The Disturbing Death of Junior Seau

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When I became a sports copy editor, I thought it was the best job I could possibly have in journalism.

I had worked as a general assignment reporter prior to that time, and I covered many depressing stories. I figured sports was all fun and games, and I welcomed it. Red Smith wrote that people go to sports events to have fun, and then they pick up the newspaper the next day to read about it and have fun all over again. That was pretty much how I viewed it.

Sure, I knew it wasn't fun for the teams that lost big games, and it wasn't fun for their fans.

But it wasn't the end of the world, either. It wasn't life and death. The sun (as Annie observed in the musical that was named for her) will come up tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar.

I quickly learned, though, that sports isn't all fun and games all the time. It is deadly serious business for some folks. It is a huge, often insatiably ravenous beast, and there are those who become consumed by it.

Wait 'til next year. That has long been the defiant rallying cry of the runners–up. Except for those who were retiring, there would be another opportunity.

And when athletes finally hang it up, there frequently seems to be a second career for them. It is true that some athletes retire to live out their lives in relative obscurity, but others become coaches or commentators. Some become successful businessmen. A few go into politics.

Usually, as I say, there is that encore for the ex–athlete that can partially provide whatever he has lost because of his retirement.

I guess what is needed varies from one individual to another. Some need that adoration of the crowd. Others need the money. For some, it is the camaraderie of their teammates.

And most athletes find some kind of substitute in their post–playing career lives. Most of the time, that substitute probably doesn't come close to making up for what has been lost. Professional sports is a big stage with a bright spotlight and a huge, adoring fan base.

For an athlete like Junior Seau, who played in at least part of 20 pro football seasons and was named All–Pro a dozen times, the financial rewards of an athletic career are like winning the lottery every day, the cheers are loud and unending, and the closeness one feels with one's teammates probably can't be matched in any other occupation, perhaps not even military service.

I gather, from what I have read, that he missed it all. Maybe it had been a part of his life for too long. Maybe he did not know how to function without it.

After all, one does not become a professional athlete without spending many years on the other levels — college, high school, even junior high and middle school.

I don't know how many years Seau played football, but he was only 43 when he apparently shot himself in the chest yesterday. His professional playing career and his college career would have accounted for more than half his life by themselves — and it is reasonable to assume, I think, that Seau must have played the game for at least half a dozen years before that.

He may well have played football for three–quarters of his life.

From what I have been hearing in the last 24 hours, Seau struggled to find his niche in life after football. Apparently, he never found it. In the absence of any other explanations — like issues with drugs or alcohol or overwhelming debts — one must conclude that there was nothing that could meet his needs the way football did.

He may also have suffered from the kind of brain injuries that we hear mentioned so often in connection with football players.

And brain injuries are deceptive because there is still so much about the brain that people do not understand. Outward appearances are often unaffected by brain injuries, and, to a casual observer, Seau looked the same as always — a little older each time we saw him, but that happens to everyone.

My grandmother had a series of what were called at that time mini strokes. She didn't look any different to me, but she often spoke about these things that were in her head.

Perhaps Junior Seau had a similar sensation. He played linebacker, and linebackers are subjected to all kinds of violent hits on the field. It is reasonable to wonder if he, like so many other former athletes, suffered from chronic repetitive brain injury.

In most, if not all, of the 50 states, a suicide is also considered something of a homicide so, by law, an autopsy must be performed on the victim, and an autopsy on Seau can go a long way toward answering the unanswered questions.

Because he shot himself in the chest, Seau's brain can be examined, and perhaps some things can be learned from this tragic chapter in American sports history.

Perhaps something good can come from something so unspeakably bad.

The Tragic Tale of Benny Paret

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"Sure there have been injuries and deaths in boxing — but none of them serious."

Alan Minter
Former middleweight champion

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I don't know when Minter made that comment — perhaps it was before a fellow named Angelo Jacopucci died from injuries suffered in a 1978 fight with Minter. Perhaps not.

Whenever it was, though, I doubt that it was prior to this day in 1962. Minter was only 10 years old.

Neither do I know if Minter's family owned a TV in 1962. TV ownership was still something of a novelty in those days. But if the Minters did have a TV in their home, it may have been set to ABC on this night 50 years ago — when Benny Paret and Emile Griffith met in a fight for the welterweight crown.

Paret and Griffith, who were both in their mid–20s, had fought twice before. Griffith won the first by a knockout, and Paret won the second in a split decision. The bout in New York's Madison Square Garden, scheduled for 15 rounds, was to be their rubber match.

