David Raese

I used to cover high school sports in this town, and we had a longtime football coach that even when I went to school he was the football coach – and then when I was covering the sports, I covered his teams and stuff.

We had a good relationship because he knew me and my brothers and everything else. But every once in a while I’d have to take him to task in my column for something but he was never – we’d get to an understanding.

But, he died of a heart attack, which was a bit sudden – he was not that old and seemed to be in good shape and things like that. So I went to the funeral home and the wife was there and their son was there, and he was probably maybe middle school age – 9 or whatever else. And I just expressed how sorry I was. What they told me, they said, you know after he died they went home, and they went through a box of old clippings and things like that. They found a column that I had written when the boy was younger, and I was doing an interview with the coach after they’d lost a football game that night. And how we were discussing the football game and the boy came running up and grabbed his dad, and everything else. And I just put a note in the column about how that sort of made things in perspective.

And they were reading that column to sort of sooth themselves during that time.

Now if that didn’t sort of tell me that you can make a difference. It doesn’t have to be a law changed or anything else. But in someone’s life, you get it down to that level, I thought that made a difference. And I’ve always remembered that.