Things do happen for a reason. I believe that one of the reasons I was brought to Buffalo was to meet Seymour and to know him and Jean. That friendship changed my life dramatically. Seymour was a professional owner who had millions of dollars but drove an old Mercedes that he had kept for years. Humble, casual, innocent, and shy at times, he was not afraid to be himself. You would never know his family had founded Marine Midland Bank. I think it was remarkable that in the midst of all that surrounded him, he was able to keep that inner, gentle, caring, and compassionate person intact. He touched everyone and everybody.
To me, there’s only one unhappy element of knowing and respecting people like Seymour Knox. When they’re gone, you miss them even more.
46
Cam Neely
The loss of my childhood friend John Brown, as well as my relationship with Erik Fanara, helped me realize how much loss can challenge and test us, even those who are tough and strong. Cam Neely, who played forward for the Boston Bruins, learned to reach down and find that inner grace as death touched his personal and professional life.
When he retired from hockey in 1996, Cam proudly carried the well-deserved reputation of a superstar who epitomized the balance between intelligence and physical strength. Yet the circumstances of his life on and off the ice pushed him to the edge of his capacity to cope. The combination of hockey injuries and the loss of his parents to cancer demanded all of the emotional strength he had. Both of these experiences forced him to change his approach to the game and to life.
Neely’s hockey career changed dramatically on May 5, 1991, when he collided with Ulf Samuelsson of the Pittsburgh Penguins. The bruise from that blow was deep, causing his thigh muscles to calcify. The condition required surgery and a lengthy recovery.
Cam approached his two years of rehab with the same vengeance that he displayed on the ice. He persevered through a demanding exercise regimen and returned to score fifty goals in forty-four games. In March 1994 his comeback received another setback when he tore the medial collateral ligaments in his right knee. More surgery followed, but Cam bounced back and played two more seasons.
It seems so easy, in the space of a couple of sentences, to sum up what Cam went through. But as a professional athlete who has coped with injuries, I know just how exasperating it is to show up for rehab day after day when your teammates are on the ice, doing what you love to do and cannot. Cam gutted out ninety-three more games, relying on the intelligence and savvy that always characterized his game, to score fifty-three more goals. An arthritic hip finally forced him to retire on February 21, 1996.
Now let’s go back nine years. That’s when Cam’s mom, Marlene, died of stomach and colon cancer. The year before, his father, Mike, a twenty-two-year veteran of the Canadian air force, was also diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor and began radiation treatments. There’s an emotional load that can crush a person in a tidal wave of grief. But Cam’s heartaches pushed him to compete more intensely and ultimately helped him deal with his injuries.
When he was tempted to get down, he thought about the battles his mom fought and that his dad was fighting. He knew his dad would never quit battling.
When Cam was fifteen and away from home for the first time playing junior hockey, he wanted to quit. As the youngest player on the team, he felt totally out of place. Miserable and desperate, he told his dad he wanted to give it up. Cam’s dad was not one to push his son, but he could make an effective point very quietly.
“My dad never told me what to do. He told me things, gave me his opinion, and then let me decide,” Cam says. “When I told him I wanted to quit, he told me that I had signed a commitment and given my word. He told me that I could quit if I wanted but he thought I should honor my commitment and be a person of my word. I stayed.”
That mentality and the strength Cam drew from the fortitude his parents showed became the underpinnings of a new work ethic. He started what would be his last season with his old fire but pushed his knee beyond its limits. It ballooned on him and left him as depressed as he was when he injured it the first time.
He rested the knee and the swelling came down. He reluctantly accepted the pattern of his off-season practices— play, rest, play, rest—missing some games, babying the knee, working on the muscles around the knee, and playing like an all-star when his knee cooperated. With the soft touch and fluid skating style that always created the room he needed to score, he averaged a goal a game. He surprised everyone, including himself, excelling during the games without practice.
His dad came to visit in November 1993 to see his son play. He loved to visit, hang out with the team, and be with his two sons, who were now living together in a Boston suburb. After Marlene died, Mike had come more often and would stay a couple weeks each time. He knew in his heart that this November visit would be his last.
The doctors had stopped their treatment for the brain tumor, saying that there was nothing more they could do. Mike, Cam, and Scott knew what lay ahead but banished gloom from their little kingdom. They joked and laughed like old times, reveled in one another.
The day before he was to head home, Mike got sick. He checked into the hospital and died that evening. Cam and Scott accompanied their dad’s body back to Maple Ridge, British Columbia, for the funeral and said a solemn goodbye to the man who had inspired them with his words as well as his example.
“I not only lost my father, I lost my best friend,” Cam said.
Cam took many hits on and off the ice. He dug pucks out of the corners and he dug himself out of the personal corners of death and injury. He turned his setbacks into sources of determination and inspiration. Cam is a superstar not just because of his hockey skills but also because he persevered through his personal and professional challenges. Even winners suffer losses. It’s what they do next that makes the difference.