In the 12th round, TV viewers had just heard the announcer say it had been a "slow round" when Griffith unleashed a furious flurry of blows to his opponent while he was pinned against the ropes. Referee Ruby Goldstein stepped in to stop the fight — somewhat belatedly, some thought — and Paret lapsed into a coma.

He died on April 3.

Many reasons have been suggested as contributing to Paret's death; all may have played roles.

New York's boxing authorities, for example, were criticized for clearing Paret to fight again four months after he was knocked out by Gene Fullmer.

Goldstein, it was said, should have stopped the fight earlier. Goldstein, who died in 1984, never refereed a professional bout again.

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"Prodded by fear or maybe by conscience, Manny Alfaro, Paret's manager, gave a disgraceful performance trying to pin the blame on Ruby Goldstein, the referee. Nobody involved has any right to blame anybody else for a tragic accident, least of all a manager who gets his boy cruelly beaten by Gene Fullmer, then sends him back against a man who has already knocked him out."

Red Smith

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Paret himself was blamed. At the weigh–in, Paret reportedly used a Spanish slang word for faggot in reference to Griffith — with the implication being that Griffith was homosexual. At the time, the suggestion that any athlete was homosexual would wreck his career, and it was especially egregious in the Spanish culture from which they both came.

Paret's death is often said to have been boxing's first televised fatality. And, although the cause of death was clearly the brain injury he suffered, there are many theories that attempt to explain why it happened at all. Some are plausible, some are not.

Deaths do occur in the ring, but they have not been as frequent as you might expect.

It is worth noting, though, that, after Paret's death, and the death of featherweight Davey Moore in 1963, commercial television did not carry fights regularly again until the 1970s.

Death of a Skier

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I don't know if most Americans have ever heard of Canadian skier Sarah Burke.

Until recently, I must admit, I knew little about her myself. But, apparently, she was well known among extreme sports enthusiasts. And Burke' death dramatically alters expectations for the next Winter Olympics.

Burke, who died yesterday at the age of 29, was a freestyler who successfully lobbied to have her sport included in the Winter Olympics and was widely expected to win a medal in the sport when it makes its debut in the 2014 Winter Games in Russia. She died from injuries suffered 10 days ago in a training accident in Utah.

The death of one so young is always a tragedy, and the circumstances of Burke's death make it even more tragic. She was practicing the sport to which she had committed everything. Her commitment to it appears to have been even more binding than the marriage vows she took less than two years ago.

As I have observed, she was the driving force behind the inclusion of freeskiing in the Winter Olympics — and the ironic (and, apparently, inevitable) outcome of her death may well be a renewed and reinvigorated debate over the risks of her sport.

That may or may not be an overreaction. Burke's death is a tragedy, but from what I know of her I think she would agree that the sport has gone to great lengths to minimize the risks.

And the accident that caused her death appears to be more of a fluke than anything else. Observers say the accident occurred not on a complicated maneuver but on a routine jump that Burke had performed hundreds, if not thousands, of times before without incident.

Perhaps, as some have suggested, she landed at just the right angle to cause her fatal accident, that the odds against such a thing happening again are astronomical.

Accidents and injuries are "part of the game," Burke said. "Everybody gets hurt."

Canadian Freestyle Ski Association chief executive Peter Judge said, "[Burke] will be greatly missed by all of us at the CFSA and the entire ski community."

Burke may not have been a mainstream household name, but my guess is that the Olympic debut of the sport to which she dedicated herself will be among the most emotional of the next Winter Games.

And I predict that, in death, Burke will inspire far more people than she ever did in life.

It would be a tragedy compounding another to turn the situation into something it isn't, whatever the motivation.

Death Be Not Proud

Tomorrow, major league baseball's stars will be gathering in Arizona to play the annual Midsummer Classic, the All–Star Game.

The first All–Star Game was played nearly 80 years ago; it was part of the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. Only once since that time has the game not been played — when World War II interfered in 1945.

Otherwise, however, it has been an annual baseball tradition. Barring a totally unexpected development, it will be renewed tomorrow night.

Today, friends and family — and even folks who never knew the man — gathered in central Texas to say goodbye to a fellow who probably would have been watching the All–Star Game with his young son, the way they apparently had watched many baseball games together in the past.

But that fellow, firefighter Shannon Stone, fell to his death at Rangers Ballpark last week, trying to catch a baseball for his son — who witnessed the whole thing.

