ALS FIGHTER PETE FRATES STILL ‘VERY MUCH ALIVE’
Pearl of wisdom from BC grad
Rick DeAngelis was among the many Friends of Pete Frates who awakened yesterday morning to false reports that our beloved ALS Rock Star had passed away.
“I always check Facebook when I get up to see how Pete is doing,” said DeAngelis, who coached the former Boston College baseball captain for five seasons on the Lexington Blue Sox of the Intercity League.
“And when I saw these ... these reports, I walked out to the deck and said to my wife, ‘ Pete died,’ ” DeAngelis said. “And then I lost it. I just lost it.” The grief was soon replaced by sighs of relief. The false reports were scraped away and repainted with a fresh coat of optimism: Though he’s struggling, Pete was resting comfortably at Mass. General.
And then came a genuine laughout-loud moment, courtesy of the one man on earth who could have provided it: Pete Frates.
Perhaps you saw it. If you did, you were invited to join in on the laughter. Talk about an instant classic: There appeared a 45-second video on Twitter of Pete, from his bed at MGH, using those deep, penetrating eyes of his to rock to the beat of the Pearl Jam classic, “Alive.”
Frates’ tweet read: “in the words of my friend ed.”
Pete can’t speak anymore, so he used Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam as his official spokesmen: “Yeah, yeah, I, oh, I’m still alive.”
As always, it was Pete setting the agenda. It was Pete making the rules. It was Pete deciding who would say what, and when, and how.
And given all the prayers and karma being sent his way yesterday morning, along with, I suspect, a ton of fresh donations to various ALS-related charities, it was Pete turning a negative into a positive.
That’s what Pete does. It’s who he is. From that moment a little more than five years ago when he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, he has invested heavily in turning negatives into positives.
From the speeches in Washington to the Ice Bucket Challenge, no one person, ever, has done more to fight back against ALS.
And no one person could have done what Pete did yesterday, which was to gift us with a dose of good cheer.
This isn’t to say a lot of people in Pete’s life weren’t twisted up in knots yesterday morning as they tried to sift through the various reports. Tommy Haugh, one of Pete’s closest buddies, was vacationing in Connecticut when he got caught up in the swirl of misinformation. He didn’t calm down till he reached Andrew Frates, Pete’s brother.
Kim Pare, a mutual friend whose son, Matt, a catcher in the San Francisco Giants’ farm system who played baseball at Boston College, was sending out texts, admitting she was “... confused. He’s stable (as far as that goes) right?”
Corrected information soon arrived. Everyone could relax now. Yet everyone was anxious, because any trip to MGH for Pete is a time for pacing and praying.
If Pete were up and around, he might just tell everyone to chill. He might have pronounced this to be a good time to have a kegger, being a BC guy and all. Instead, Pete went to his very deep bench and sent Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam into the game.
“That’s so Pete,” said DeAngelis. “That is so Pete. He has always been very much alive in everything he does. He has never gone to school, never gone to a game, never gone to a practice, just to be marked present. He always had to be active. He always had to be in on everything.”
Yesterday also happened to be the sixth anniversary of the day Pete met Julie Kowalik, who would become his wife and the mother of their beautiful little girl, Lucy.
Nobody was going to ruin Pete’s day, so he took charge and did something.
Years from now, we’ll still be saying, “Remember how hard Pete fought to help find a cure for ALS?”
Years from now, we’ll be mixing in a smile as we say, “Remember the Pearl Jam video?”