‘He found his calling’
Dee Rowe could have been anything. Luckily, he became UConn’s heart and soul
Dee Rowe could captivate anyone with his words and recollections alone but the way he really sucked people into conversation was to wrap his hand around their forearm as he spoke and listened. It was so gentle, so powerful. It was genuine, too, the way he could remind someone of their worth and importance just by being curious and engaging. Rowe’s personality traits — his care for and interest in others — are among the greatest gifts ever bestowed upon the UConn athletics community, right there with the Hall of Fame coaches he helped hire and the awesome buildings he helped construct.
Thousands of hearts were fractured Sunday as word spread that UConn’s brightest light had been extinguished. Rowe, the former men’s basketball coach and the university’s top ambassador until his final breath, died at home in Storrs. He was
91, worn down by numerous illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease and eventually COVID-19.
“He loved people,” Don Rowe, one of Dee’s seven children and his only son, said Sunday evening. “That’s the reality of it. And he wanted nothing more than to help people. He probably should have been a priest, to be honest. But the good news is, he found a calling.”
At UConn. In an athletic department’s vision. Through a fascination, bordering on disbelief, with the transformation of a campus full of fields into a campus full of facilities where championship teams actually play.
Rowe, a Worcester legend before he was a Storrs legend, was such a presence. He was everywhere, often dressed to the nines or in the red corduroys he had for decades, engaging with passersby and random students the same way he would with Bob Cousy, a dear friend. He was a fan at so many games, a sounding board to so many coaches, so regal in the same settings he’d spend hours telling one self-deprecating story after another. He was so versatile.
“He was a great person, a great mentor,” said former baseball coach Andy Baylock, with whom Rowe spent much of his leisure time in recent years,
sipping coffee, pulling apart sweet pastries. “This will be hard. I’ll miss him.”
“He was ours,” said Tim Tolokan, who has worked in the athletics department since 1980. “Best friend is an understatement. I traveled a lot of miles with him.”
Many people did, literally and figuratively. Scores of players were on those buses throughout the Northeast in the Yankee Conference days with Rowe as coach in 1969-76. Many colleagues saw the country with Rowe during fundraising efforts or trips for competitions. Most of the travel for anyone in Rowe’s orbit was through the power of imagination and conversation, though. So while voices were gathered for a collection of remembrances Sunday, it was as if the people Rowe touched were picking up where he left off, telling stories that should be turned into a book.
Rowe, during a talk on the shores of
Mirror Lake in May of 1985, convinced
Jim Calhoun that leaving Northeastern for UConn was a challenge he needed to accept. A year earlier, Rowe had long conversations with Geno Auriemma, then an assistant at Virginia, about taking over the women’s program.
In the late-1980s, he stood with Harry Gampel on the balcony of Gampel’s highrise condominium overlooking South Beach, Miami, finalizing fundraising for a basketball arena. Rowe raised $7.5 million alone for project, an absurd figure particularly at the time.
Rowe had all sorts of jobs before and after attending Middlebury College in Vermont, and before setting into a career as coach and athletic director at Worcester Academy in 1955. He drove a Coca-Cola truck and feared getting fired on day one because the brakes failed and he nearly crashed. He didn’t make it unscathed through day one of his job working the scoreboard at Holy Cross football games.
“He put up first-and-a hundred-and-10,” Don Rowe said. “He said, ‘The next thing I know, I was in the stands, yelling ‘Cigahs, bahs and butts!’ ”
“Madison Square Garden in 1988, we’re playing Ohio State in the NIT,” Tolokan said. “Well to Dee Rowe, Ohio State — they won national championships in the ‘60s with Jerry Lucas. And here it’s ‘88, Jim [Calhoun] is in his second year and we beat Ohio State in the championship. There’s an old piano down Dee and I are leaning against, waiting for Jim to finish talking to the team, and he looks at me — he always called me ‘Timely’ — and he said, ‘Timely, James just beat Ohio State with these guys.’ It wasn’t a knock on Spider Ursery or Jeff King or Phil Gamble; it was Dee loving UConn and knowing from a basketball sense what Ohio State was and that UConn had never won anything.”
