Making Up For Lost Time

So what I am doing to honor him is to nominate Cory Lemke for Faces in the Crowd.

Cory's real accomplishments were being the best friend a guy could ask for, the most loving and best son a father could ask for and a truly gentle and loving kid with the greatest smile in these United States.

I don't know how I will cope without him. I hurt so much, and I miss him so much, just to talk to or watch sports together. God, I loved that boy so much!!

Please accept this nomination!!

Mark Lemke--Cory's Father

You call him. He's a 51-year-old truck driver in Sheldon, Iowa. He's on the road four or five days a week, just him and his rig and his sorrow.

Even on the phone, you can tell he's one of those tough guys who's not used to fighting off tears. And you can hear that he's losing.

He tells you how he and Cory played golf together every day they could--"thousands of rounds," he says--kidded each other endlessly and then, when it got dark or cold, played video golf together or watched the Vikings or just shot the bull. How his son gave him 16 shots the last time they played and still took $20 off the old man.

He remembers telling the kid that night, July 7, as Cory left to go to a car show in Hull, "Get some sleep, buddy. You gotta play tomorrow." And later: the phone ringing and the sickening cry in his wife Maud's voice from the kitchen, moaning, "Is he dead?"

He didn't even wait to see what it was, he just sprinted to his car and floored it to Hull. But he couldn't get there fast enough because Cory was as good as dead the second he hit that van. "No brain activity at all," the doctor said. Great idea. Let me test-drive your motorcycle. No helmet. Kids.