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May 14, 2003
Steve Rushin For Sports Illustrated
In seventh grade Quinn Connally is the rare child who can, at once, act his
age and his shoe size. Both are 12. "Get your feet out of the driveway," his
dad, Steve, will shout, in mock horror, when Quinn is standing in the yard. "I
can't pull the car out." To the boy, everything is "Sweet!" --
Will Smith, tacos, the Detroit Red Wings -- and that word, too, describes
his disposition. When Quinn sees, on TV, that Wings defenseman Vladimir
Konstantinov has been paralyzed in a car crash, he cries.
"A gentle giant," says his uncle Paul Chojnowski.
Quinn has hands like a grown man's and an athlete's body
that's been -- says his mother, Ann -- "sculpted and
defined since age five." And so she develops the reverse
concern of most hockey moms: Ann worries that her son will
hurt someone else's child on the ice.
Quinn is smart -- in the 93rd percentile for IQ -- and maintains
a B average at St. Stanislaus Kostka school in Adams, Mass.
Anything lower and Steve won't let him play hockey. Never
mind that Quinn was diagnosed with dyslexia in second grade
and often asks, angrily and with deep frustration, "Why
can't I read?"
His friends all devour the same books, and one evening Quinn
announces that he intends to tackle an inch-thick Harry Potter. "So
we laid belly-down, shoulder-to-shoulder, on his bed," says
Ann. "And he started to read this long passage." It
was like watching a high-wire act, and when Quinn, with scarcely
a stumble, made it safely to the other side, he exhaled mightily
and looked up from the page. For a long moment, says his
mother, "We just looked at each other with these big
smiles. Then Quinn said, 'O.K., Mom, I'm tired now.'" And
he retired for the night.
Quinn is disconsolate if his father forgets to wake him
for the 5 a.m. SportsCenter. The Connallys' front yard in
Cheshire, Mass., is a lawn mower's minefield of Day-Glo pucks,
golf balls, tennis balls and badminton birdies. After fracturing
his right hand playing hockey, Quinn uses the cast as a paddle
when playing Ping Pong in the backyard.
Quinn plays hockey like he reads Harry Potter. Slowly, yes,
and without natural aptitude, but with such a doggedly competitive
streak that after two seasons of tryouts he makes the MassConn
Braves traveling team. Seldom has the phrase "traveling
team" been so apt. The home rink is 70 minutes away,
and it's not unusual for the family to travel six hours round-trip
for a one-hour hockey game.
Thus a 75-minute drive to practice in Springfield is nothing.
Or rather, it's something. Quinn does homework by domelight
while Dad drives. "Real bonding time," Steve says
of those rides.
At practice in the Springfield Civic Center, Quinn, a defenseman,
slides to block a shot in a three-on-two drill. It is 6:15
p.m. when the puck strikes him in the back of the neck, just
below the helmet. Steve hears another father say, "That
didn't look good," and indeed, Quinn is taken to Bay
State Medical Center, where his parents, and his teammates
-- and their parents -- stay all night. "Hockey parents
have a special connection," says Uncle Paul. "Maybe
it's all those 5 a.m. ice times."
At 11:59 the next morning, the Connallys are told, unfathomably,
that their son has died of a severed blood vessel. When they're
asked, in the same breath, if they would be willing to donate
Quinn's organs, the Connallys say, "Of course."
Quinn's death -- on Dec. 4, 2000 -- is reported as the first
of its kind in youth hockey history. The Connallys receive
cards from strangers in every one of the 50 states.
For two years Ann cannot enter an ice arena, and to this
day she cannot bear to look at a Pee Wee-aged player. "With
the big bag and stick?" she says. "Can't do it."
So it is astonishing that Ann should quit her job in retail
management, and that Steve should leave his job as a "computer
geek," to devote their working lives to one purpose:
building a two-rink arena (and community/tutoring center)
in Pittsfield, Mass. The Berkshire County Chamber of Commerce
and Del Alba Realty promptly donate 20 acres of real estate
for the rink.
Soon, a local printer, Quality Printing, donates $25,000.
Berkshire Life Insurance gives $75,000. The Berkshire County
sheriff's department gives $20,000 more, and USA Hockey donates
another ten grand. The Connallys raise $250,000 in $10-a-plate
potluck dinners, bake sales and skateathon pledges. And though
they remain nearly $7 million shy of their $8 million goal,
they plan to break ground this summer, on faith and borrowed
money. "If we dig it," Steve says of corporate
donors, "they will come."
The Connallys' foundation is called Quinn's Legacy, but
of course Quinn's legacy already exists -- in the seven adults
to whom he has given life, including the man from Marlborough,
Mass., who tells the Connallys that the damnedest thing has
happened since he got Quinn's kidney: His feet have grown
two full sizes.
As for Quinn's heart, it now beats inside a 32-year-old
black man in Kentucky, rendering racism rather ridiculous
to the Connallys. "He's about to be married," says
Steve Connally, his eyes slick as twin sheets of Zambonied
ice. He looks as proud as a father could be. As of course
he should.
Issue date: May 12, 2003
Sports Illustrated senior writer Steve Rushin pens the weekly
Air and Space column in the magazine.
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