Everyone will miss 'Casey' Kane

This ran in the Wednesday, June 02, 2004 edition of the Springfield Rebulican's Holyoke section.

By Mike Burke.

Kathleen C. "Casey" Kane, a jewel in the fabric of Holyoke, was taken from us on May 19 after a lingering illness that she battled with all the courage and fortitude anyone could imagine.

Casey was only 28 years of age and she crammed a whole lot of living in that all too brief span of time.

Casey was a 1993 graduate of Holyoke High School, where she was class salutatorian, and was a 1999 graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

While in high school, she received 12 varsity letters for participation on the swimming, tennis, soccer and field hockey teams, and if that wasn't enough, she was also a member of the marching band.

At UMass, Casey was sports editor and editor in chief of the Daily Collegian.

After college, Casey lived in Anderson, S.C., where she was a sports journalist at the Independent Mail Newspaper from 1999 to 2002, covering a variety of sports, including the University of South Carolina Gamecocks. She was vice president of the Association of Women in Sports Media.

That is factual stuff but it doesn't really say what Casey was really like.

She was talented as a writer, so much so that I wanted her to be on staff of this magazine. She not only knew sports from playing the games but she knew what made participants tick. She knew what they were thinking, she knew the process, what it took to succeed, and she wrote about it very well.

Because of illness, try as we might, it just didn't work out that she would grace these pages with her prose. And I feel badly about that.

But I feel honored that I knew her, that I was able to interview her and get to know her and what a fine person she was.

Casey was very proud of her family. She also loved this city and it showed in her writing and in her attitude. She was friendly and, despite her illness, a very happy person.

My deepest sympathies to her parents, Bill and Eileen, her brothers Christopher and Timothy, and to all of her other relatives and friends.

At her wake, there was a picture of Casey with former Red Sox player Lou Merloni. They were laughing and having a pretty good time. I remember thinking when I saw the picture, "That's how we all should remember her, smiling and having a fun time."

The family requested donations to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Division of Development & the Jimmy Fund, 10 Brookline Place West, Floor 6, Brookline, MA 02445-9924.

We will all miss her for her talent and her personality and her many other gifts.

But I will always remember her for her courage and bravery in the face of illness.


Rest in peace, Casey Kane.

Mike Burke is the Springfield Republican's longtime time Holyoke reporter.