47
David Duval
The stories of John Brown, Erik Fanara, and Cam Neely show us how death pushes us to the edge of our capacities to cope. We can be crushed by the weight of such losses. However, we can learn how to turn our losses into sources of determination to live our lives more fully, to reach our goals, and to pay tribute to those we have lost by giving back to those in need.
Learning to recover from personal loss is easier said than done. David Duval’s story illustrates the difficulties of conquering the heartache of personal tragedy.
When David’s older brother, Brent, was twelve, doctors diagnosed him with aplastic anemia. It is a disease that causes the bone marrow to stop producing white blood cells. He would need a transplant. The marrow would have to come from Deirdre, the boys’ younger sister, or from David. David’s marrow was a 90 percent match with Brent’s. The doctors would draw marrow from David’s bones by inserting large stainless steel needles six times into both sides of his pelvic area. Bob Duval still hears the scream that came from David when that first needle plunged into his son’s hip.
The bone marrow transplant seemed to have worked, and the Duvals hoped for the best. Then, as they enjoyed dinner out one night, Brent began to vomit. A few days later he had diarrhea and then developed a high fever. He had graft-versus-host disease. David’s bone marrow had begun attacking Brent’s body, and bacterial infection consumed it, one organ at a time.
Brent went to the Cleveland Clinic for treatment. It was the last place David would ever see his brother alive. Just as disease ravaged Brent, guilt ate up David. At the young age of nine, David felt sure he had killed his brother. Picture the torment of his parents, already grief-stricken, as they tried to comfort a surviving son who continually told them, “I killed my brother.”
David had been a good-natured kid. He loved life, playing golf with his family at the Timuquana Country Club, and finding snakes and turtles around the ponds on the course. When Brent died, everything changed. David dropped into a deep place inside himself and developed his own personal routine of survival. He came home from school, dropped his books off without a word, and r
ode his bike to Timuquana. He’d get a hot dog at the concession stand and then go practice and play golf for hours. He loved playing in the fog because it protected him from whoever might be around, hid him and his misery.
At home, sympathy grew harder to find. Bob and Diane were living apart now. Their grief had pushed them away from each other. Like David, they coped in private ways.
Unlike his mother, David buried his emotions. Everyone noticed how reclusive he had become, but no one knew how to reach him. At night Diane would come into David’s room and quietly caress his back, his head, and his neck to help him fall asleep, but David grew more stoical and hardened as time passed. His comfort came not from people but from his game.
Hammering golf balls on the range became his escape and the way he steeled his resolve to win. He had no time for banter, parties, or hanging out at the mall with other kids his age. He maintained his friendships with several of his non-golfing friends but eventually went to a private high school and rarely saw them anymore.
When David reached age thirteen, he began to hit the ball longer and straighter. He started winning the club members’ money and becoming more determined than ever to excel at golf. It was the perfect game for him because everything depended solely on him. That’s the way he lived: Count on no one, let no one in. His shell grew thicker, his resolve to make the PGA Tour even stronger.
When someone asked him about his success, he replied, “To really improve you need to rise and fall alone, and each time learn why. That can be very lonely, but I’m not afraid of aloneness. I’ve done it. It’s not so bad.”
After graduation, David left home. He packed his clothes, his golf clubs, and his brother’s Lamborghini poster and headed for Georgia Tech. His first day on campus, an upperclassman, Mike Clark, told David that the team was glad they now had a good fifth man on the team. David replied, “If I come here, I won’t be Number 5. I plan to be Number 1.”
In his first ACC Tournament David took second and the team placed fifth. When his teammate Tripp Isenhour complimented him on his round, David replied, “Yeah, and if I had teammates who were worth a shit, we’d have won the damn tournament.”
Puggy Blackman, Duval’s coach at Georgia Tech, is the one man who was able to see through David’s hardness, to see a softness buried deep within him. David was so obnoxious that Puggy felt like he had two teams at Tech— David, and everybody else. David seemed to have no idea what camaraderie would do for him. He just kept building his inner wall higher and thicker. At one point Puggy called Bob Rotella, a sports psychologist, out of desperation. Not much changed, so Puggy resigned himself to the two-team concept. “It was the only way to keep them from killing each other,” he said.
The trips where Puggy and David ate and roomed together apart from the rest of the team began the process that eventually helped David emerge from behind the barriers that protected him from his childhood pain. Puggy talked to David about life, people, and the bigger picture of a spiritual design where everything happens for a reason. David listened to Puggy because he respected him, but his own sense of the way the world works remained deeply rooted in the death of his brother and the demise of his family.
If David leaned on anyone for support, it was a character in Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead, Howard Roark. Roark, an architect in the novel, believed that a man must maintain the virtue of a healthy selfishness. To have integrity, a man must serve his own ego and its truth. David read passages from the book over and over again and found a justification for his thinking and approach to life: “The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. To a creator all relations with men are secondary.” Duval loved it when his friend Kevin Cook referred to him as the Howard Roark of golf.
And yet David loved spending time with Puggy, his wife, Gail, and their three kids. Puggy felt like the shepherd trying to bring a lost sheep back into the human fold. His persistence would eventually pay off.
