- Joined
- Aug 17, 2014
- Messages
- 237
- Reaction Score
- 1,929
My name is Christopher Owen and I've been a Huskies fan for thirty years. my father Walter was a Husky fan for four days. The May before last I got a phone call from my father " hey there Christopher , they found a shadow". Four months after quitting smoking and complaining of shortness of breath my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. I visited with him shortly after for about a week and we spent that time just talking about life, death and everything in-between. On September 27th I got a text from him simply saying "when can you come and how long can you stay"? I just thought maybe he just really wanted to see me. He never let on to how bad things really were , very German ..tough. I made it back home to Naugatuck on November 9th. The day before I left my Dad said "hey Chris, lets go to a Uconn game with the family ( mostly alumni) , they're playing Yale in Hartford". So we ordered our tickets and on 11.11.13 me and my Father went to the xl center . Section 104 row h seats 5 and 6. I gave him a quick rundown of our team but when I mentioned Niels Giffey and Leon Tolksdorf his eyes lit up, he was locked in. If I remember correctly Niels hit five threes that game . The last three of them my father who took about a half hour to get down the stairs to our seats stood up and cheered ...in German. After the game was over Bazz came over to take a picture with a little girl. We were the only ones left because we needed to let everyone clear out before we walked up the stairs. I yelled down " hey Bazz!!, we'll see you in March". He nodded and my Dad asked what does that mean? I explained the ban for the season before and without skipping a beat he said" well , that's why they'll win it all this year and you never know ...maybe Germany will win the world cup too". Isn't that just perfect? That's the last " thing " I did with my Father. I came home Wednesday afternoon and on Friday he passed away in his apartment. We talked in-between a few times and all he talked about was our time together ...our game together. He said he felt like he was back in Kaiserlautern cheering on his hometown club. Thank you Uconn basketball for creating that stage for us. I have tried to find the full game on youtube and cannot find anything but a few highlights. If anyone here has access to this game in its entirety I would greatly appreciate a copy. I would of course pay for shipping ,time or whatever else you would need. I thought about writing the school but didn't know where to start so I figured I'd try here first.
