Connecticut helps native son cope after wife’s death
Forty minutes into an hourlong conversation where he would bare his broken heart and tickle our funny bone, Chris Berman stops, as he often does, in mid-thought.
“Wait, wait, the Swami has a prediction,” says Berman, conjuring his long-time NFL picks segment from ESPN. “We are rooting for and predicting a winning Travelers score of minus-15. This will make it closer to par than the U.S. Open for the first time in history. I love Jim Furyk, but no 58 this year.”
Berman loves the Travelers Championship. He hosts the annual media day. He does radio commercials promoting the tournament. He hands out the championship trophy on the 18th green on Sunday. Last week, he once again played in the Celebrity Pro-Am, in a foursome with J.J. Henry, Tim Wakefield and Kevin Nealon.
“Kevin’s from Bridgeport, J.J. is from Fairfield, Tim’s from the Red Sox, a nice New England group,” Berman says. “Yeah, I’m ready for this.”
Berman faked car trouble once to get a breakfast date with Kathy Alexinski. They would be married in 1983 and Kathy would become as staunch an advocate for literacy as anyone in Connecticut. On May 9, Berman says, his wife, “went to lunch to see her sister and never came home.” It has been six weeks since Kathy Berman, 67, died in a two-car accident and the outpouring of emotion for one of the most famous sportscasters in American history has overwhelmed him.
“I’m blown away on every level,” Berman says.
Berman was there at the first ESPYs in New York in 1993. He remembers what Jim Valvano said that night, remembers how he said there are three things everyone should do every day. Laugh. Think. Cry. You do those three things, Valvano said shortly before he died of cancer, and that’s one heck of a day.
“I do most of that before breakfast,” Berman says softly. “But I’m OK.”
Wide circle of friends
Berman, who accepted a reduced role at ESPN earlier this year, attended Jim Kelly’s annual celebrity tournament outside Buffalo early in June to benefit Kelly for Kids Foundation. Berman wasn’t sure he was ready to get out. The former Bills quarterback and Berman are good friends. Kelly attended Kathy’s memorial service at Seymour St. John Chapel at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford on May 17. He insisted that Berman needn’t worry. Berman called back and said, “I’m coming.”
“I have a good connection with the city of Buffalo,” Berman says. “People were telling me you certainly don’t have to come, we understand. We also want you to understand everybody up here wants to hug you. I’m glad I went. People I hardly knew were saying, ‘We’ve been praying of you.’ It was really uplifting, to be honest, but sad.”
Bill Belichick and Andy Reid also were known to have attended Kathy’s memorial service. Hall of Famers, championship quarterbacks, leaders across the sports world, high profile media personalities contacted Berman with condolences. Berman and San Francisco Giants head of baseball operations Brian Sabean are good friends and Berman was at the Giants-Mets game at Citi Field when he got the horrible news. Days later, flowers arrived at the chapel at Choate. They were from Willie Mays.
“Seven years old, he made me a Giants fan,” Berman says softly. “At 86, he comforted me. The circle of life.”
Yet it also would be the colleagues and many friends of Kathy, a teacher and later literacy volunteer, who would comfort him. Total strangers, too.
“She made her own footprint in a quieter, understated way in the education channels,” Berman says. “The literacy volunteers, to where she taught, to where our son and daughter went to school, they all came out. It wasn’t Chris Berman and his wife. It was, ‘We look at you guys as the community.’ I’m touched by that. I’m overwhelmed
by that.
“I guess if you’re 38 years on national TV, people feel like they know you. There’s not much mystery about me after all these years. Perfect strangers run into you in a store, Rite Aid, where I get the Sunday papers, saying, ‘We’re really sorry.’ I get this feeling from people, ‘Our guy needs our help right now, and here we are.’ ”
Kathy died May 9. Their son Doug’s wedding was May 27.
“Our son got married, she never saw it,” Berman says. “We were kind of figuring out what semi-retirement was for us. We’ll probably go to Maui, January, February, March. We’ll see what the year brings.
“Now, people ask me what are you going to do? I don’t know. Are you kidding? We’re just trying to process it.
“She had waited all this time, this is what I said at the eulogy, never complaining and she never saw it. Here it was, our son’s going to get married, there’s our daughter (Meredith), I’m semi-retired. That’s what makes me the saddest. This was right at the doorstep. Doug had a wonderful wedding. It was great, upbeat. But there’s the song my son never got to dance with his mother. That’s rough.”
Berman pauses to gather himself.
“Believe me,” he says, “she wouldn’t want us to mope.”
Facing the music
So he doesn’t. Berman and Kathy had gotten tickets with another couple to see Tom Petty and Joe Walsh in Hartford on June 14. He went. He went to see Bob Dylan at Oakdale two weekends ago. He’s not hiding, but it has been low key.
Berman has covered 30 U.S. Opens and knows so many big names on the PGA Tour. This is different. This is just down the road from his Cheshire home.
“I’ve thought about it since (Jim Kelly’s) event and I think what I’m looking forward to is having folks in my home state saying, ‘How you doing?’ when I walk around for 18 holes,” Berman says. “I’m certainly not asking for it. I’m just ready to be embraced a little bit. I hope I don’t tear up, because that’s what I do. I cry at the ‘Lion King.’ ” Berman paused. And then he laughed. “I don’t know if I could have walked around the U.S. Open — it has nothing to do with Milwaukee, those people are great,” Berman says. “I just couldn’t have done it. I wasn’t ready. But this is my home.”