Posted on 07/16/2008 8:11:12 AM PDT by Born Conservative
Bobby Murcer called it a “God moment.”
The Zimolzaks are the parents of Seth Zimolzak, who died of cancer in 1999, a couple months after he graduated from high school. Seth was a Make-A-Wish kid. He was an amazing young man who battled the terrible disease for four years before it finally got the best of him.
I still have the orange suede shoes Seth wore to his graduation at Northwest Area High School. I wear them in tribute to Seth for all he meant to more people than you can imagine.
My fondest memory of Seth was during a Make-A-Wish telethon. He was sitting on a couch about to do a television interview. He stopped me, reached into his tuxedo pocket, and pulled out an envelope. Seth was very symptomatic at this time. The cancer was about to claim his life in a month.
The envelope contained $1,647 – his graduation money.
“Give it to the kids,” Seth said. “I won’t need it where I’m going.”
About a year and a half before he died, Seth and his parents were in New York City where Seth was receiving treatment yet again. His mom was in the laundry room of the hotel they were staying and another woman started a conversation.
The woman asked Sue why she was in the city. Sue said her son was being treated at St. Vincent’s for cancer. Sue recalls the woman becoming very concerned. She asked Sue if she knew who Bobby Murcer was and Sue, being the non-sports fan that she is, said she didn’t know. Kay Murcer, Bobby’s wife, just smiled and told her Bobby was a Yankees announcer and had played for the Yankees. Kay invited Sue, Lon and Seth to dinner.
The Zimolzaks and Murcers broke bread and a friendship blossomed immediately. Bobby reached out to Seth, giving him an official Yankee cap to wear atop his bald head. Bobby and Kay kept in touch with the Zimolzaks over the next year and a half. Then Seth died. The two families gradually drifted apart until shortly after Christmas Eve 2006.
That’s when Bobby found out he had brain cancer. The Zimolzaks, remembering the genuine sincerity the Murcers offered them and their son, reached out to them. They talked back and forth as Bobby went through treatment and the Murcers never forgot it.
Bobby Murcer died last week. It hit the Zimolzaks hard. On May 28, they attended a book signing in New York where Bobby signed a few books for them and posed for pictures. They talked in a way only families of cancer patients can talk.
Then Bobby told Lon to turn to page 276 of his book – Yankee For Life: My 40 Years in Pinstripes. Seven paragraphs, written by Kay, detail the relationship between the Murcers of Edmond, Okla., and the Zimolzaks of Huntington Township, Pa. It shows the bond between them and the strength of a friendship that will never die.
Kay talked about one morning in January 2007, when another young cancer patient – Aaron – sent a letter to the Murcers. Aaron reminded them of Seth, Kay said. Bobby had just gone through his brain surgery and when Kay returned to her hotel room – still thinking of young Aaron and Seth – her phone rang. It was Lon and Sue Zimolzak calling to see how Bobby was doing.
“I told them we’d just been talking about Seth 15 minutes earlier,” Kay wrote in the book. “(Sue) laughed and said that very day would have been Seth’s 26th birthday. That made the hair stand up on my arms. And it made me begin to believe that everything that was happening to us was meant to be.”
Lon and Sue will never forget Bobby and they will always be friends with Kay. They were deeply touched when the Murcers had a special prayer service in their Oklahoma church for Seth.
“We always knew their hearts genuinely ached for us and for Seth,” Lon said. “Kay told us Bobby always referenced Seth when he spoke to groups. He used Seth as an inspiration.”
Sue said Kay told her God intended for them to meet. She said Bobby called their meeting “a God moment.”
I think I’ll wear my orange shoes tomorrow.
but Bobby Murcer, Roy White, Chris Chambliss, Thurman.....now those were Yankees....
This period of Yankee history...from 1970 to the late seventies...was one of the better periods (at least after the Mantel era). There weren’t big-winners, but then you had honest players who played hard and weren’t attitude problems. The team was always short two good pitchers who could have gotten them into the playoffs.
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