Saying Goodbye

 

TigerBlog was walking on Nassau Street yesterday morning when the strong wind blew something in his eye.

As he kept walking, he could feel whatever it was, and he tried to wipe it away. The wind got a little stronger, though, and try as he might, he couldn't keep his eye from tearing.

In that moment, TB was struck by what would be the theme of the moment. This would not be a day to keep from crying, no matter how hard he tried.

TB walked on Nassau Street on his way to the packed St. Paul's church. It was there that he would attend the funeral of his dear friend Steve DiGregorio, who passed away last week after his brave battle against cancer. Digger, as he was known, was a Princeton football coach for 13 years and part of the staff of three Ivy League championship teams.

Like all funerals, this one featured smiles as well as tears. There were smiles when seeing old faces that TB hadn't seen in a long time. It was smiles when people told stories about Digger. 

It was tears when the reality of why they were all gathered there made its way to the surface. Ultimately, it just all so sad.

There were people there from every area of Digger's world. There were rows of Nutley High School football players, the ones Digger had coached as recently as a year ago, when he was the New Jersey high school Coach of the Year. 

There were his friends from Nutley, the ones he grew up with, when he was a football player there too.

There were the Princeton football players, so many of them, back from the years that Digger coached them. Again, it was at once good to see them and sad think of why.  

One of them, Marc Washington, flew in on the red eye from Los Angeles, attended the funeral and the reception that followed and then went back to Newark to fly back. He came in for less than 24 hours, just for Digger.

There were the people with whom Digger used to work at Princeton. There were the friends he had from living in town, the friends with whom he and his wife Nadia had raised kids together. 

Chris Thomforde, the former Princeton basketball great from the 1960s and now a minister, talked about planting seeds, and how from the seeds of Digger's life and how he lived it came the bond, the connection, the love he shared with everyone there. 

Digger's oldest son Zack gave a eulogy that was so composed, so inspirational and so moving that it resulted in something TB had never before seen at a funeral: applause, and lots of it.

Digger was buried in Princeton Cemetery, the same one where former U.S. President Grover Cleveland is also buried. Digger, a student and teacher of history, would have liked that. Like everyone else at the gravesite, TB put a flower on the casket, pausing to press his hand against the wood while he said "goodbye buddy" out loud, softly.

He cried as he said the words. He cried often during the day. He cried when he saw his friend in the open casket, wearing a Nutley football sweatshirt, with Princeton football and Muhlenberg – where he'd been a defensive end – gear inside as well. He cried when he saw the boys for the first time, Zack, Derek and Aaron. He cried when others cried.

That's what the day was all about. It was about trying so hard to focus on all of the good things about Digger, all the good times Digger had shared with all of the people there, all of the love that brought all of these people together yesterday.

And yet, ultimately, none of that could change the reality. Digger was gone. He was only 60. He left all of this behind, through no fault of his own.

And that was just too sad to be true.  

Like the wind that blew relentlessly into TigerBlog's eyes earlier in the day, there was nothing that could be done to change that. 

And so it was a day when it was just too sad to keep from crying.

*          *          *

TigerBlog is hardly the only one who cared deeply for Steve DiGregorio. Former men's basketball player and assistant coach Howard Levy, who was as close to Digger as anyone, also cried yesterday. Cried, and laughed. He wanted TB to share this, and he wanted to share what it below his take, which was written by Howard's son Lior:  

“Hey John, take Howie and Riva over to Digger’s place to show them the type of housing they could get,” said new Princeton head basketball coach Bill Carmody to his assistant John Thompson III, in the summer of 1996, shortly after Coach Carmody asked me to join his staff at Princeton because he “needed another pair of eyes.”  Digger was the assistant football coach that was also basically part of the basketball staff.  He played lunch ball, worked the summer basketball camps and was one of the few guys that Coach Carril let into the “inner circle” of Princeton basketball.

So John walked me, my wife Riva, and our one year old son Lior, the 200 yards or so from Jadwin Gym to the apartments on the other side of Palmer Stadium, on Western Way.  There we met Steve and Nadia DiGregorio and their one-year-old son Zack.  Little did I know that was the start of one of the closest and most consequential relationships in my adult life.  And now, way too soon, we say goodbye to Digger, who died the other day after a valiant two year battle with cancer.  I assume that Digger and I would have met anyway and become friends, but there was something about this meeting that seemed special and set the stage for the family bonds that soon developed.

We moved in about a month later, and our partnership was solidified.  2 coaches in a community of professors, mostly young families and it was an idyllic life.  In our first collaboration, Digger and I bullied the University into putting in a new playground to make up for the disruption caused by the demolition of Palmer Stadium.  That playground is about to get demolished after 25 good years, and though our families moved out many years ago, I proudly note that our sand toys remain. 

Then came Mia, Derek, Aaron and finally Noa.  We were together for everything—Hannuka and Christmas, Easter and Passover, First Holy Communions and Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, trips to the shore and Hershey Park, fireworks, Princeton baseball games and especially first days of school and Halloween.  Even after we moved, we got together for the walk to school on the first day.  Riva and Nadia were co-presidents of the Riverside School PTA.  Their extended family became ours and vice versa.  I loved that our Israeli cousins knew the DiGregorios.  And that sfogliatelle from North Jersey became a staple desert at our annual Hannuka party.

Steve and I agreed on virtually everything—Giants and Met fans, American history buffs, Bruce and The Godfather lovers, proud Democrats, 1970s pro wrestling fans (Chief Jay Strongbow is from Steve’s hometown of Nutley, and in one of our last conversations we discussed Baron Miguel Sekluna from the Isle of Malta), lovers of pizza (especially Contes) and Italian food.  Steve was impressed that I knew that real Italians call their pasta “the macaroni” no matter what it is (I had a Sicilian grandfather).  We coached Little League together, and fought the league to outlaw base stealing because none of the catchers could throw the ball to second base. 

