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SALT LAKE CITY — There’s plenty to write about these days as the Jazz face major personnel decisions, along with hiring a legend to work with the big men, and with the NBA Finals getting started.
But those topics and others took a backseat Monday night with one telephone call. Allow me the rare opportunity to get personal.
Right after we ate leftovers and put away the dishes, my sister called to break the bad news. Some 15 minutes earlier, my mother died in Arizona, where she lived for 40 years.
While not a stunner, considering she was 82 and had taken a nasty fall late last week, I was still rendered virtually speechless. For all those who’ve listened to morning sports talk radio the last 11 years, you know silence is rare for this native East Coast loudmouth.
What does this all have to do with sports? Admittedly, not much. But there needs to be some tribute for a common woman who tried her best to raise a family. No people should understand this better than those who inhabit the community in which I live.
Long-time listeners of the DJ and PK show know whose role it is to be opinionated and sometimes — OK, oftentimes — obnoxious. Guess where I got it? My mother was not short on opinions and rarely hesitated to speak her mind.
If by their fruits you shall know them, then we know she was a successful mother. Along with my 84-year-old father, who has the same name as me, she raised three successful children.
There are two girls, each of whom delicately balanced motherhood and employment for the better part of three decades. They deserve all the credit for keeping a strong family bond while their younger brother scattered to chase opportunities in Los Angeles and then Utah.
It stung to be absent there at the end, having last seen her over the Christmas holiday. But she instilled a work ethic long ago, built on years of enduring the swing shift in a factory in order to be home for the kids as much as possible. She would have screamed to get my fanny back home and go to work.
Long-time listeners of the DJ and PK show know whose role it is to be opinionated and sometimes — OK, oftentimes — obnoxious. Guess where I got it?
My mother was not short on opinions and rarely hesitated to speak her mind. Here’s where the sports angle comes in.
The native of New Jersey could hold her own on the topic of baseball, particularly on the hometown Yankees and Mets. She helped foster a love for the game that I still possess.
Never was she more forceful when baseball involved her son. Any fool who got in the way needed to step aside or face the wrath of the diminutive Italian woman, who often referred to herself as FBI (full-blooded Italian).
In Little League when her son wanted to be a catcher, mama said not happening. Put him in the field to lessen the chance of injury. Not even a coach, who was her husband, could intercede.
When the family packed up and moved west to Arizona, she didn’t lose her intensity against a more passive group of people. Dust storms weren’t the only thing that rattled the desert.
When her son, to the shock of the family, got cut from the freshmen baseball team, this woman didn’t go quietly. The boy was a decent player, certainly good enough to make a high school team.
Want to guess who showed up in the principal’s office? And when a member of the team didn’t make grades, guess who was added to the roster?
In Little League when her son wanted to be a catcher, mama said not happening. Put him in the field to lessen the chance of injury. Not even a coach, who was her husband, could intercede.
Needing a week to get acclimated, her son became a starter on that freshmen team. Three years later, he graduated high school having started all four seasons.
When that same son got cut from a college team, she was the first person he called to break the bad news. This time, her role was to console, and she filled it well.
We’re not talking a perfect person here. She had faults, at times creating frustration in others. But she possessed an ample amount of love, extending down to her four grandchildren.
We’ll meet again down the line. No worry there.
For now, forget about all those darned bills and other assorted worries — rest peacefully, Ida Ciamillo Kinahan. And say hello to your parents, Elmer and Carmela, and all the others waiting for you.
Ciao.
