Twenty-four hours after the tragic and shocking death of Grant Wahl, an American journalist who died while reporting on the World Cup in Qatar, his brother Eric is imagining a moment from their childhood — more specifically, the basement of the Mission, Kansas house in which they grew up.
In the memory, Grant is sitting at a table, his ankles tied to his chair. He’d done it to himself, Eric clarifies quickly with a slight laugh. Grant had wanted to ensure that he wouldn’t stop working on his homework until it had all been completed, so he borrowed some twine from the garage and tied his feet to the legs of the chair.
This wasn’t a one-time thing.
“Grant could overdo it — but he was aware of that,” Eric says, “But he was so dedicated. When he put his mind to something ...”
That part of him never changed, and as of late, Wahl had put his mind to reporting the truth about a corrupt FIFA World Cup committee in Qatar, symbolic of the type of journalist he was. Before the tournament, Wahl had made a trip to Qatar as a civilian, with plans to interview migrant workers, though he had not disclosed that intention. So many had lost friends constructing the stadiums for the very tournament Wahl would cover.
And when the time came to cover the World Cup, he never stopped reminding us of its backdrop — no matter the reaction. I wrote about that courage in the hours after Wahl’s death was announced by his brother, who shared more details in a phone conversation with The Star.
In the United States Men’s National Team’s opening match of the World Cup, Wahl had worn a rainbow shirt to show his support for the LGBTQ+ community, but more specifically for Eric and his husband, who live in Seattle. Eric said he asked his younger brother not to wear it — he thought it might be too dangerous in a country that criminalizes gay relationships.
“But you can’t make Grant do anything he didn’t want to do,” Eric said. “And I always appreciated that about him.
“Some people said it was a stunt. But he did it for me and my husband. ... I supported the reasons why he did it. I just thought it was going to bring trouble.”
It did.
Wahl told Eric, his only sibling, that he had received death threats after wearing the shirt, Eric said. They last spoke on the phone on Dec. 2, Wahl’s 49th birthday. They would keep in contact via text messages over the remainder of the tournament until his shocking death on Friday during the Argentina-Netherlands game. To Eric’s understanding, Wahl collapsed in the press box and was taken by Uber, not an ambulance, to the hospital.
In the emotional aftermath of learning the news, Eric posted a video on Instagram saying he believed Wahl had been killed. He told The Star he regrets posting that video and did not anticipate how widely it would be shared. But he is sticking to one demand in it: transparency.
“There’s enough that I know in my conversations with Grant to make me legitimately suspicious, if nothing else,” Eric said. “That’s why we want transparency.”
Wahl had been sick while in Qatar and wrote and recorded podcasts about his illness, which he said a local medical center diagnosed as bronchitis. Eric said he talked about the illness “just like office talk of something going around. He didn’t feel like it was serious enough to be concerned, and he got medication that was making him feel better.”
On Monday, Wahl had posted a long message in his newsletter that, in part, read, “My body finally broke down on me.”
Eric said his younger brother was otherwise a “very healthy man.” Eric and Wahl’s wife, Celine Gounder, a physician and epidemiologist who served on the COVID-19 transition team for President Joe Biden, have been in contact with U.S. Department of State officials. Eric has also spoken to Timmy Davis, the U.S. Ambassador to Qatar.
“I have full faith that Grant will get a U.S. autopsy,” he said.
Eric, who works at the University of Washington, has also been informed that Wahl’s electronic devices were gathered by other reporters at the stadium and will be returned to his family.
In the end, Eric’s request is the same thing for which his younger brother frequently fought.
Straightforward and full transparency.
For Wahl, that fight started before his career did. As part of his thesis project at Princeton, Wahl traveled to Argentina to write about the relationship between soccer and voting. He lived in an apartment there, and his laptop was stolen during the project.
Already, he had been introduced to the danger one sometimes encountered on a job. And rather than turn his back, he willingly, even eagerly, confronted it.
Until the end.
Throughout the World Cup, he reported on the death of migrant workers and Qatar’s human rights violations and discriminatory polices against the LGBTQ+ community.
“That was something that we definitely got from our parents. It was very important to them to help marginalized people,” Eric said. “I was a marginalized person myself, and Grant was always so supportive of me.”
Eric paused to collect his emotions, as he did frequently during the conversation. It has been an unimaginably difficult few days.
Eric and Grant’s mother died in 2019. She was an invested soccer fan, particularly a women’s soccer fan, and died as the U.S. Women’s National Team was winning the World Cup. After learning that, American soccer star Megan Rapinoe had a jersey made for their mother, plastered with signatures from the entire team.
A year later, in 2020, their father died of Parkinson’s Disease. The COVID-19 pandemic would prevent them from collecting their father’s ashes.
Both parents were teachers.
“It’s easy for people to think that Grant was some rich snob who traveled around writing about soccer and making lots of money,” Eric said. “But he grew up poor in Mission, Kansas.”
On Grant’s enduring connection to Kansas City, Eric would add, “He was so proud that this geographically absurd city where we grew up is such a soccer city. That was so important to him. He was so proud of that.”
They had each moved away, their careers taking them to opposite coasts, Eric in Seattle and Grant in New York.
But a year ago, they met in Arizona to hike a mountain their parents loved. There, together, they scattered the ashes of their parents.
“We just talked about life,” Eric said. “And that’s my whole family. And they’re gone. And Grant’s gone. It doesn’t make any sense.”