I'm sure you know that story by now. One struggles to find some meaning in it. Death — or fate or whatever — is always doing this. It takes people in horribly random and cruel ways.

We've always known that life isn't fair. Turns out that death isn't, either.

The more religious among us always assure us when tragedy strikes that "God has a plan," and they speak of his incomprehensibly "mysterious ways."

That is intended to comfort those who grieve, even those who never knew the person who died. But sometimes there is little comfort to be found in those words.

For many of us, it is hard to see how this contributes to such a "plan." God's ways are a bit too mysterious for the mortal mind.

As a writer, my inclination on such an occasion is to put my thoughts on paper, but that isn't always easy. Sometimes I want to know what others are saying.

I've re–discovered — as if such a reminder was necessary — that the human mind also looks for someone to blame when terrible things happen. But that's the thing that has been so frustrating about this matter, I suppose. There is no one to blame. Everyone's intentions were good. No one meant for anything bad to happen.

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Should we blame Josh Hamilton because his toss was just a little short? He was only trying to accommodate the fans.

Should we blame Stone because he lost his balance? It's true that fans must bear a certain amount of responsibility for their own safety — and I've heard some people suggest that Stone was negligent, at least in part, because of the "recklessness" of his own behavior and because his footwear apparently provided him with little, if any, traction.

But, although there have been similar incidents at Rangers Ballpark in the past, falls were not epidemic. There was no reason for that possibility to dictate what he wore or anything else.

Should we blame the Ballpark management because the railings, even if they do exceed existing city requirements, are lower than they probably should be? The management couldn't foresee this, although I do think, as I have said, that making certain that stadiums are safe and family friendly, not merely that they meet city codes, should be their top concern now.

I guess I feel I am too close to this one — much as I did 16 years ago when I lived about a half hour's drive from where Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City — and I need the perspectives of those who are farther removed.

In the aftermath of Thursday's tragedy, I have been thinking about something that I hadn't thought about in several years.

When I was teaching journalism at the University of Oklahoma, a student of mine died in a freak accident at his fraternity.

There was a ritual at this fraternity that involved the members going outside following a house meeting and shaking the flagpole. I don't know why. How does any tradition begin?

I don't know how long it had been done, but nothing had happened to anyone before. On this occasion, however, the upper one–third or so of the flagpole snapped and fell, striking my student and another boy. The other boy suffered minor injuries. My student, however, suffered far more serious injuries and died the following day.

There was no one and nothing to blame for that accident, either. The students who shook the flagpole had no reason to think it might snap. As far as I know, it had never snapped before. No one intended for anything bad to happen. Even so, a young man lost his life.

And, like the tragic case of Shannon Stone, we were left with lots of questions and precious few answers.

In my quest for understanding, I have found some fascinating observations from some folks who may never have been to Texas — but they understand things like childhood and fatherhood and the need to strike a better balance between fun and safety:

• Like Steve Solloway of the Portland (Maine) Press Herald, who wrote very movingly of the "purity of the moment" that should have ended in triumph but ended in tragedy instead.
  
  All that Stone sought, Solloway wrote, was "[a] baseball to forever remind him and his son of the July day they watched the Texas Rangers play a game. It can't be any simpler than that, which makes the sorrow that much harder to bear.
  
  "Until this week," concluded Solloway, "Shannon Stone was a stranger to most when in fact, he was always one of us."


• If there is something good to take away from this, it may be that "baseball fans across the country are discussing ballpark safety," reports Paul Blume of FOX9 News in Minnesota's Twin Cities.
  
  Of course, each ballpark is designed differently, and no facility can be prepared for the sizes of all the people who might buy tickets to events there, but if Stone's death leads to an across–the–board requirement of railings that are higher than most adults' centers of gravity, well ...

... as I say, if that is what ultimately comes from this tragedy, that will be a good thing.

• Rodger Jones of the Dallas Morning News says, in response to a survey on a blog on the News' website, that baseball players should not be banned from throwing balls to the fans.
  
  I agree. That would be a knee–jerk overreaction.
  
  However, he does believe railings should be raised — even if they make it difficult for some fans to see what is happening on the field.
  
  "Sightlines be damned," he writes. "If you disagree, wonder how you would feel if the next accident (and there will be one) involves someone you know."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

We Should Do What We Can

The deeper one goes into the tragic story of Shannon Stone, the firefighter who fell to his death during Thursday night's Ranger game, the more pointless his death seems to be.

But I believe it is a clarion call.