“Wouldn’t you rather teach them a force play?  It happens way more often than stealing home in real baseball.”  Despite our combined 25+ years of coaching experience at the time, we lost that one because, “Little League rules allow it.”  It cost us a few games not stealing bases, and a few of the parents were pissed, but at least the kids learned some baseball.

Then the football staff got fired, and both families left Western Way.  We stayed close and our friendship and those of our kids blossomed.  It often felt like one family with six kids.  When Derek got diagnosed with A-T, we banded together to form Derek’s Dreams, and have raised over $1,000,000 to help fund research to find a cure for this extremely rare disease.  The first Derek’s Dreams dinner was such an incredible event and a forerunner of a lot of great work done for this cause by our families and others that loved Digger and the DiGregorios.

After leaving Princeton U, both of us found new passions—Steve teaching and coaching at his alma mater, Nutley High, and me coaching at Mercer County Community College.  We both were fortunate to have the opportunity to impact different populations than we encountered at Princeton.  We collaborated often.  I spoke a couple of times at Nutley and arranged to get a few guest speakers for his History classes.  He and Derek accompanied our team to Washington D.C. several times and served as our tour guide/historian at the Supreme Court and at the Museum of African American History.  We supported our kids as they grew at high school and college track meets, football and basketball games.

Steve brought me into the football world—he asked Jason Garrett to allow me to work at Jason’s annual football camp and leadership summit—a decision he sometimes regretted!  The Starfish Charities event became an annual can’t miss event on the Levy-DiGregorio calendar.  It also gave me enough football knowledge and connections to (intentionally) make Digger cringe.  Like the year when the head coaches drafted their assistants and I was chosen before Digger and a host of other football lifers (for social reasons only!).  One year the Final Four was in Dallas, and Jason invited me to spend the day at the Cowboys facility.  When I showed up, Jason immediately whisked me into a staff meeting with the defense and their new coordinator Rod Marinelli.  Then a bit later the defensive coaches were walking through somethings on the field and Jason was behind center to help them, when he said, “Howie, come dot the I.”  That year the Cowboys defense was much improved, and I knew I could get a rise out of Digger by attributing their improvement to my suggestions that day.

And now he’s gone.  Hard to believe.   I already miss talking about coaching philosophy with him—one of us would call the other most days on our way home from practice.  “Everything matters” was one of his tenets that I shared with my team yesterday.  I’m honored that he considered me as good of a friend to him as I considered him to me.  I’ll miss him but the work of the Levys, DiGregorios and others will go on to honor his memory.  May his memory be blessed.

*          *          *

“Whoever made up the line ‘there’s no such thing as a stupid question’ is an idiot” said Steve to me after I probably asked him the 4th or 5th stupid question in a row- at this point purposely egging him on. I have many, many memories of me and Steve going back and forth, usually me asking or saying something that would annoy him, and Steve responding with the perfect combination of anger, wit, and humor that would leave me, or whoever he was dealing with, speechless (which was obviously his goal).

 

However, on this night, Steve skipped right over the wit and humor.  It was a beautiful summer Princeton evening in 2011 when Zack, Christian Giles and I decided to hang out in town. The three of us have spent countless amounts of time together over the years and, while we definitely knew how to annoy our parents, we never got into any real trouble. But this evening, we decided to head across the street to the University and ride some golf carts.  

 

Now in case officer Lanzi or any other public safety officers are in attendance I will not disclose any information on how a University golf cart key was obtained, but with this key we took a golf cart and had a wonderful time riding around campus. And we would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for those meddling football coaches! As we were on the way TO RETURN the golf cart, one of the assistant football coaches caught us outside of Jadwin Gym. Just our luck that the football team was having a team dinner in the Jadwin lobby that night.

 

We were humiliated as we were forced to sit in the lobby while seeing familiar faces like coach Verbit and Coach Surace. Public Safety arrived first and started telling us about all the wrong and irresponsible things we did, which was scary in its own right, but all of us knew that the real fear was looming as we waited for our parents to arrive.

 

First my dad walked in, and while I was expecting him to scream at me like one of his players didn’t cut backdoor hard enough, he did the only thing even more terrifying… walked right past us, didn’t look at me, didn’t say a word. Then Christians mother, Janet, walked in, who was thankfully so much nicer to us than my dad (Thank you for that Janet!). Now the way my memory serves it, after Janet walked in, the ground started rumbling, and I could have sworn that the Jaws theme song began playing in the background. Steve barges in, swinging the door so aggressively that I'm sure it became unhinged. He wastes no time shouting at the top of his lungs…. “I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU DO WITH THE OTHER KIDS, I’M GONNA TAKE MY SON AND KILL HIM”.

 

Now everyone needs to understand that Steve is my second father, and he would refer to me as his fourth son. But at that moment I was so happy to not be associated as one of “Steve’s sons”. Sorry Zack!!!

 

After everyone calmed down a bit and the public safety officers warned Steve that he cannot be making death threats towards his son, we all went home. The problem was that Zack and I rode bikes from my house to campus. Me and Zack had to bike home with my dad and Steve tailing us in their cars. This was easily the longest bike ride of my life, and I’ve had to ride in all these Million Dollar Bike Ride fundraisers.

 

While this moment was terrifying at the time, I am so thankful for every moment I got to share with Steve, and many moments there were. If I listed all of them we would be here a very long time but as he did for everyone that came in contact with him, he showed me unconditional love and support through everything. And all I wanted to do was make him proud. He never liked being celebrated, which is exactly why he deserves to be celebrated today. Steve will always be the standard, he will always be my role model, and he will always be my second father. Love you always and forever pops. Love, Your 4th Son Lior