Sunday, I — along with about 150 people who didn’t mind getting soaked — went to Monument Avenue in Swampscott to a ceremony honoring all those who died as the result of the war on terror.
One of the many military people there was a kid (I call him a kid because anyone younger than I am is one) I recognized. I said to the person next to me, “I think I know that kid!”
The kid turned out to be Sgt. First Class Dan Bertrand, who grew up on Pine Hill, and whom I coached — albeit briefly — in Little League.
I told him that it was really nice to see someone whose life intersected with mine — if only for a minute — doing well. And I thought back to something legendary Swampscott Coach Frank DeFelice once said: that he was always proudest of the life he chose when he saw people that he coached in baseball or football working for the police department, fire department or some other worthy endeavor. It made him happiest when kids who crossed his path ended up living fruitful lives.
I don’t have “DeFa’s” experiences. I never directly coached a kid over the age of 14. I love baseball, but I didn’t have the skills — or the patience — to teach anyone beyond first-year Babe Ruth league. Ditto basketball.
But I sure covered a lot of kids in my 20 years as sports editor at The Item. A few of those kids broke through and played beyond high school. More of them, though, matured and did useful things with their lives. And like Frank DeFelice, I was always glad to see that.
I was happiest, though, one summer morning when, at Dunkin’ Donuts on the Lynnway, I ran into a family on its way to Middlebury, Vt. for a college visit. The mother had with her a thick binder filled with information on her son — a good number of them were articles about him, written by me.
“You have no idea,” she said, “the effect what you do has on kids and families.”
Those are the times when you can’t even find the words to say in response.
This ride of mine will eventually end. All rides do. But seeing Dan Bertrand, and how composed he was with monsoon-like rain pouring down on him, I thought a lot about those kids.
I see Todd McShay of ESPN and Peter Woodfork of Major League Baseball, and say “I covered them back in the day.” Brian St. Pierre was on a Super Bowl Team. Mike Yastrzemski wasn’t even the best baseball player on his team at The Prep when I covered the Eagles. How about Lynn English’s Ben Bowden, who won a national championship at Vanderbilt and now pitches for the Colorado Rockies?
The general manager for the Minnesota Twins, Derek Falvey, was a player on Lynn’s 13-year-old Babe Ruth all-star team, which ended up going to the New England regionals in Burlington, Vt. I spent almost a week up there with that team.
I also think of Lt. Mike Kmiec, who is a spokesman for media inquiries for the Lynn Police. One of the first high-school basketball games I ever covered for The Item involved Lynn Classical. The two top players on the team were Nick Lampros and Mike Kmiec.
I remember Kmiec as a guard who lived to feed Lampros the ball. That system worked well. Lampros scored more than 1,000 career points for the Rams.
Ted Bettencourt is now mayor of Peabody and his cousin, Mark, coaches baseball and football at Peabody High.
Brianna Rudolph was an exceedingly cheeky girls basketball player at St. Mary’s, who studied domestic abuse prevention, sociology and criminal justice. She is now a UMass – Lowell police officer. I would defer to Jeff Newhall, her coach at St. Mary’s, as perhaps having a more profound influence on her life. But I was there, and I’d like to think of myself as part of the support system that helped guide her.
We’d all be extremely fat-headed to take credit for everything. It’s enough, though, to say we were there. I remember a few years ago when Michele Durgin, one of our correspondents, died. Michele was a teacher and assistant principal at St. Mary’s, and she wouldn’t have been conceited enough to say she single-handedly turned lives around.
But you may get a different answer if you were to ask any of the people whose lives she changed. You never know what you do, or what you say, which may become the tipping point. So when you see people whose lives have intersected with yours doing well, you just feel good.
And I have to tell you, for me, that list is endless.