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Cowher Enjoyed Special Bond with Thomas
Feb. 9, 2000
Bill Cowher's voice broke as he spoke yesterday of the man he called the son he never had.
Derrick Thomas.
"With all the players I've been fortunate enough to be around," Cowher said, stopping to gather his emotions, "he's probably the one guy I've gotten closest to."
The Kansas City Chiefs' star linebacker died yesterday of cardiac arrest in a Miami hospital, two weeks after he was paralyzed from the waist down in an auto wreck near Kansas City.
Cowher was defensive coordinator of the Chiefs when Thomas broke in as a rookie from Alabama in 1989. When Cowher became head coach of the Steelers in 1992, Thomas said he'd like to follow him to Pittsburgh.
Cowher had planned to visit Thomas in the hospital next Monday and Tuesday and recently talked to him by phone.
"My wife and I just talked to him last Friday and told him ... I'm coming down to see you and told him we loved him. It's hard."
Cowher learned of Thomas' death when he returned to Three Rivers Stadium after his daily game of racquetball.
"My wife and I both have said he's probably the son we've never had. He's a guy who lived his life with a passion, everything he did. I really think that with all the things that have taken place today [in the NFL] and all the publicity of the arrests and everything else that took place, this is a good person."
"He lived his life with a passion, but he didn't have a bad bone in his body. He never hurt anybody."
Cowher also lost his agent, Robert Fraley, in the plane crash in October that claimed the life of golfer Payne Stewart.
"To me, if anything you learn, tell the people who mean something to you how much you love them every day. Don't take anything for granted. Derrick Thomas will be missed, but he's a guy who touched a lot of people in so many positive ways, and that's how he should be remembered."
from pittsburgh post-gazette
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