#WilliKid

 

There was only ten minutes in between the junior varsity and the varsity game. Ten minutes to explain how the scoreboard which was dedicated to my brother came to be. Ten minutes to leave people with a sense of who he was and why he mattered to so many people. Neal Curland spoke first. He thanked all the people who made this happen. 

It went something like this...The Windham High School gym was beautifully renovated but there were only enough funds for one scoreboard. One. People were disappointed. Chatter began. Neal hatched an idea, went to the Board of Ed and got their support. Unusual, yes. But let's just say, Neal was highly motivated. 

Why did one basketball player have such an impact that once Neal's idea was hatched to raise funds for the second scoreboard, $7,000 was raised in a matter of weeks? By the way, all of this was done without contacting our family. And those who donated? They have zero interest in being named. None. It was the best kept secret of the year. 

Neal (himself a WHS alum) coached the basketball team Thad's senior year, and as it happened Neal wasn't all that much older than many of the players at that point. He's got stories. Some wild days trying to tame players who were a little resistant to discipline and order. Neal prevailed. And made life long friends in the process-friends who heard his call to rally one more time in the name of one of their own.

Janel, Thad's wife, thanked everyone for coming and said how much Thad would have loved and appreciated this gesture and how much it meant to our family, in particular his kids, Owen and Grace. 

I didn't speak at the dedication but thought of all the time I'd spent in that high school. My siblings and I all went there. Our sister, Blair, painted a mural that survived a renovation and countless hallway re-paintings. My first job as a school counselor was there and after Dan, our older brother died, Thad and I pitched in and gave a small prize to a graduating student who loved art. We did that for ten years. But never in my wildest nightmares, did I see myself coming back here to memorialize another brother. I wasn't so sure how I felt about this. 

But there I was. Sitting in the bleachers watching a basketball game next to best friends like it was 1985. And I wondered what the players were thinking as they waited patiently for their game to start. They had no idea who Thad was. 

If they'd asked, I would have said, "He's all of you." 

He is every kid that walked through those gym doors and tried out for the basketball team. He didn't have any money. He didn't have expensive sneakers. He's every kid who loved basketball, every kid who imagined playing in college or had even bigger dreams. He's every kid who wakes up and shows up, day after day, for the highs and the inevitable lows a sport can bring. He didn't have season after season of AAU or travel basketball. He had a dog to retrieve balls when he pitched them against the wall in our yard- he loved baseball too. He had any public basketball hoop. He had the local Y. He had a wide, easy smile and made what he had work. He didn't have parents devoting weekends and thousands of dollars a year to a sport. None of his friends did. Willimantic is just not that kind of place. 

What kind of place is it then? It's the kind of place you're desperate to leave but you're proud to be from. It inspires hashtags like #WilliKid. It inspires love and devotion to the coaches, teachers, and adults in the community who stayed and loved these kids. Coaches took those kids and loved them hard enough to feel it and then served as life-long mentors. These same coaches took these big sloppy messes of kids and tamed them into teams. The kind of team that shows up when one of their own is lost to cancer and they celebrate that life. They put his name up in lights to remind the whole town Willimantic is good, the people are kind, and the kids have promise. 

As Thad lay dying that Easter weekend a few years ago, he drifted in and out of consciousness. Lost in a haze of memories. Once he asked if the team (that only he could see at this point) was the varsity team. Someone gave him the answer he wanted and he drifted back to the movie playing in his head. That was the hardest week of my life. Harder than finding out about my own cancer. Harder than losing my older brother- his death was swift. There is mercy in that. There's little mercy in a death caused by cancer. But there was grace.

Grace in the form of a friend who came to read to him once a week. Grace in a high school friend that left his own busy life with four boys to regularly come sit and visit with Thad. Grace in the friend that FaceTimed from Portugal busy with his own life teaching, coaching, and raising three boys. Grace was the weekend in Florida to celebrate a college roommate's professional success. Grace in the form of a best friend who came and spent a week and got Thad, so tired he could barely walk, outside to feel the sun on his face. All were former teammates, lifelong friends, and Neal, of course. Our gratitude to all of you. 

I don't typically associate a high school gym with moments like these, but that night I did. All the friends that came...and all the stories afterwards at a local bar. The night was full of laughing and friends and good memories. We've been sad for a long time. This didn't feel sad. It felt right. I think Thad would have loved it too-once he got over being mortified.  

Thad didn't want a funeral, so we had a very private sprinkling of his ashes in a river in Vermont. But I was keenly aware that others needed to say good-bye too. This was a pretty excellent good-bye. And finally, it felt like closure-in a high school basketball gym. Who would have guessed? 

You are loved, you are missed, but damn if your name won't be up there for a good thirty years. 

The team won that night, by the way. 🏀