Damn! This is the saddest news I’ve heard in a long time. A long, long time. Dick Edell died early this morning. Damn!

How can I be so sad — and even surprised — that Big Man has passed away? He was 74 years old. He had been confined to his wheelchair for two decades. He had no use of his arms and legs. Every time I’ve seen him in recent years he looked skinnier and more frail.

Yet he stands out above all the people I’ve ever known for his ability to be defined by his indominitable spirit, by his ability to look beyond himself and look me in the eye and ask with sincerity, “How are you doing? How’s Linda? How are the kids?” He meant every word, every time, and everybody knew it.

Inclusion body myositis was the name of the disease that struck Dick down in 2001, when he was coaching the lacrosse team at the University of Maryland, and removed him permanently from the sideline. But no rare disease could defeat the warmth and kindness that was in his heart. That never left.

I first knew Dick when he was a giant 6-foot-5 freshman attackman playing for Towson State, now called Towson University. I officiated some of his games then and later when he was on the coaching staff there. On and on, I was the guy with the striped shirt and the whistle, or the sports writer’s note pad, as he coached at Calvert Hall and the University of Baltimore and at West Point and finally at Maryland.

I guess it was in the last 10 years or so that I really got to know Dick and to love him. These were the wheelchair years, but never once did I see him complain or even wince. How could I ever complain about a simple cold or some creaky old knees when here was a man with no use of his arms or legs and he rose above it?

One day at lunch at Edell’s home in Howard County (Md.), then-Virginia coach Dom Starsia was with us. I asked him if he was recruiting in Baltimore that day. “No,” he said. “Just came up to see Dick.”

Just drove 150 miles to see Dick? Yes, and so did many others. One day having lunch at Dick’s home, a lunch served by his loving and heroic wife Delores, the coaches in attendance included Starsia, Jim Adams, Dave Urick and Bob Scott — all of them National Lacrosse Hall of Famers.

Tony Seaman, another coach who attended the get-togethers at Edell’s home, put it perfectly when he explained why he came: “You always leave with more than you came with.”

Scottie (Bob Scott) was another one. I played on the team at Hopkins with him and now, here we were, some 60 years later, commiserating with an old friend and fallen warrior.

For the final three or four years of Bob Scott’s life he was no longer driving, so I drove him and he was always saying, “Let’s go out and see Edell in a week or so.” So we did, continually, and we always hated to leave. I remember telling my wife where I was headed one day and with whom and I told her, “I love those two guys.” And now they’re both gone.

I’m so glad Linda and I drove up to West Point last September to see Dick Edell installed in the Athletic Hall of Fame at a black-tie dinner there. Though I’d been to the U.S. Military Academy several times, I was reminded anew what an impressive place it is.

Later, back in Howard County, Dick confessed to me, “That night at West Point, plus our wedding day and the days our children were born, were the greatest days of my life.”

Bill Tanton retired in 2017 after working 21 years as columnist for Lacrosse Magazine. He previous covered the sport as an editor with the Baltimore Sun.