Stone, as just about everyone knows by now, tumbled over the railing trying to catch a baseball. What went through his mind, what motivated him can only be guessed — but the emerging story of a devoted father strongly suggests he was trying to catch it for his son.

Such selflessness only makes this story more tragic.

There was a time when most, if not all, ballparks had netting around elevated sections — but that practice was stopped, as I understand it, because fans went out on the netting to try to catch baseballs, making it unsafe.

Yes, there was a railing in front of Stone's seat — but if you have seen the video, you know that it wasn't sufficient to prevent even an average–sized man from losing his balance if he was leaning forward trying to catch a ball. (I haven't heard how tall Stone was, but, just from watching the video and knowing his profession, my guess is that he was taller than average.)

I was listening to a local sports talk radio show here in Dallas yesterday, and one of the hosts reminisced about when he moved to the area in the 1990s and there wasn't even a railing like the one that could not prevent Thursday's tragedy — as if the fact that the installation of a short railing since that time could somehow mitigate what happened.

It can't, of course, but it is a reminder that there are steps that baseball in general, not just the Rangers organization, needs to consider. Seriously.

Rangers President Nolan Ryan pointed out that players toss balls into the stands all the time now. He doesn't remember whether there was a policy that either encouraged or discouraged it when he was playing, but he speculated that it evolved from a desire on the part of baseball in general to be more accessible to fans.

That's a good objective, but it carries a certain amount of responsibility. What happened in Arlington can happen anywhere, and the co–objective must be to prevent tragedies like that from happening again.

Stadium management can't install a two–foot railing and honestly believe it can keep a six–foot man from falling. You can't take away netting that is supposed to keep people safe because inadequate security permits people to congregate on them.

Stone was doing something that has become increasingly difficult for people to do — take their children to ballgames. Gone are the days when a father could take his kids to a ballgame and buy them hot dogs and caps for a few bucks.

It's a major investment now, especially in this economy, but there are still folks who want to share the experience with their children.

Baseball should do whatever it can to encourage them to do that. To be sure, baseball does have special promotions, yes — Family Night or Ball Night or whatever — but that is really about the profit margin, not fan safety.

It may be more confining — and expensive — for fans to install more adequate barriers to keep them from being hurt. It may be more expensive to hire additional security people to make sure no one gets on the netting during games.

But isn't the good public relations of a safe, family–friendly environment worth it?

Drivers don't like being told to wear seatbelts, and motorcyclists don't like being compelled to wear helmets, but they are required to do so because they make the experience safer.

Really, I believe this should be a no–brainer.

I sort of feel the way the panels investigating the sinking of the Titanic must have felt when they heard that there were not enough lifeboats to accommodate everyone on board.

Why not?

The people who operated the Titanic justified their decision a couple of ways — (a) the Titanic was believed to be unsinkable, and (b) the lifeboats on board met specifications. As I recall from my studies of that disaster, the number of lifeboats actually exceeded what was required at the time. But still there weren't enough.

We know sports events aren't always safe — and there are certain things you really can't prevent — but it is incumbent upon stadium management to do whatever it can.

When Reality Intrudes

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I've heard this said in other ways — more eloquent ways — so please forgive my feeble and wholly inadequate paraphrase:

People watch sports in part to escape from reality.

They may wish to get away from any one of several kinds of realities, and sports events are diversions. They're almost like fiction, like a movie or a TV show, a drama that people watch for a few hours before returning to their lives and whatever it was they wished to escape.

Sports events are the way we wish our lives could be. Someone wins and someone loses. No one wins all the time. But athletes learn from their failures, and they know that tomorrow is another day — a new day. No mistake, no miscalculation is final. Redemption is always possible.

Sure, sometimes there are tears in the losing locker room after a particularly hard fought athletic contest. But deep down, most athletes know — even if they have just lost a championship — that they will have another opportunity. The sun will come up tomorrow. The slate will be wiped clean.

Perhaps one of my favorite journalists of all time, sportswriter Red Smith, once wrote that people go to athletic events to have fun — and then they pick up the newspaper the next day to read about it and have fun all over again.

And, nearly every time that people have gathered for sports events in human history, it has been fun.

But what happened last night at a Texas Rangers baseball game in Arlington, Texas, definitely was not fun, particularly for the folks sitting in an upper section of the Ballpark. A man was reaching over a railing, trying to catch a ball, and he fell head first to his death after he apparently lost his balance.

The Dallas Morning News quotes a witness as saying that "[i]t looked awful because you knew there was no way he was going to land on his feet."

