Tresolini: On eve of Delaware Sports Hall of Fame induction, a letter to my late father
Dear Dad,
On the night your life ended, mine had barely begun.
That was the sad fate I contemplated as I lay awake for hours, grieving both your sudden loss and the dreadful realization I had a long life ahead from which you would be absent.
You were 47. I was just 8, faced with a long and interminable void.
But let me tell you about that life, which, despite missing your presence in it, has been long, joyful, healthy, enriching and incredibly fulfilling. The last two-thirds of it has been spent writing sports stories for a newspaper, which I have always imagined would not surprise you.
Surely, you’d recall me spreading the sports section of the Bethlehem Globe-Times out across the living room floor every afternoon at our home in rural Upper Bucks County, Pennsylvania. At some point, I must have realized that, because there were names atop those many stories, it was someone’s job to write them.
The thought struck that would be a splendid occupation someday. Growing up in the 1960s and early ‘70s, when news was constant and not always good, also drove my interest in and inclination toward journalism.
As a college professor, you also wrote for a living. The five books you authored were about very significant things – constitutional law, civil liberties, Supreme Court cases. It might amaze you how important sports, and what I write, is to so many readers.
They don’t hold the historical, societal weight of Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, among your many literary topics. But Delaware vs. Villanova, Saint Mark’s vs. Salesianum and Newark vs. William Penn can be quite captivating, too. Considering your keen interest in college football’s most-played rivalry, Lehigh vs. Lafayette, you surely understand.
This week, my professional career will be recognized in the most flattering way with induction into the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame.
Receiving such an honor makes me appreciate and value the many people I’ve met along the way who have shared their reactions, opinions, experiences, sentiments, insights, satisfactions and disappointments and trusted me to chronicle them. They often tolerated my persistence, understanding my quest to be informative, insightful and accurate. They are why I’ve been encouraged and inspired to keep doing it, now for more than 42 years, at The News Journal here in Delaware.
Someone you would remember, great Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig, famously called himself “the luckiest man on the face of the earth” in a moving 1939 Yankee Stadium oratory, despite terminal illness and an early eventual death at age 37.
I have felt equally fortunate to do what I have done, where I’ve done it, for so long. And unlike Gehrig, who had to wear flannel to work on hot summer days, I’ve frequently done so in shorts.
Telling those stories, and doing so fairly, factually, knowledgeably, enthusiastically and often very quickly, has been an absolute pleasure, most of the time. Some stories are more difficult than others. And finding the right words, the perfect descriptions, is a daily challenge.
When the ideal collection of nouns, verbs and adjectives comes to mind – “Roman Lewis looks like he might have been built in a day,” I once conjured to describe a 5-foot-4, 120-pound wide receiver making big plays for his high school football team – it’s a glorious moment of satisfaction and relief. I’m sure you remember that feeling.
Some of my favorite stories
BUDDIES FOR LIFE: For 30-plus years, Blue-Gold football bond has endured
PENN RELAYS RETROSPECTIVE: Jamaican gold medalist Bolt's 2010 sprint still a treasure
FRIENDS GRAD'S PLIGHT STIRRED MANY: Football killed him, not his legacy
LEGEND IN GEORGETOWN: Felled by 1918 flu epidemic, Blue Hen Roach remembered still
BLUE HEN FOR LIFE: Walk-on realized childhood dream of playing Delaware football
Annual honors from Lehigh
To receive such everlasting recognition for my work is gratifying and humbling. You, by the way, are honored in that way every year.
Since 1978, 11 years after your death from a cerebral hemorrhage, Lehigh University, where you were chairman of the Government (now Political Science) Department, has annually held the Tresolini Lecture in Law. Its speakers have included a scholarly array of justices, judges, cabinet members, attorneys, authors, activists, educators, scholars, politicians and journalists. All had something very smart and thought-provoking to say.It has been wonderful to keep your memory constant in that way and introduce you to several generations.
Your sudden loss granted me a perspective and appreciation for life I don’t know if I otherwise would have had. It made me more independent, empathetic, caring and appreciative of moments, of memories, of Mom. She, thankfully, lived nearly twice as many years as you did.
It made me so appreciate being a father myself, a gift in which I still revel as your twin grandson and granddaughter near age 30. I’m so thankful I have been here for them in a way you could not, through no fault of your own, be there for me.
But, oh, the hole it left in my heart.
