTC Awards Ceremony expressing his gratitude for their support.”
Chase’s mother
Tipton’s mom, Tika Tipton, had multiple sclerosis, a chronic disease of the central nervous system. She had the “worst kind, which is progressive,” and it got worse over the years, he said.
It got to the point where his mom went from a cane to a wheelchair, to a power chair, to a hospital bed, where she’d be for weeks at a time. Tipton said he knew she was getting worse because when she would get “super hot” she wouldn’t be able to talk, swallow or do other things. He helped her “every single day with everything,” such as feeding her and doing housework.
Tipton recalled one morning, he gave his mom medicine and she couldn’t swallow it so she kept spitting it back up. He said when she’s in that mood, her brain shuts down and she keeps repeating herself.
“It was traumatizing for a little bit because she was sitting there and she’s like, ‘I need aspirin,’ over and over and wouldn’t stop,” he said, saying he called his dad to take her to the hospital.
“That’s when she got really bad to the point of where they were like, we got to let her go. We literally did everything we could for her. It was to the point where she couldn’t breathe on her own, she couldn’t do this or that on her own.”
Tipton said he tries to hold on to funny or goofy memories of his mom, like a time years ago when she fell out of her chair onto the floor at home.
“What I did as a smart young man, I grabbed her leg and I dragged her through the hallway to the living room. We were laughing. She had this donkey laugh. It was so funny,” he said.
After his mom passed, the biggest thing he learned was to stay positive.
“What I’ve learned from (my mom) is to stay absolutely positive. That’s helped me get through the first few losses,” he said.
By this point, Tipton said everything was going good again, he made it to senior year, but then his dad, James, got sick.
His father
Tipton’s dad got really sick for a week and they didn’t know what it was, so Chase had to help make him food and do other things.
“Then one morning, I went to school and my brother called me and he was like, ‘dad’s going to the hospital, he collapsed.’ Right when I got to the hospital, he was already dead,” Tipton said.
What he died from, Tipton said, was disease in his heart. He said his dad didn’t take the best care of himself and got to a point where he was taking too much liquid medication to make himself feel better, which clogged up his heart and he went into cardiac arrest.
“It was very, very unexpected,” he said.
Life after his parents
Now Tipton is 18 and living with his last immediate family member, his 26-year-old brother who helps take care of him. Except they don’t get to see each other much, because his brother works third shift.
“I’ll go home and then he is already leaving for work and it’s just that cycle, it’s like I never see him. I’m always on my own,” he said. “But through absolutely everything that’s happened, I think the biggest person that’s helped me is definitely God and my faith. That’s definitely been the biggest thing that’s picked me up.”
One unique thing through this experience of losing his family, Tipton said, is he feels he’s already lived a good amount of his life.
“I feel like this isn’t even the start of my life ... because I’ve gone through so much emotional stuff. I feel like everything just was shoved into the beginning. I feel like I’ve been shoved into the spot where so much has happened so fast,” he said.
Tipton said he has a life he has to live, with dreams and goals to have kids, a wife and a future.
The future
After everything he’s been through, that’s where he picked up the idea of wanting to be a nurse and go into nursing for college. He plans to go to Sinclair Community College, which recently started a four-year bachelor’s program he plans to do. Tipton then plans to get his master’s, become a nurse practitioner and then a doctor.
“Nursing is seriously one of the biggest career choices that I feel like is good for me ... I really want to help people,” he said. “My goal is to be the best I can be at anything I do,” he said, explaining he loves talking to people and hearing their stories, too.
Through it all, Tipton’s biggest thing is to “just be positive, be yourself and don’t let things hinder you so much that you don’t want to push on.”
“You have a life you got to live. If you lose somebody and you feel like you don’t want to go on ... They want you to live for your life,” he said.
About the Author
