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After losing their son in a hockey accident, Stephen and
Ann Connally help others in his name
By Jack Thomas, Globe Staff, 4/30/2003
CHESHIRE -- Sitting on a sofa in his living room, not far
from all the books about death, Stephen Connally, 43, dabs
the tears and struggles to regain composure before continuing
to relate the events that occurred that cold December night
when his dreams turned to dust.
It was nearly 2 1/2 years ago, and as he drove home from
work, tired, he decided that his 12-year-old son, Quinn,
could forgo hockey practice. As he pulled into the driveway,
however, the boy bounded out of the house, hockey stick in
hand, bag over his shoulder, hat on sideways, shirt half
in and half out.
''Where ya been?'' his son demanded. ''We're gonna be late!''
As the father drove south that fateful night, the son did
his homework by carlight. At the rink, he rushed to the locker
room to be first on the ice. A few minutes later, waiting
at the edge of the rink, Stephen saw his son approach, and
as he describes the moment now, he pauses
again to wipe away tears. ''Quinn looks up at me. A big
smile comes across his face and he says, `I'll see ya!' And
then he jumps on the ice.''
Fifteen minutes later, it happened.
Stephen was in the stands, chatting. The boys were engaged
in three-on-two drills. Quinn moved to block a shot. In a
freakish, one-in-a-million moment, the flying puck hit Quinn
on the back of the neck, just under the helmet, in a vulnerable
spot no larger than a dime, bursting a vessel.
Quinn fell to the ice. He never moved again.
By the time Stephen reached him, they had turned Quinn on
his back. Stephen tried to rouse his son. He yelled to him.
He threw snow on his face. Nothing.
At the hospital, someone suggested it was time for Stephen
to call his wife. When the telephone rang, his daughter,
Tessa, 11, noting the source of the call, asked her mother,
''Why is Bay State Medical Center calling?''
''Ann,'' said Stephen, ''there's been an accident, and it's
bad. He's on life support.''
The 75-minute drive to the hospital in Springfield was agony.
Ann rushed to her son's room. Quinn was propped up in bed.
He was breathing through a tube. He was ash gray. The family
stayed all night. Next morning, doctors
told them what they knew already, and that it was time to
decide whether they wanted to donate Quinn's organs.
Yes, they said, without hesitation.
Arriving home that night, Stephen, Ann, and Tessa were physically
exhausted, emotionally drained, and spiritually broken. For
solace, they slept together.
The next morning, Ann descended the stairs, and in the living
room she wondered why Quinn wasn't where she found him every
morning, there on the sofa, in his boxers, under a blanket,
watching a sports show. ''Where is he?'' she thought.
Quinn's impact
Today, Quinn's heart beats in the chest of a man in Kentucky.
The gift of his liver means that a Red Cross volunteer in
Connecticut has been able to go back to school. The donation
of Quinn's pancreas has enabled a carpenter in his 50s to
return to work in eastern Massachusetts. A computer technician
in central Massachusetts who received a kidney from Quinn
is engaged to be married.
And now, 30 months later, because of the Connally family's
desire to memorialize him, ground will be broken in nearby
Pittsfield in June for the Quinn Connally Memorial Sports
Facility, an $8 million, 2,500-seat arena with two hockey
rinks that meet Olympic and National Hockey League standards.
One recent morning, Ann was in her bedroom when she noticed
atop the television set a videotape of Quinn playing hockey.
''I started watching it,'' she explains later, ''and I found
myself cheering him on, `C'mon, Quinn! Go for it!' It brings
him back to us to be able to see him playing hockey on video,
to see him skate again. It's a way of reconnecting, and yes,
I cry.''
''We cry a lot,'' says Stephen.
''Donating his organs wasn't difficult,'' she says. ''The
worst moment was accepting that we had to let him go, because
that's when you know he'll never return, and you'll have
him only in a two-dimensional thing, like a video.
''I could be having a good day, and then my eye falls on
his picture and suddenly,'' she says, snapping her fingers,
''I'm back at the hospital, walking the corridors.''
Quinn is the boy photographed each year on the first day
of school, always holding the hand of his little sister.
He's the boy nicknamed Mr. Safety because he took it upon
himself to ensure that his sister fastened her seat belt.
Quinn is the boy who learned about competition from his
mom, who'd walk by him in the kitchen and surprise him with
a hip check, saying, ''That's how it's done.'' He's the boy
obsessed with bouncing a ball or slapping a puck against
the front steps, missing by so much on occasion that his
father had to replace glass in the storm door.
Quinn is the boy who struggled with dyslexia, and despite
an above-average IQ and B grades, he was so frustrated by
his difficulty in reading that he'd ask his father, ''Why
am I so stupid?'' He's the boy who stammered when he read
aloud and who, though taunted sometimes by playmates, nevertheless
often raised his hand and volunteered to read to the class.
