Remembering Digger

TigerBlog received an email yesterday morning from one of the biggest Princeton Athletics fans there is, Glenn Morris of the Class of 1972. 

Of course, he's never "Glenn." He's always "Merc."

He is Princetonian through and through. He's a landscape architect who, among other connections to the University, has given Reunions tours to showcase the campus trees. 

He came to Princeton in 1968, when it was all men. He graduated in a co-ed class. It was quite a time to be a Tiger.

In his case, though, he's never stopped. He was in Macon, Ga., this past Saturday to see the Princeton-Mercer football game, and he sent TB this photo:

In case you're wondering, going left to right, you have: Fritz Cammerzell, William Underwood, Bob Wright and Merc. William Underwood is the president of Mercer University, while the other three are all in the Class of 1972. 

The game in Macon didn't go the Tigers' way, though as you can see — to quote what Merc wrote to TB — "President Underwood was most gracious as was the Mercer community ... the many Tiger fans could not be more pleased with our courteous reception."

President Underwood, by the way, has no Princeton connection. A graduate of Oklahoma Baptist and then the University of Illinois Law School, he has been the Mercer president since 2005.

It was a day of football and friendship, all under a perfectly blue sky in a nearly filled stadium. It was a day of competition, of improvement, of coaching and of learning. 

It was the kind of day that was tailor made for someone who, sadly, wasn't there. He would have loved it, except the outcome; the only people who would have loved it more were those who would give anything to have even one more day, one more Princeton football game, with him.

TB certainly is in that group.

This past Saturday, the day of the Princeton-Mercer game, was the third anniversary of the day that Steve DiGregorio died, after a battle, a ferocious battle, against pancreatic cancer. There haven't been too many days of the more than 1,000 that have gone by since where TB hasn't thought of Digger, one of the best people he's ever met and one of the best friends he'll ever have in this lifetime. 

In many ways, it hasn't really completely sunk in that he's gone, at least not in an emotional way. Maybe TB never really thought about how often he spoke to Digger, or how much they had in common, or how many funny stories they had to share. 

TB tries to go over to the cemetery where Digger is buried and visit the gravesite as often as possible. When he does, he finds himself staring intently at the ground, trying to wrap his arms around the unfairness of it all.

Digger left behind a wife (Nadia) and three sons (Zack, Derek and Aaron), and it's unlikely that you ever met a better husband or father.

His legion of friends was vast, from his days with Princeton Football as an assistant coach and later just a huge fan, to his time at Nutley High School as its award-winning football coach, to the people he met at Muhlenberg as a football player there, and to any stop he ever made in his lifetime.

TB wrote this about him shortly after he died: 

He was someone whom TB looked at more than once and thought "if you could be more like he is, you'd be a better person."

Those are the truest words TB has ever written, he's pretty sure. 

There's a tendency to lionize people after they're gone, whether in the "retroactive sanctification" way that Marvin Bressler always cited when he spoke about how a player would suddenly become indispensable to Pete Carril after four years of nothing but criticism, or in the way that people rarely want to say anything bad about someone after they've passed away. 

In Digger's case, there really isn't any way to lionize him. That's just the kind of person he was. 

Digger would have come away from the game at Mercer happy to have had the chance to compete against the No. 7 team in the country and yet with a full list of areas that need work. He wouldn't sugar-coat it for his players, but they would know it wasn't personal, that their coach had only their best interest in mind, as athletes, students and people. 

As such, they would run through a wall for him. If you think that's lionizing, well, then you could have asked any player he ever coached who was there three years ago at his funeral. You didn't even have to ask them. You could just see by the tears they shed. 

The last thing Digger ever said to TigerBlog was this: "I love you buddy." The last thing TB ever said to him was "I love you too."

He wouldn't just a word of that. He'd simply add that he misses his friend deeply — and he's not the only one who does so.