The man's young son was with him and, presumably, saw the whole thing.

Since I heard about this tragic story, I've been thinking about the (admittedly few) times that I have gone to professional baseball games.

Most of the time, I've attended minor league games in small, intimate ballparks where virtually all the seats were on the ground level — so such a tragedy was not really possible.

But there have been times when I have attended major league games in their palatial stadiums, and I have sat in upper decks — although never on the front row behind a railing.

Nevertheless, from time to time, it did cross my mind, as I ascended each level, that the farther up we went, the greater the chance of something bad happening.

But something bad never did happen. It was just my imagination running away with me. The fantasy was safe.

That fantasy has been shattered now for a young boy — and countless others, too, although his loss is clearly the greatest.

I presume that his father, like most of the men who live in Texas, was a sports fan who would have wanted to pass on his love of sports to his son.

But, after watching his father die, I can only wonder if such a thing is possible for that young boy now.

Will he ever be able to watch a baseball game — or any sports event — without seeing his father tumbling over the railing in Rangers Ballpark?

Will he ever be able to erase the memory of seeing his father on the pavement below, his head apparently bleeding profusely?

I have loved sports since I was small. It was a passion my father passed along to me. Dad was never much for "having a catch," as Kevin Costner put it in "Field of Dreams," but he has always loved the drama of athletic competition and admired the skill it takes to excel.

And, if I outlive my father, one of the ways I will honor his memory is by watching and savoring athletic contests.

I hope that young boy will be able to do the same.

The Day Len Bias Died

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Twenty–five years ago, I was working on the sports desk of the Arkansas Gazette.

It was a morning paper so the folks who worked on the copy desks worked nights. Everyone worked weekends, but one's nights off generally were determined by seniority. As one of the most junior staff members (at that time), my days off were Mondays and Tuesdays — not exactly prime time.

That's important to note, though, because it was on Tuesday, June 17, 1986, that the annual NBA draft was held. My memory is that it was held in conjunction with the NBA Finals that year, but I could be wrong about that.

I do know that it was televised, and I remember watching it briefly with some friends — long enough, anyway, to see that Maryland's Len Bias had been selected by the Boston Celtics.

Larry Bird brought championship basketball back to Boston, but he was about to turn 30, and he had struggled with back issues. The comments I remember hearing and the articles I remember reading in mid–June 1986 suggested that Bias was going to be groomed to step in and take over the role of star player when Bird retired.

He couldn't miss, the experts said. With Len Bias, the Celtic dynasty would be in good hands.

The day after Bias was drafted, I returned to work to pull my graveyard shift on Wednesday night. I had to be back earlier the following day — I worked the sports wire on Thursdays in those days, which meant it was my job to constantly scan the wire for sports news.

I always enjoyed working the wire. When I arrived in the office to work it (a shift that typically began about two hours earlier than my usual shifts — and ended two hours earlier as well), I did a preliminary scan of the wire's contents so I could tell the editor who was in charge that evening what we could expect.

Then I would pick wire stories on sports events from all over the world and ship them over to the editor, who would decide where to put each article, assign a headline size to each and turn the stories over to the folks who were handling the copy editing that evening.

It was a procedure that had taken shape over a long period of time. The Gazette was the oldest continuously published newspaper west of the Mississippi. The system that was in place when I came on board was the product of years of evolution.

Usually, working the wire came down to the accounts of games in whichever sport happened to be in season, but there were times when unexpected stories demanded our attention. If a story was big enough, I might combine the best elements from all the wire services the Gazette received — and the Gazette subscribed to about half a dozen news services.

Nothing noteworthy happened that Wednesday night, but when I got up the next morning and switched on my TV, there was a sports story that I knew immediately would dominate my activities that night — and for many days to come.

Sometime during the night (as the wire editor that day, I learned a few hours later that it had actually been sometime around daybreak), Len Bias, the NBA's #2 draft pick less than two days earlier, had died of a cocaine overdose.

He was only 22 years old.

I can't tell you the tsunami–like ripple effect this had — not only in sports and on college campuses but throughout American society as well.

When Bias was taken in the draft by the Celtics, he was widely expected to be at least one of the greatest players ever to play the game — if not the greatest. He would rewrite the record books, some people said.

And he might have. We will never know.

It does seem likely that, if he hadn't died, Bias' career would be over by this point. We would know if he set all those records that he was expected to set and if he won all those titles he was expected to win.

We didn't know much on this day 25 years ago, but we did know that Len Bias would never accomplish all those things.

