Headlines
As reported by The Hartford Courant, February 11, 2004.
Rowe's Passion for Life Going Strong
By Jeff Jacobs
He dropped 20 pounds and the number draws a gentle laugh from Dee Rowe. He'd never weighed more than 175 in the first place, and the last time he remembers being this light was his wedding day.
He had finished the first eight weeks of basic training at Fort Bliss when he and Ginny walked down the aisle in Reading, Mass., and even a half-century later Dee can feel that tuxedo riding 18 sizes too big down his arms and legs.
"We were married 50 years on Jan. 3 and my clothes are back to being 18 sizes too big for me," Rowe said Tuesday. "Ginny has been with me everywhere, every day for four months. We've had no chance to celebrate. She is an absolute wonder woman. We met when we were at Middlebury College and, my God, I don't know what I'd do without her."
Dr. Roger Jenkins removed a baseball-sized tumor, part of Rowe's liver, his gall bladder, spleen and an adrenal gland at Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Mass., on Dec. 8. He had been rushed to the hospital on Cape Cod, shaking horribly with a high fever on Oct. 18, and a CAT scan showed a mass on his liver. Weak and wanting to avoid contagious illness, Dee missed the big family Thanksgiving and Christmas. He missed birthdays. Dee and Ginny have seven children and 15 grandchildren, with No.16 on the way, and before you start feeling sorry for Dee Rowe, he says stop it. Stop it right now.
"This has been a great journey for me," Rowe said. "The only thing I'd change in my life is some of those L's when I coached."
This is a story Dee Rowe doesn't want written. There are too many good things happening at UConn, he says, and acquiesces only after there is an agreement it won't be written the same day a basketball game is played. He had a hole in his gut. He couldn't sleep for nights on end. And all he cares about is the competition and the players.
"I'm ancient history," said Rowe, 75, UConn special adviser for athletics. "I'm yesterday's newspaper."
There must be somebody who comports himself with more dignity than Donald "Dee" Rowe.
There must be somebody who serves as a better ambassador for college basketball and for his state university.
We haven't found that man.
If Dee Rowe, former UConn basketball coach and all-time fund-raiser, is ancient history, then make him repeat himself. If he is yesterday's newspaper, start the presses and reprint him.
This is no secret, of course, no secret at all. That's why hundreds and hundreds of messages have flooded the UConn offices and Rowe's home since it was determined he had a malignant melanoma, which had metastasized to his liver. They have come in the form of letters, phone calls, Mass cards and personal visits. They have come from the famous and the regular Joes. Coaches and players and former teammates and administrators and officials and the media and UConn Club members and former rivals ... the list is long and personal and he refuses to name them for fear one message will be perceived as more important than another. So he talks anonymously about a letter from an attorney on the shoreline who'd been given three to six months to live and how he fought his way back from cancer and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He talks about another man who had severe heart problems, cancer of the esophagus, and how he came back from a coma.
"One of my friends who had cancer and lost a child to cancer said to me, `Don't droop. Because if you droop everybody around you will droop,'" Rowe said. "I was never good at losses. Every loss was a death to me. I got to the point in coaching where I felt like I was the lonely matador. I suffered too much. I got out at 48. I was burned out.
"This is different. I've had time for deep reflection and what's happened to me has made me cherish life and realize how lucky I've been. You wouldn't believe how great President Austin and [athletic director] Jeff Hathaway and the coaches have been to me.
"All those letters and messages have given me incredible strength and courage. That's why I'm talking, to show my gratitude and hope I can lift the spirit of someone with cancer the way mine has been lifted."
Last month after practice, following the rout of Oklahoma, there was such an uplifting moment. Emeka Okafor, maybe the greatest player in UConn history, saw Rowe, still frail and weak, in the hallway at Gampel Pavilion. He threw his arm around Rowe the way Jim Valvano would have, and said, "Coach, how are you doing?"
"Great game," Rowe said.
"We'll try to keep it going for you," Okafor said.
Rowe had melanomas removed from his shoulder and back in 1988 and '93 and thought they were gone for good. They weren't. The good news this time - the unusual part, Dr. Peter Deckers said - is that this insidious form of cancer hadn't spread to any other part of his body. Not once through this did Rowe concede an inch to death, and now, nine weeks after surgery, he is back at work a couple of hours each day. He has been to home games the last month. Asked if the Final Four is his goal, he says no. The Big East tournament three weeks earlier is. Retire? No way.
"My life has been a parade," Rowe said. "I just want to get back on the horse and get back in it."
The late Buster Sheary, who coached some immortal Holy Cross teams, also worked in the Worcester school system. He is the one who introduced a third-grader at Thorndyke Road School to the game that would become his life. Rowe would become a coaching legend at Worcester Academy and this did not escape the notice of a boy 12 years younger, who also attended Thorndyke.
"When I was a kid, save Bob Cousy, Dee Rowe was Mr. Basketball in Worcester," said Deckers, who is head of the UConn Health Center.
Rowe's right. There are some great things happening at UConn and they aren't all on the athletic field. He says he has put himself in Deckers' hands. Rowe is receiving an experimental vaccine at the health center based on research by UConn scientists. Heat shock proteins are extracted from a tumor, then reintroduced into the patients. The immune system should recognize the molecular signature and attack residual cancer cells. The procedure has been approved by the FDA and is in Phase III of the clinical trial, the last stage before full approval.
"It's a pretty courageous thing to do," Deckers said. "A lot of people would have been satisfied with the surgery."
Not Rowe.
He sat there during the UConn-West Virginia game Saturday, the day Jim Calhoun and coaches around the nation wore sneakers to commemorate Coaches vs. Cancer. Rowe thought about Valvano. He thought about how Geno Auriemma's and Chris Dailey's dads had died of cancer and how Calhoun had battled through prostate cancer.
Valvano had been his assistant coach at UConn and they remained close friends until Valvano's death in 1993. Rowe, a pallbearer at the funeral, spent six hours with Jimmy V a few days before the end, and when it was time to leave that April day in North Carolina, they hugged and cried. The last thing Valvano told Rowe was, "Coach, surround yourself with people who have a passion for life."
And so he has. Dee Rowe is sure those hundreds of voices of support have made him well. He says it's his turn to do the same. Nobody's giving up around here. Nobody.