We have lots of family photos displayed on the piano lid. A person can see the unfolding of our lives over the years, beginning with pictures of my grandfather as a young man, Max’s father as a boy with his young parents, my parents in their senior pictures from high school, and on and on. If that person were to look closely, he or she would eventually come to a picture of me with a fairly famous person. “Hey!,” someone said once, “Is that Bob Costas?”
It is. But more important than who is in the picture is who took it.
Several years ago, Max and I went to a huge fundraiser in Kansas City for ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Our friend, Jay Daugherty, whose father died from the disease, was president that year of the Keith Worthington Chapter of the ALS Association; George Brett was – and is – a spokesperson for the Chapter, and lots of baseball players were going to be there, so we went, thinking that we, as fans forever, might see some “Royalty.”
We wandered through the crowd, and I remember seeing Mr. Costas at an adjacent table. I went over to take his picture. He was shorter than I had imagined, only a couple of inches taller than I in my 3-inch heels. He was, as we say in Thayer-talk, as cute as he could be, friendly and loquacious, as articulate in conversation as he was when he anchored the Olympics and countless other sporting events. He more than graciously agreed that I could take his photo.
“But,” he said, “Don’t you want to be in the picture?” I hadn’t really considered it, but liked the idea. So he looked to his left and hollered, “Hey, Stevie! Come on over here and take my picture!” And a man hobbled into view, a man with a cane, a man I thought I recognized from national and Kansas City news: Steve Palermo.
All of a sudden, the picture was not that important. In front of me, I thought, could be a true hero, “One who shows great courage” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hero).
In 1991, Steve Palermo was in his 15th season as a Major League Baseball umpire. He was well- respected in the field, after having grown up hoping for what was his ultimate goal – calling balls and strikes in the big leagues. He was in a Dallas restaurant after a game, when a bartender yelled that two waitresses were being attacked in the parking lot. Steve Palermo and five other men ran out to help.
It turned out that four men were assaulting the women; three got away, and another started shooting. Steve Palermo was hit. He was paralyzed.
He didn’t really like that diagnosis, and so he decided that he wouldn’t be paralyzed. He worked like crazy, and though he never umpired again, he threw out the first pitch a few months later in Game 1 of the World Series.
Well, when Bob Costas hailed “Stevie” to take our picture, and I saw the man approaching, I asked, “Stevie who?” Mr. Costas confirmed what I suspected.
Picture and Bob Costas forgotten, I strode over to “Stevie” and said, “You are Steve Palermo?” He nodded.
“You, sir, are a hero. I admire you so much, and I thank you for trying to help someone who needed it.”
He was appropriately humble, chatted a bit, and then took the picture that sits at the front of the conglomeration of photos that tells Max’s and my story.
Steve Palermo died this week at age 67. Reports said that he had lung cancer, and that contributed to his death. But some part of him died in the summer of 1991. The other four men who rushed out to help the women that night were also heroes; however, as far as I know, Steve Palermo was the only one of them who paid for his actions with his career and a part of his life.
One does not often have the opportunity to shake hands with heroic greatness. When I see Bob Costas and me smiling in a frame on top of the piano, I remember the night I did.