One night, when I was in my mid-20s, with the newspaper spread across the floor on a warm summer night, something I read reminded me of you. And, for the first time, I felt deeply sorry for you, because you hadn’t gotten to see your three sons and daughter become fine adults, meet your in-laws – including my wife Fiona, whom you would have adored – or your grandchildren, who now number six.
A teardrop landed on the newsprint.
Olympic coverage was highlight
Tis an odd experience to be writing about myself and to be singled out. I’d much rather tell the story than be part of it, and I’ve been lucky to chronicle so many over the years while periodically expressing my opinions as well.
You were already gone when, in October of 1968, I became enamored with watching the Olympics on TV. In those breathtaking Summer Games in Mexico City, a man long jumped almost two feet farther than anyone before him. Two United States medal-winning sprinters held gloved fists toward the sky in an enduring protest about Civil Rights, a topic dear to your heart.
It’s been my pleasure to report on six such Olympics myself for the USA Today Network. Four Summer and two Winter. I watched Cathy Freeman, an Aboriginal woman, win the 400 meters in her native Australia, a flickering constellation of camera flashes accompanying her around the oval, in 2000. Also in Sydney, I saw a kid I covered in Little League and high school, Mike Neill, hit a home run, make a difficult catch for the final out and then have a gold medal draped around his neck.
I witnessed a man from Jamaica, Usain Bolt, run the 100 meters faster than anyone before him in Beijing in 2008. Goosebumps still rise at the thought. I saw Delaware’s most accomplished athlete, basketball player Elena Delle Donne, win sports’ biggest prize – Olympic gold – in Rio eight years after she temporarily ditched the sport in which she so excelled.
When I got home from my first Olympics in 1998, Delaware basketball coach Mike Brey mentioned what a professional thrill it must have been. It certainly was, I said. But, I added, it doesn’t beat being able to chronicle important issues and events in your own community, and sometimes seeing people you know and people you like achieve the ultimate thrill. His Blue Hens had just done that by winning their conference and playing in the NCAA Tournament.
That’s what has always been the joy of this job: To address a topic in a quest for revelation and perhaps change, such as Delaware’s dubious decades-long refusal to schedule Historically Black Delaware State in football; To see a state champion wrestler’s arm raised or a track champion cross the finish line, then chronicle their reactions; To describe the moments, methods and merriment that comprise a championship, or even the disappointment that does not.
More stories to come
I sat next to a man from Delaware who had become vice president of the United States during a barbeque at his D.C. home for a Delaware championship basketball team. Earlier that day, Joe Biden had given the team a tour of the White House. As we conversed, he remarked that no matter how many times one walks into the Oval Office, it inspires awe.
Now that office is his, as the U.S. president. You would be appalled at what happened after the election that put him there. Unhappy with the result, the outgoing president encouraged an assault on the U.S. Capitol. Despite being twice impeached and repeatedly indicted, he has convinced a stunning percentage of the U.S. population he deserves another term as our president. As for the Supreme Court, its recent actions might fill a few more volumes for you today.
My favorite stories have been about a person who coped with tragedy, trauma, injury, illness, personal or family difficulty or any other type of adversity to succeed. Maybe I could identify with their perspective, optimism or determination to rise above life’s sometimes savage blows.
The boy who survived a plane crash that killed his family but thrived while raised by relatives, a story preserved on page S5665 of the June 17, 1997, U.S. Congressional Record by then-Sen. Joe Biden, a family friend; the high school baseball player who, days after his parents’ murder-suicide, found valuable solace and camaraderie in a state championship win; the three-sport star who survived cardiac arrest days after her high school graduation; the lacrosse player whose late father was paralyzed by, but still adored, the sport and passed that love to his son.
I’ve probably written too much here, a realization my editors have periodically also had over the years. I’ll leave you with this: The first time our family’s name appeared in this newspaper was June 29, 1967, a paragraph reporting your death which, apparently, was an AP regional news brief.
Under far better circumstances, it has been in the newspaper and its website – it would take time to explain what that is to you – thousands of times since, typically atop stories I have written.
That has been an absolute privilege, an important responsibility and often a great joy. I have never taken that duty, nor anything else, for granted, another difficult but important lesson of your premature departure.
There are plenty more interesting stories to compose, an exercise I’ll continue to perform while, as always, inspired by your memory and fueled by your spirit.
With love,
Kevin
Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com and our DE Game Day newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Kevin Tresolini pens letter to late father Rocco before hall of fame