Rowe was the most vibrant man I’ve met in 21 years around UConn athletics, the most charismatic — and I got to know him only in 2005. By then, he had slowed a bit. Rowe battled various forms of cancer numerous times over the years. Dementia set in. Then Alzheimer’s.
“He’s fortunate,” Don said. “His mother had it, his brother had it. But I honestly think because he took care of himself and was so engaged and working, he was fortunate that it didn’t really show up until, like, now. He would always say to me, ‘I’ve still got a job. Can you believe that?’ It kept him engaged.”
No one was more magnetic. Short-term memory loss, ironically, was always a reminder for him to make fun of himself. He never lost his passion for a university and its people. Rowe was UConn, its guiding light, anyway. Everybody in their lifetime should find a fraction of the joy Rowe found with every stroll across campus.
Rowe was devastated by the death of his wife, Ginny, in July of 2018. The seven children helped a lot. Assisted living was considered, Don said, but Dee always wanted to be home, “Because that’s where mom is.” There are pictures all over the house of Ginny. The family hired four care-givers to assist Rowe around the clock.
“He had, over the next two years, joy,” Don said. “He went to games, they had events for him, but he still was sad. He really was. He missed her.”
Rowe missed UConn, too, after the pandemic forced him off campus, out of his routines. He missed people. No more elbows to grab.
Rowe attended one men’s basketball game and one women’s game last month, his final events, and couldn’t quite understand why he had to wear a mask. Former players still visited, sitting socially distanced in the driveway. They called, too, and Rowe would usually say, ‘I love you,’ before hanging up. So many Rowe loved remained active participants in his life, in any way they could, but nothing has been the same since March 2020.
Nothing will be the same at UConn from here.
Austin Williams scored a career-high 29 points to lead Hartford past UMass Lowell 75-58 on Sunday in Lowell, Mass.
Hunter Marks had 13 points and eight rebounds for the Hawks (8-5, 5-3 America East). Traci Carter added 13 points and seven assists, and D.J. Mitchell had 10 points.
Hartford totaled 44 secondhalf points, a season high for the team.
After UMass Lowell scored first three points of the game, Hartford put together a 13-2 run to take a 13-5 lead with 12:47 to go in the half. The Hawks built the lead to 31-15 on a pair of free throws by PJ Henry. But the River Hawks ended the half with a 10-0 run to cut the lead to six at the break.
The second half quickly turned into the Williams show, as he scored 23 points in the final 20 minutes, going 8-for-11 from the field, including 2-for-3 on 3-pointers.
UMass Lowell pulled to 53-45 with 7:54 to go, but UHart pulled away with a 12-2 run capped by an impressive windmill dunk by Williams that made it an 18-point lead with 4:26 left to play.
Obadiah Noel had 18 points for the River Hawks (4-8, 3-5). Kalil Thomas scored a career-high 13.
Aidan Carpenter scored 19 points and Jordan King had 18 as Siena (4-0, 4-0 MAAC) won at Fairfield (2-11, 2-6). Manny Camper chipped in with 17 points, 12 rebounds and six assists for the Saints.
Jake Wojcik scored 18 points andJesusCruzhad14fortheStags.
Women’s basketball
Kharis Idom scored 19 points to lead four River Hawks in double figuresinavictoryoverHartfordin West Hartford. Senior guard Jada Lucas led UHart (3-5, 3-5 America East) with 12 points off the bench.
Quinnipiac (6-4, 4-2 MAAC) outscored St. Peter’s 25-7 in the second quarter to take control in JerseyCity,N.J.SeniorguardChiara Bacchini scored all of her careerhigh10pointsinthequarter.