Thursday, July 08, 2004

Lots to bond over

By Jim Pignatiello

It seems silly now, but I’ve been putting this off for most of the same reasons that Seth Koenig wrote about earlier on this site. It just didn’t feel right to put myself on this board alongside Casey’s closest friends.

I didn’t know Casey before she was sick. I never spent time along with her. I probably saw her in person only a dozen times or so. But then I remembered that Casey would have kicked me in the rear for thinking that way.

As a Collegian writer who came along a few years after Casey graduated, I only knew about her through word of mouth. They still talk about some of the legends down there as the older folks pass along the stories and Casey was someone we heard a lot about in the Sports section.

It wasn’t until my senior year that I met her through Matt at a Steve Lappas Show and I was instantly taken with how the two of them played off each other. As you could all imagine, she was quick to make me feel both comfortable and like a fool at the same time.

We became friends through Matt, each passing along our hellos and catching up to watch an basketball or Red Sox game together at Rafters or Smokeybones.

We bonded over our love for Duke basketball (her favorite player was Bobby Hurley, mine was Grant Hill), the Red Sox and sports writing. She always had a different, and generally more intelligent, way of looking at things.

A few months back, she learned that I was a finalist for a reporting job I really wanted. Over lunch a few days prior to the interview, Casey met up with us at Rafters with prepared questions to quiz me with. She wasn’t letting me go in unprepared.

Not surprisingly, a few of the questions she asked — and stumped me on a bit — were brought up during the interview. Total Casey. I learned later (after I was hired for the job) that Casey was trying to plan a congratulations dinner for me at my favorite restaurant. Apparently, the plan was to tell me she and Matt were taking me out and then to have two more of my best friends from the area surprise me. Unfortunately, she became sick before we could get together, but I’ll never walk into that restaurant without thinking of her and how generous she was to me.

That mock interview was the last time I saw her, and I’ll never forget that she was giving her time to me that day.

As we were leaving, she said her good-byes and gave me hug and told me she loved me for the first time. Our "I love yous" were the last words we spoke to each other.

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