Sports fans grieved as much for the potential that would never be realized as they did for the life that was cut tragically short. The circumstances were different but the sensation was much the same a few years later when Hank Gathers collapsed and died during a Loyola Marymount game in 1990.

Len Bias was like a shooting star in June 1986. He burst onto the scene and left almost as quickly as he had come, leaving the aging Celtics in a funk they wouldn't shake off for many years.

His legacy lives on, though, says Jeff Barker in the Baltimore Sun, and his life story continues to influence the sport in ways that no one could have anticipated in 1986.

His death continues to influence people beyond the universe of basketball, writes David Steele in The Sporting News.

"His almost unfathomable death lingers as a cocaine deterrent," observes Barker. "He also maintains the power to rivet players and fans despite being from a wholly different basketball generation."

That's great, but even Barker gives in to the eternal, unanswerable question: What would Bias have accomplished?

Barker closed his piece with speculation from one of Bias' teammates — that, had Len Bias lived, people would be mentioning his name today in the same breath with his greatest contemporaries, like Michael Jordan, and the stars of today.

Sadly, no one will never know.

A Short Season

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When I was a boy, I did many of the things boys of my generation did.

For awhile, I was an avid collector of football and baseball cards — many of which would be quite valuable today if my well–meaning mother had not thrown them out when she was cleaning and sorting once.

As a result of my hobby, I became familiar with the names of most of the men who played professional baseball and football in those days. Even today, when one of those men dies, it triggers memories of my childhood, and I am reminded that, no matter how healthy and strong people are when they're young, eventually bodies give out with the passage of time.

A few of those men taught me the lesson of mortality when I was still a boy and they were at an age that most of us would regard as too young to die.

One such man was Brian Piccolo of the Chicago Bears.

Piccolo never became an NFL superstar. I knew his name because I had his football card. But I didn't know until well after the fact that he had been diagnosed with cancer.

What I knew of Piccolo prior to that time was what most football fans probably knew — that he was an undersized fullback and a good friend of the Bears' star halfback, Gale Sayers.

But I really knew nothing of his disease until I read a book that was written about him after he died at the age of 26 on June 16, 1970.

My grandmother knew of my fondness for reading, and she gave me a copy of the book, "A Short Season," which was written by the wife of one of his former teammates. And I remember devouring that book, reading it from cover to cover, even though I was too young to pronounce many of the medical terms — much less know what they meant.

But I knew enough about cancer to know that just about everyone who was diagnosed with cancer did not survive. Well, that was the impression I had at the time. And I guess that was understandable. Up to that point in my young life, everyone I knew who had been diagnosed with cancer had died.

And, although I knew before I read the book that Piccolo also had died, I still grieved when I got to the part of the book that described his final days.

And I grieved again when I saw the TV movie that was based on his life, "Brian's Song," starring, among others, James Caan and Billy Dee Williams. Neither Caan nor Williams were unknowns when that film was made, and I have seen both in other movies in the years since. But I always think of Piccolo whenever I see either of them.

Oh, remember what I said about a cancer diagnosis being a death sentence when I was a child? Well, I've lost some other friends to cancer since Piccolo died — but I also have some friends who fought it and won. Thankfully, the times, they are a–changing.

When Piccolo was diagnosed with embryonal cell carcinoma, the fatality rate was 100%. But, thanks in part to the work of the Brian Piccolo Cancer Research Fund, about 95% of those who are diagnosed with it can be cured.

It was a tragedy that Brian Piccolo's season was so short, but perhaps his life has served — and continues to serve — a long–lasting purpose

Nancy Kerrigan's Tragedy

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It's strange how things have played out for Nancy Kerrigan.

She may remember Februarys past with some fondness — she did win medals at the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics.

But January may be in for some unpleasant comments when she writes her memoirs. She is 40 now and she has been out of the spotlight for awhile, but in January 1994, she was hit in the knee in a plot to improve Tonya Harding's chances of winning the gold medal at the Winter Games. She recovered from her injury, but she didn't win the gold medal.

And now, her brother stands accused of assault and battery following an incident in which their 70–year–old father died.

I know it is tempting to swarm around Nancy Kerrigan and intrude on her grief, but I hope those in the media will be respectful at this time.

Dan Kerrigan will be laid to rest on Thursday. The Kerrigans have asked for privacy as they come to grips with the tragedy of losing a patriarch and the incarceration of a sibling.

Give her the space she needs at this difficult time.