Quinn is the boy who sat at the kitchen counter and played
NHL 2000 on his laptop, listened to hockey songs on his CD
player, and watched a hockey video on TV, all at the same
time. ''And if you asked him to turn anything down,'' says
Stephen, ''he'd yell, `I'm listening to all of it!' ''
The bedroom where Quinn slept is pretty much as he left
it.
''There's a bookcase with his favorite things, his deck
of cards, his trophies, all the things he played with, and
I go in there sometimes and just sit,'' says his mother.
''I look at his stuff. I look through his books. I found
a spelling test, and his mark was only 43, but the reverse
page was filled with his handwriting, and each word that
he'd misspelled he'd written out three times for practice.''
He'd play any sport, says his father -- rollerblading, baseball,
soccer -- but hockey was first, and he might have played
college hockey. For his jersey, he chose ''25,'' after Darren
McCarty of the Detroit Red Wings, whom Quinn admired as an
athlete with less natural talent than others but a willingness
to work hard.
Feeling his presence
The funeral Mass was held on a Friday instead of Saturday
so that Quinn's friends would not miss their hockey games.
Some of his playmates, returning from the Communion rail,
touched his hockey jersey, which was draped over the casket.
''We're not practicing Catholics,'' says Ann, ''but we sent
the kids to Catholic school to build values, and it worked.
''After he died, I went to Barnes & Noble, to the section
on death and dying, and I read about synchronicity, which
means there's no such thing as a coincidence, that everything
happens for a reason. We've come to believe there are no
coincidences.''
Talking alternately, they describe their synchronicity.
''I was at the cemetery once,'' says Stephen, ''a cloudy,
New England day, and I was asking Quinn questions when, suddenly,
a ray of sunshine came through the clouds and hit the gravestone.
''In the kitchen,'' he continues, ''I work on my laptop
where Quinn used to sit, and I constantly catch things out
of the corner of my eye, in the backyard, like the swing
moving, and I say, `C'mon, Quinn. Just come in and stop foolin'
around out there.' Things like that happen a lot.''
Asked if he believes in heaven, he pauses.
''I do. There is a life after. Too many things have happened.
I know he's around.'' Turning to Ann, he says: ''The snowmen.''
There were four wooden snowmen on the front porch, she says,
and they symbolized the four members of the family, three
red and one green that represented Quinn, because he favored
green.
''Last week, it was time to bring in the snowmen, and I
found the three red ones standing, and in front of them,
the green one had fallen, and its hat was off.
''One day at the cemetery,'' she continues, ''it was sprinkling.
I stood at the grave and said, `Quinn, I hope you realize
how much we love you and miss you. I wish you could give
me a signal.' And then one raindrop fell and hit on the image
of Quinn, and it trickled down,'' she said. ''I said, `My
God, you do know!' Quinn had answered me. Now, some people
may think we're over the edge. . . ''
''But too many things have happened,'' says Stephen.
Like the watch Quinn wore the night he was killed. It's
still on the counter in the kitchen.
''And there are times,'' says Stephen, ''when the alarm
goes off, and it'll be 6:15, the time of the accident. There
are days when the alarm beeps a lot and days when it beeps
only a couple of times, but it's always 6:15, which is pretty
strange.''
Their cause
Ann and Stephen both have made an effort to comfort the
player who shot the puck that killed Quinn.
''I told him, `Don't you ever think this was your fault,'
'' says Ann, '' `never, never, never.' ''
On June 21, 2001, the Connallys held a press conference
to announce the establishment of Quinn's Legacy Foundation,
a nonprofit corporation committed to building the skating
rink in memory of their son. Both Stephen and Ann work for
the foundation full time, and both bring their skills to
the task. Stephen was an architectural draftsman. Ann, 44,
worked in retail management. All of the work thus far, letters,
brochures, and press releases, has been produced on a laptop
at their kitchen counter.
After completion of the rink, the foundation will promote
the development of young people through sports and other
after-school activities.
''We've done this backwards,'' says Ann. ''In a capital
campaign, you hit corporations, then grass roots, the community.
We started at grass roots. We've had lots of community support,
$10 dinners, variety shows, sports auctions, skate-a-thons,
a Bruins alumni game, and we now have more than a million
dollars in cash, land, and services. And we've hired a consultant
who's put together the financial package that sets up the
financing to break ground, although we still have money to
raise.''
In addition to the skating rinks, the facility will have
a community center, sports shop, and rooms for studying and
for lectures and seminars on subjects from sports to organ
donation.
''This is a lot more than a hockey rink,'' says Stephen.
''Yes,'' says Ann, ''and we've got a lot of work to do.''
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