Another major loss in the sports community

FROM KEITH GROLLER

It has been a difficult week.

On Tuesday, we lost Dieruff coaching icon Dick Schmidt and tonight I just learned of the passing of our Morning Call sports department colleague Larry O'Rourke.

I will simply say what I said when I introduced Larry and helped to induct him into the Lehigh Valley Recreational Sports Hall of Fame in Northampton in mid-April.

This is a tough business. You have to have an ego to survive and along the way, that ego is going to make you unpopular with someone, if not many.

But Larry O really didn't have an ego, and thus, he didn't have an enemy in the business and that simply is unheard of. He was the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet.

No one in the business that I know was more beloved. And he knew hundreds of people. Heck, even Andy Reid liked Larry.

And as nice a man as he was in full health, he showed his true grace and elegance as a person in the last few years when he battled the dreaded disease you can't beat, ALS.

Some of us can moan and groan when it rains, or when we get stuck in a traffic jam or when the service at a fast-food restaurant was slow. Some of us complain at the drop of a hat.

Larry O'Rourke could have been the most bitter, angry man on the planet. But he wasn't. He stayed the same positive, upbeat, wonderful person he always was and at a time he could have been bitter, he fought hard and tried to raise as much money as he possibly could for the fight against ALS. As recently as a month ago, he held his own golf tournament in the Poconos -- again --- to raise funds to help others in their fight against ALS.

I will remember Larry O'Rourke's many appearances on our Morning Call radio show. When he covered the Eagles, we tried to have him on every NFL Sunday.

On a show that ended at noon, Larry was usually was slotted for 11:40. But almost every Sunday, we got backed up and got to Larry late, sometimes as late as 11:55.

But typically, Larry never complained and if he got three minutes, he made them the best three minutes of radio he could.

I used to kid him about looking for a statue of him at Blue Mountain High School. He was proud of Blue Mountain, proud of that area and that school.

I was joking about that statue, but as I said the last time I saw him, I am no longer kidding.

Blue Mountain should build that statue to remember one of the finest people that school will ever produce; someone who knew what was life was truly all about and lived it the way it should be lived -- with fun at the forefront.

Larry O was a true gem of a human being.

He will be definitely be missed, but never, ever, forgotten.

http://blogs.mcall.com/groller/