Bobby Suvoy had Lou Gehrig's Disease, and it was vicious. He'd been a boy
who liked to swim and skate and catch fish, always looking for something to do.
Now here he was at 16, paralyzed, with a breathing machine inflating his lungs.
Chris Terry was Bobby's idol, his favorite hockey player. The team arranged
for Terry to meet him, and it was a thrill; one of the few things Bobby could
still do was smile, and he hardly stopped from the moment Terry walked in.
Then Terry dropped by the Suvoys' house in Redford Township a few more
times, on his own. And when Bobby died in early May, Terry came down from his
home in Brampton, Ontario, for the funeral, driving four hours in his big green
Isuzu Rodeo.
The Suvoys dressed Bobby for burial in the official jersey
Terry autographed for him. Bob Suvoy Sr. wanted to show him, so he approached
Terry the moment he walked into the visitation.
"Are you ready to go up
there?" Suvoy asked.
"No," Terry said, honestly, and Suvoy understood.
"You've got to remember," Suvoy says now, "he's just a kid."
Chris
Terry, hero to a dying teenager, was all of 18 years old.
A mature
teenager
At least he was when they met. Terry turned 19 in April, and it's a
mature 19, honed by three years in Junior A hockey. He has finished high school
and started at Schoolcraft College while living with host families and playing
center for the Plymouth Whalers, where his teammates range from 15 to 21.
The Whalers play in the Ontario Hockey League, a league of great promise,
long bus rides, heavy responsibilities and tiny paychecks. Terry's Isuzu is a
'98, a hand-me-down from his parents.
You wonder what it's like for a young
man to commit to that life in hopes of someday skating in the NHL. And you
wonder what it's like for someone whose body has brought him so far to spend
time with someone like Bobby, whose body betrayed him.
Daunting, you
discover, at least at first. But then inspiring and enriching. Educational, in a
way. And certainly humbling.
Only a few years ago, Terry had Steve Yzerman
posters on the walls of his bedroom. Suddenly, he's comforting someone who owns
framed pictures of Chris Terry.
"I guess I really wasn't prepared for what
condition he was in," Terry concedes. "It was an intense time." But there was
something in Bobby, and something in himself, that brought him back.
Though
Bobby couldn't form many words -- he mostly said "thank you" and "hello" -- he
was upbeat most of the time, and he made it clear how much the visits meant.
Phone conversations were out of the question, but Terry would text Bobby's two
older sisters every day, just checking in, and they would tell Bobby that the
Whalers' leading scorer had asked about him again.
"Such a terrible thing,"
says Terry, who's back in Brampton with his family for the summer. "He was my
sister's age. It's too young."
Community becomes family
There's a lot
more to the story and at the same time, it's simple.
Lou Gehrig's Disease,
or ALS, typically attacks 40- to 60-year-olds. Nobody survives it. From
diagnosis to funeral home, Bobby lasted less than two years.
Knowing his
time was limited, the Suvoys adopted a simple philosophy: Whatever Bobby wants,
Bobby gets. Hockey tickets, no problem. A Chris Terry jersey, $200 including the
cost of getting the name and No. 20 on the back, no problem.
The Make-A-Wish
Foundation bought Bobby a 42-inch high-definition television with surround
sound. Whalers games are streamed online, and the Suvoys would connect a laptop
to the big screen and gather 'round.
Suvoy, 50, is a machinist. His wife,
Patrice, is a secretary with the Redford Township schools. Financially and
otherwise, he says, "People came out of the woodwork to help us with this."
A friend's friend painted their little fishing boat, though Bobby
deteriorated so quickly he was never able to use it. Their church put on a
spaghetti dinner. One of Suvoy's softball buddies stopped knocking; he'd just
stroll in two nights a week, head to Bobby's room and chat for a few hours.
Some friends are throwing another fundraiser for the family Thursday,
helping to chip away at the leftover medical expenses. It's $15 per ticket for
an 8 p.m. stand-up show at Joey's Comedy Club in Livonia. Call the Whalers at
(734) 453-8400 for information.
The Suvoys didn't even know about it until
the fliers had been printed. As for Terry, he won't be there: It's for
21-and-older.
Bobby's impact on Terry
The Whalers played the Sarnia Sting
the night Bobby and Terry met. Bobby was supposed to go, but his health bottomed
out that week and he couldn't.
Instead, he asked Terry to score a goal for
him. Terry, in turn, wrote a message for Bobby on the tape at the top of his
stick: "Do It 4 Bobby."
"I've got to be honest with you," says Pete Krupsky,
the Whalers' play-by-play broadcaster, "when we talked about it on the air, I
was breaking up."
Then the Whalers went out and lost, 5-4, and Terry was
held without a goal. Life works that way sometimes.
Bobby didn't care. When
Terry scored a few games later, he just assumed that one was his.
Seven
weeks later, he was gone. The clip from Krupsky's broadcast played in a loop at
the visitation, and Krupsky, a retired chemist, dissolved again.
Since then,
the Suvoys have turned Bobby's bedroom into a den. The décor is the same, with
all the hockey pictures. They just took out the hospital bed.
Terry will be
back with the Whalers come fall. Drafted last year by the Carolina Hurricanes,
he's a step closer to the NHL.
Bob Suvoy finds himself reflecting sometimes
on a conversation he had with Terry one of the times he stopped by. "He said we
need to appreciate what we have," Suvoy says. "He said we should all be
thankful, every minute of our lives."
Terry probably understood that before
he met Bobby, because that's the kind of 19-year-old he is. But chances are
he'll never forget it, because that's the kind of impact Bobby had.
