Our family lives in La Mesa, and at the mouth of our neighborhood is a nice little park (La Mesita) and a wonderful sports complex. The Junior Seau Sports Complex.
Drive by it sometime (Fletcher Parkway and Dallas are your cross streets) on a weekend, and you are sure to see fields filled with youth soccer, football, what have you. The place is always vibrant, always full of life. Just like the man for whom it was named.
As we all know, Junior Seau is no longer full of life. He’s no longer alive. Seau took his life by his own hands, pulling the trigger on a gun, opening a hole in his chest, and later, ours.
Our community is struggling to come to terms with the suicide of one of our most inspirational and uplifting figures. Memorials and ceremonies, such as the paddle-out last Sunday or the upcoming celebration at Qualcomm Stadium on Friday, all help to bring some measure of closure.
My issue is longer term. At some point, seemingly far away but closer than I’d like to think, my ten-month-old son James will be old enough to be trotting around the Junior Seau Athletic Complex. We will undoubtedly walk past his name on the large sign on the corner (now decked out in flowers, hats and other Seau momentos in memoriam), and eventually, the question will be asked: who was Junior Seau?
How do I answer that question? Continue Reading →
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Craig Elsten -
Chainsaw -
