Nine years later, it still hurts

In the midst of a lot of things happening for me, such as the announcement of two new Web-TV sports weekly shows that I will be co-hosting beginning next week, gearing up for posting reports and stories all day from the LA Kings 2010 Hockey Fest on Saturday, and keeping an eager eye on many big college football games, Saturday is still a day that is as somber as any on the calendar each year. It may have been nine years ago that the terror attacks devastated New York City and our entire country, but I felt many personal losses that year. This includes the death of Jeremy Glick, one of the four men who bravely overtook the terrorists on United Flight 93 and prevented them from flying the plane into the White House, making the ultimate sacrifice in the process.

Here's a story that I wrote on-line in December of 2001 for AllSports.com that I hope all of you will take a couple of minutes to read today. My thoughts are with everyone that suffered a loss on that day:

Two heroic athletes we should always remember
My Remembrances of Gretchen Dater and Jeremy Glick
December 21, 2001

Christmas is a season of mixed emotions for me. I, like many people, am grateful and thankful for all the blessings I have in my life. These would include first and foremost the members of my family that care deeply for me, as I do for them. Not to mention all the friendships I have developed over the years, and the other blessings too many to mention.

Sports have also been a blessing in my life. I have taken great pleasure in experiencing, both as a competitor and a fan, many moments of success and achievement. Yet, I am also reminded at this time of year, especially this year, of all the evil in the world. I am reminded of how powerless I really am, and how mortal I really am.

Sports, and the athletes that participate in them, have always been a coping device for me. I have been a sports fanatic all my life. Love to play sports, love to watch sports, love to talk about sports. In part, I think this is because the people I developed friendships with growing up also had similar levels of interests in sports like me.

That’s why I want to take a moment to recognize two of my friends that I can’t celebrate this season of cheer with. These are two people who I knew in my younger days, and I knew them then, and now, as athletes.

Their names are Gretchen Dater and Jeremy Glick.

Every year on December 21st since 1988, I remember Gretchen Dater, my former classmate at Saddle River Day School. Actually, I think about her often, but the anniversary date of when she and 269 others died as a result of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbee, Scotland, amplifies it. My recollections of her are of a kind and gentle young woman, someone who always wore a smile on her face and enjoyed a good laugh. My recollections of her are of a young woman who was beautiful, at an age when a young man starts to really notice those kinds of things about young women.

My recollections mostly, though, are of a school girl who didn’t buy into the stereotype of most girls back then, which was not to play sports with a passion like boys did. Mind you, this was before the explosion and popularity of women’s sports in this country. This was before women’s tennis and golf tours were popular, before the WNBA, before the WPSL.

Gretchen played sports with a fearlessness you rarely found in girls in those days. Whether it was in physical education class, or the girl’s soccer team, she always played hard. When she played floor hockey (my sport of choice) in “Phys Ed” class, she not only knew how to shoot a puck, she shot it hard. She always had my respect for that. To me, she wasn’t just another pretty girl.

She was an athlete.

Maybe that’s why hearing of her tragic and untimely death was so hard for me to accept when I first heard about it. She had so many positive qualities. Even when I knew her, you could see her artistic talents and abilities. These talents were what led her to become an art student at Syracuse University, and eventually an exchange student in London, from where she was returning home for the holidays when tragedy struck.

It was also hard to accept because it personalized the tragedy. It made acutely aware, in the early stages of adulthood, just how quickly and senselessly it could all come to an end.

Every year on the anniversary, my thoughts and feelings are always ones of anger and sorrow. Her parents were among those who championed the cause to bring those who did this unspeakable act to justice. Two such men were convicted this past January for this crime in the Netherlands, yet the real mastermind of these murders, Muammar Qaddafi and the government of Libya, remains “at large” in my mind.

Yet, tragically, we as a nation did not learn the lessons of December 21st, the lessons of air safety and the safety of our citizens that Pan Am Flight 103 taught us. For the families of the victims of that horrible terrorist attack, they have been left to ponder why it took our government 12 years and the unfortunate events of September 11th to become so enraged at state-sponsored terrorism and so united in purpose to defeat it.

For me, I wonder why I had to lose another friend. I knew Jeremy through his brother, Jonah, whom I was a classmate of for four years at Saddle River Day School. Jonah was a good friend for the years I attended school there. I attended his Bar Mitzvah, and it was through this friendship that I came to know Jeremy, as well as his other siblings.

My father put a basketball hoop and backboard on my driveway so that I could have friends over to play games with. He even put “flood lights” up so I could play at night. Jonah was one of those friends who played ball with us. My recollection is that he liked the idea of playing basketball at home so much, he convinced his father to take a section of their backyard, dig it up and pour in concrete so Jonah and his brothers could have a “home court” advantage.

I can distinctly remember many Sunday afternoons playing basketball with Jonah and Jeremy, and their little brother Jared, as well as other kids. Just like at my house, they had “flood lights” put up so the games could extend into the night hours.

I also remember both Jonah and Jeremy as being extremely skilled in judo and wrestling, as well as soccer. They may not have looked physically imposing, but believe me, they were as strong as anyone I knew back then at my age. I was taller than them growing up, so I used my height advantage in basketball games, but it was never easy matching up against them in any sport they played.

I lost touch with them after I transferred to a different high school. It turns out, from what I’ve read since September 11th, it was a huge loss for me that I lost touch with them.

After all, if you’ve read any of the accounts of the kind of family man, father, friend, brother and hero Jeremy has been portrayed in the stories since the crash of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, wouldn’t you agree he was the kind of person you’d want to have in your life? When I first heard his name in connection with the story, it didn’t register. After all, I assumed it couldn’t be the same person I knew.

Yet, when I read the story with quotes from his older sister, Jennifer, and from his mother, Joan, I cried like my own brother had died. In some ways, for that period of my life, he was my brother.

He was an athlete.

My regrets about Gretchen and Jeremy, other than them not still being alive, is that I didn’t know them more than I did. Yet, I knew them enough to remember the many good things they had to offer. I am proud to say that I knew them both, and the memories I have of them, albeit minor ones, will be memories of passion and athletic determination that I will carry with me forever. Knowing the kind of people they were, and how valiantly they faced the defining moment of their lives, I only hope I have the same kind of courage if put in the same situation.

Sportswriter Mike Lupica said shortly after September 11th that he will never again use phrases such as heroic and courageous to describe athletes again in the games we watch. I couldn’t agree with him more.

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