Ayer-informed lines faded and white chalk is barely visible in the batsman’s box, Kenny Lewis was standing near the plate of the house of Ier-Sarley Baseball Field on 4 April, with a batting on his right shoulder.
And one angel on the other.
After the recent loss of his father, who was also named Kenny and served as the head groundskeeper in Ire-Sarley, there has been a slight spot for 17 years to 17 years from Ier.
They have hit him very hard.
Nevertheless, Lewis has emerged from the cloud of heartbreak with support behind him – his father in the same area helped maintain. At the time of the tragedy, Lewis takes his father’s memory with him on the diamond.
“I think I have something to play.” “It is nice to know that he is with me.
“Whenever we needed him, he was there for us, and I will always love him.”
Ire-Shili Baseball Kenny Lewis honored the father late
How does this local baseball player take his father’s legacy on diamonds.
Find a migration
In the last few years, whenever Kenny Lewis arrived at the Ire-Serly Regional High School, he will be competed by his father in a fist.
During one day, Lewis will see his father in lunch, inside the gym or outside the fields. He did not have to search for a long way to find his father – and the best friend.
“This was a good, a little migration to me,” said Lewis. “If I was doing a hard day or boring day, I could just go out and see him and talk to him and just catch it. It was good to talk to him.
“He will always be happy,” said Lewis. “He tried to befriend everyone. He was a very outgoing boy, he was a funny. You could talk to him a lot.”
Known for his infectious personality and funny humor, Kenneth F. Lewis fought with systemic lupus erythematosus for more than 20 years. For a long time, Ayer resident spent the last five years on dialysis, while he was waiting for a kidney transplant. In August, the 55 -year -old needed heart valve replacement, and surgery went away without any bottlenecks.
But around Christmas, Kenneth Lewis began to feel ill.
“He felt that he was cold,” said his wife Amanda. “He could not just shake it.”
On 4 January, Kenneth Lewis moved to the emergency room with an infection in his heart valve. A week later, he looked at his son through facetime from his hospital bed, playing in a high school basketball game at TD Garden.
Eight days after that, Kenneth Lewis died unexpectedly Due to complications from surgery.
Amanda said, “He did everything they could do.” “They could not just stop bleeding. It was like the end.”
“It was just being destroyed. I was done,” said Kenny Lewis. “I really didn’t know what to do. I was lost.”
Three days after his father’s death, Lewis returned to court to play in a basketball game on the road. His team ordered white restbands and wrote “KL” on him in a black marker to pay tribute to his long -time patron and former young coach.
“My team was there for me,” said Lewis. “We wore them for the first game that I had returned against Gardner, and they decided that they were going to keep them for the rest of the season.
“When I saw them, it smiled me.”
Two days later in Ire-Sarley, for a domestic game against Nantket on 24 January, Lewis gave his first shot: a 3-populator. His family (and all other attendance) was happy with the bleachers.
“The crowd settled,” said Rick Kilpatrick, coach of Ier-Shrily Basketball. “This was something that I am never going to forget. And I am sure something and his family will not forget him either.”
There was a historic season of the panthers that saw him winning 20 straight games, playing in Clarke tournament and claiming the Mid-Watch de League Championship. Hardwood provided a migration for fast-shaking Lewis.
“It was very important,” said Lewis’s mother. “He didn’t know what to do. It was very difficult. It was sad and all that, and I told him that it was above him and his father wanted him to continue playing.
“Basketball was a very good outlet for Kenny,” he said. “Family, team bonding. It was a good distraction.”
Look at
As Kenny Lewis went into a plate for a bat during the baseball game against Tahnto on 4 April, the “My Girl” song “My Girl” by the temptations played on loudspeakers.
I got sunshine on a cloud day
When it is cold out, I got the month of May
In the last five months, a somaras cloud with a sunshine with a sunshine hung with a sunshine. However, some fogs around Iyer-Serly outfielder from playing the game scored in this spring with a .300 batting average, 12 RBI and 16 runs.
Louis said, “This is a month cloud,” Louis said, who plans to study civil engineering at UMS Emhrist after graduating from Ier-Sarley in two weeks. “Sports have helped. … baseball was his favorite. Knowing that he is with us, it just makes me feel much better.”
In this spring, the Ier-Sarley Baseball team obtained the number 25 seeds in 10-8 and the Division 5 State Tournament. Like the Ire-Sarley Basketball team, the panthers placed the beginning of Louis’s father to his former groundskeeper and his father’s father behind his cap to honor the father of one of his players.
“His father was such a loving man and was never negative, just positive with a bright smile on his face,” Ire-Sarli’s senior Matt Marchand said, who grew up playing baseball and basketball with Lewis. “He will be in every game. It is basically as he is with us, even if he is not. We keep it in our memory.”
Ayer-Shrily athletic director Steve Kendal was added: “His influence was just beyond being the head groundskeeper and head custodian. It was well beyond him. He was clearly remembered, not only for the goods he did, but the kind of person he did, but he is just great to see the rally around Kenny.”
When Jeevan threw him a curvball, the Ire-Shili baseball player placed his head in his bat and game. And with the support of his community and sports teams, Kenny Lewis put his father’s legacy with him in the same field he had placed.
His father will be proud.
“(He) was one of the best people in the world and he has just gone,” said Lewis. “But he is always going to be with us, and he is always going to see us.”
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