How To Honor A Fallen Hero — Kobe Bryant

The news of Kobe Bryant’s tragic death this morning in a helicopter crash in Calabasas has started to sink in. And, having lived through something similar in sports myself, after a few hours of reading the news accounts, I couldn’t help but think back to a dreaded fall Sunday and Monday in 1985 after the Flyers rising superstar goaltender, and fan favorite, Pelle Lindbergh, suffered fateful car crash from early that November Sunday morning. The parallels are way to similar. Hero. Family. Friends. The only difference is only Pelle died in the car crash, with two survivors.

While Pelle was an active player, and Kobe a retired hero, the adoration and respect they both carried is far too similar.

But what’s really happening is going to be even as gut-wrenching for those within the Laker’s family as the news of the death was to others.

To give you all some background, I was part of the Flyers management team, as back then I directed their amateur hockey program and also was the office manager. I remember hearing the news from my dad on the way back from a NEA conference at George Washington University the next day.

After hearing what transpired, I immediately called our assistant coach E.J. Maguire to get a sense of what had happened and what was going on. “Shock. Disbelief. Sadness” were some of his words. But the next few days between the crash and our next home game went from business as usual to more about what do we do. What’s the right thing to do was the common…