When Duval left Georgia Tech, he failed to make the cut at the PGA qualifying school. His mother was drinking heavily, trying to cope with her continuing grief, and his father refused to face what was happening. David became more distant, but a different sort of numbness was setting in. His Roark-like strength drained from him. One week folded into the next; his golf began to slip. He was finishing way behind the leaders, and then he started missing cuts. Out of desperation he called Puggy. He was ready to listen.
Puggy talked. David listened. The message was simple: “Relationships are important and life is not just about you.” Puggy was shocked and overjoyed when David agreed to accompany him to a College Golf Fellowship, a Christian gathering. Duval emerged from that experience with a new fire and played well enough to make the Tour.
Still, his acceptance of Puggy’s faith and philosophy came slowly at best. David steeled himself against his pain and the people who had brought him this far. But Puggy knew that if David didn’t soften his stance, he would not achieve the greatness of which he was capable. Deep inside, David now began to see it too.
Ever so gradually, David softened. He began talking to his father again and accepted the new woman in Bob’s life. He started to face his mom’s drinking problem and found ways to help her. What brought a smile to Puggy’s face was that David began to make more friends and take time to go skiing and fishing. He began dating a young woman named Julie McCarthy. He began to feel again. Children with life-threatening diseases touched his heart. He couldn’t believe it when he heard that a man wanted to be buried with a golf hat David signed for him. He lost weight and began spending more time out from behind his well-constructed wall.
When David won for the first time on the Tour, Puggy likened his experience to giving birth to a twenty-pound baby.
David spent so many years trying to protect himself not only from the outside world but the pain inside. The answer wasn’t to keep others out. The answer was to let them in and let himself out.
48
Julie Krone
Judy Krone was selling a palomino to a woman who wanted a horse for her young daughter. She instinctively picked up her own daughter, Julie, and put her on the horse to show it was gentle. The horse trotted off and Judy said, “There, you see?” When the palomino reached the fence, two-year-old Julie instinctively reached down, took the reins, and nudged them into the horse. The horse trotted back to where the two women stood.
Judy was shocked by what Julie had just done but not really surprised by her baby’s horse savvy.
Judy Krone had been raised in a very strict Baptist home and learned to look inward to find freedom. She lived in an imagination fueled by books—books about horses. Horses became her passion. When she became pregnant with Julie, riding helped her cope with the emotional and physical ups and downs. The thought of a miscarriage didn’t enter her mind. Judy Krone was a champion equestrian rider. She loved horses and everything associated with the stable. Her daughter became an extension of that love.
Julie’s childhood in tiny (population 494) Eau Claire, Michigan, had the look of an uninhibited free-for-all, but the constant was horses and her dream of being a jockey. It was not unusual to find Julie eating out of the same dish with her horse and her dogs. One day she walked the horse in through the back door, past the kitchen and to the dining room, where her mother was sitting. An emergency? Maybe to Julie. She needed the horse saddled.
Julie lived on the edge. If she wasn’t riding to school, hanging on to the bumper of the bus as it traveled over ice, she was standing on the back of a galloping horse and ducking under the doorway when it reached the barn. Don Krone, Julie’s father, remembers life with Julie this way: “Every day was a missile launch. Yes, there was always that element of possible disaster, but it was just like a missile. If it goes, God, there’s going to be that moment of glory. You can’t tell a kid to go for it, to be whatever they want to be, and also tell them to b
e careful. If we all ride the safe road, who will we look up to? No, we didn’t worry about the little things.”
Julie and her mom attended every horse show they could, and the desire to be a jockey burned in her young soul. She entered and won a Youth Fair horse show at age five. Sometimes at night they would ride together, mother and daughter, singing above the mesmerizing rhythm of beating hooves.
In order to pursue her dream, Julie dropped out of high school and went to Tampa to live with her grandparents. When she arrived at Tampa Bay Downs to begin her career as a jockey, there was one problem—they wouldn’t let her through the gate. Not to be deterred, the four-foot-tenand-a-half-inch, hundred-pound girl climbed the fence and made a beeline for the barns. When she finally connected with Jerry Pate, a trainer, he said, “So, I’m told you want to be a jockey.” Julie didn’t hesitate: “No! I’m going to be a jockey!”
Five weeks later, Julie sat in the winner’s circle. She won nine races, had four seconds and ten thirds in her next forty-eight mounts.
Tampa Bay Downs trainer John Forbes describes what Julie faced as she made her way up the jockey ladder: “You’ve got to understand. Nobody took girl riders seriously—they were a joke. Nobody thought a girl was strong enough. Nobody wanted to be the one to get a girl hurt and nobody worried that a girl might beat him. It ate Julie up, to be considered a girl jockey. I introduced her to someone as ‘jockette’ and she kicked me in the shins.”
Life was a constant battle. Fights with male jockeys, an estrangement from her mother, no high school diploma, a broken back in 1980 and four months of rehab—all these only intensified her determination to realize her dream. In 1982 Julie won the riding title at Atlantic City. She beat every man there and established herself. They now had to take her seriously. Two months later she won two races at Pimlico, and in 1983 she won the Atlantic City title again.
Companions in Courage Page 16