Dan Sheldon was in California on vacation when the news hit him like a ton of bricks.

Sheldon heard that his teammate and close friend Shea Fitzgerald died when the third-floor porch he was on at a party in Chicago collapsed and crumbled through the second and first floors into the basement.

Sheldon had been in this situation before, and it’s not one that he is growing used to at all.

As a freshman in high school at Burlington Central, Sheldon’s older brother died in a car accident. When he got a call on his cell phone from NIU tight end Brad Cieslak early Sunday, he thought back to when he lost his elder sibling.

“When I first heard, I’m thinking, ‘This can’t be right,’” Sheldon said. “Then, from experiencing something very similar, I knew inside that it was true, but I still did not want to believe it. I was thinking, ‘No, it’s got to be somebody else.’ After that I was on the phone for the next few hours talking with all of my friends.”

“It’s not easy and it’s something that really really hit home with me.”

Sheldon, who was going to stay in California until Saturday, got an early flight back to NIU on Monday.

Sheldon, along with the entire football team, experienced a similar situation on Feb. 1 when NIU football walk-on Jawan Jackson died during tryouts because of excessive exertion and an enlarged heart.

“We went through this last year when Jawan died,” NIU cornerback Randee Drew said. “But since we’ve already been there as a team, we can be there for each other and know how to support each other.”

While Jackson was an aspiring NIU football player, Fitzgerald had been through the trenches with the team for two years — he was redshirted his freshman year.

“Not to take anything away from Jawan, but not everyone knew him,” Drew said. “Shea had been around and we’ve been through everything together. That’s like a brother to me.”

It almost seems like a cliche with everyone’s thoughts on Fitzgerald, with everyone saying, “He was a great player, but an even better person.” But when everyone said the exact same thing about him and everyone cites a different example of his true genuineness as a person, you begin to realize that God is getting a good one.

Here’s a story of a multi-sport, all-state wrestler and football player out of an affluent high school on the North Side of Chicago (New Trier). He overcame dyslexia and was a roll model to local kids. At NIU he “paid his dues,” spent a year behind current NFL player Tim Vincent and was set for a breakout year blocking for Michael Turner — the top returning yardage gainer in the nation.

It’s not disputed that he had an NFL body at 6-foot-8, 283-pounds, but it’s beyond the football field where his presence seems to be absent the most.

“There are a lot of people that are going to be missing Shea,” said Sheldon, “and they are not going to forget him.”