0303070378
DETROIT FREE PRESS
030307
Friday, March 07, 2003
METRO FINAL
1D
Photo Special to the Detroit Free Press
Brendan Shanahan poses with Brendan Filzek, right, and his sister
Caitlyn in the Red Wings dressing room. The young boy, whom Shanahan had
befriended four years ago, died last month from cancer. Shanahan was a
pallbearer.
Kris & Kara
Brendan & Brendan
Brendan Filzek of Macomb Township meets Stanley. He loved the Red Wings and
was buried wearing a Shanahan jersey.
MITCH ALBOM Free Press columnist
Copyright (c) 2003, Detroit Free Press
BIG MEN, LITTLE BUDDIES
HOW DRAPER, SHANAHAN TOUCHED THEIR SHORT LIVES -- AND VICE VERSA
There are bonds you are born with, like your parents or siblings, and bonds
you choose, like friends and lovers. Then there are the bonds that come along
by accident, that somehow choose you, and draw you in like destiny.
For Kris Draper, the Red Wings' oft-grinning forward, the bond began with a
phone call. A teenage girl from Shepherd, he was told, had leukemia and was in
the hospital. She was a huge Draper fan. Could he possibly call her?
"I'll never forget when she answered the phone, I told her who it was, and
there was absolute silence," Draper says. "And then she said, 'Is it really
you? Is it really Kris?' She was kind of overwhelmed. She couldn't think of
anything to say. So I said, 'I'll tell you what. Why don't you take some time,
think of some questions, and I'll call you back.' "
And he did. That call led to another. And those calls led to a visit. And that
visit led to a hug -- "I was all sweaty after practice, but she didn't care,"
Draper says -- and that hug never really ended, it formed a connection, the
unexpected kind, between a veteran hockey player and an otherwise-typical
16-year-old named Kara Spindler, who found out on Sept. 11, 2001, the day
terrorists struck the United States, that she had leukemia.
Draper's phone calls went on for months. They could come at any time, from the
road, from the car. He and Kara talked about typical things: the game, the
players, TV shows, movies. She would ask why he always seemed to get his face
cut on the ice. At the end of the conversations, she would say, "I have to get
off now and call my girlfriends and tell them I was just talking to Kris
Draper."
All this time she was going through chemo treatments. She suffered a stroke.
She was slowly dying. You wouldn't have known it. She was upbeat. She watched
out for others.
One night, her father, Dave, was sleeping in a chair in her hospital room. The
blanket fell off him. "She got out of bed, with all these IV tubes in her and
everything," he recalls, his voice choking, "and she put the blanket back over
me. That's the kind of kid she was."
When children get sick, families need support. Before Draper entered their
lives, neither Dave nor his wife, Lyn, nor their two older sons had ever had
any encounters with professional athletes. They watched them on TV like
everyone else.
Now Draper was part of their small army of the heart, part of that support
group that shares a terrible burden.
Which is why, just days ago, Draper got a call from the family. The bad call.
The worst call. His phone pal, the bouncy teenager who had sent a stuffed bear
to the Wings so that Draper's kids could play with it, had lost her battle.
She was gone.
A pair of Brendans
For Brendan Shanahan, it began with a name. There was a little boy, he was
told, a 5-year-old from Macomb Township, also named Brendan. He was sick.
Cancer. He was undergoing treatment for a tumor in his sinus cavity and 16
tumors in his lungs. Would Shanahan meet with him? Shanahan said sure.
This was four years ago.
"You could tell the moment you saw his face," Shanahan remembers. "Something
about him. Just really charming. And he loved the Red Wings."
Young Brendan, whose last name was Filzek, began coming to games regularly.
You could tell he was suffering; he was small for his age and had to deal with
radiation and hair loss. But he soldiered on. He turned 6, 7, 8 and 9 -- all
those years shrouded by a terminal illness. Doctors would twice say he was
cancer-free, and twice he would relapse into the disease. Shanahan, known for
being a tough hockey player, was in awe of the boy's bravery.
"He was such a little guy," the Wings forward says, "going through such a big
thing."
Sometimes, during warm-ups, Shanahan would see him standing near the glass
with his parents, Doug and Maureen. They would wave. Other nights, when, after
the game, young Brendan could barely stay awake, Shanahan rushed out of the
locker room still wearing his equipment, still sweating off the chin and
forehead, just to say hello.
One time, Shanahan visited his house and sat on the floor, talking to his
"buddy."
"I'd always ask him if he had any new girlfriends," Shanahan says.
And?
He laughs. "He usually said he had a few."
They sent Christmas cards to each other. Little Brendan got to pose with the
Stanley Cup. The night Shanahan scored his 400th goal, he gave the puck to
Brendan. And last November, the night Shanahan broke a nine-game goal-less
streak by scoring twice, he gave both pucks to Brendan, who also left wearing
a Shanahan hat and a Shanahan sweater.
You kindle hope in moments like that. You think maybe, just maybe, because the
kid looks so happy, he will get better.
And then, a few weeks ago, the Wings were on a road trip. Their PR man
approached Shanahan after practice. He had some sad news. Shanahan braced
himself. He had just become a first-time father himself. The miracles of
growth were part of his every day, watching his newborn twins open their eyes
or wave their tiny hands.
Now young Brendan Filzek, whose growth, in a certain way, Shanahan also had
watched, was dead.
A few days later, Shanahan was at the funeral, holding the casket as one of
the pallbearers. Little Brendan was buried wearing a Shanahan jersey.
"I wasn't there as a Red Wings hockey player," Shanahan says. "I was there as
a friend. I was honored to be asked. I was honored, that day, to be part of
that family."
Good guys, good deeds
And that's the thing, isn't it? The sense of family? You can't be naive. You
can't think athletes are substitutes for fathers or mothers or even brothers
or sisters. But when they care, like these Detroit players care, they become
like uncles or cousins, distant cousins perhaps, but under the tent, they
share the news, they call on the phone, they come to the funeral.
It is the best that sports can be, a spreading of the glory that comes with
the game, an athlete's saying, "Here, you want to feel some of this? I'll
share it with you. You're special to me, the same way I'm special to you."
When Draper remembers his teenage phone pal, he says, "Kara was always
thanking me. That's the amazing thing. Here she was, dying from this disease,
and she kept thanking me for calling her. How do you tell her that there's
nothing to thank me for, that it's a privilege to be able to put a smile on
your face, to distract you from the disease even for a few hours?"
You don't. You just do it. Draper and Shanahan are only two of the Wings who
make these connections. It happens more than you know, more than you might
think, especially with hockey players, who seem to think the locker room is a
sort of playground of good fortune, so why not share it -- especially with
sick kids?
"There are a lot of faces that have come through our room, kids' faces that
you think about and then you realize they are no longer with us," Shanahan
says. "Knowing kids like little Brendan reminds you that what you do is only a
game, it's not life and death, but at the same time it shows you how important
the game can be. Because it can make a sick kid happy."
Shanahan has a picture of little Brendan now; it hangs inside his locker.
Draper has the stuffed bear that Kara sent him; his little daughter plays with
it.
Big men. Little kids.
The bonds that tie.
Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or albom@freepress.com. Catch "The Mitch
Albom Show" 3-6 p.m. weekdays on WJR-AM (760). Also catch "Monday Sports
Albom" 7-8 p.m. Mondays on WJR.
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