Duke leaves behind good memories, great friends

By Keith Groller
Of The Morning Call

 

Bills pile up. Aches and pains multiply. Prices rise. Traffic jams aggravate.

For many of us, life's worries always seem to outweigh its pleasures and we whine much more than we laugh.

It takes a special person to maintain a positive demeanor no matter what the circumstances, and to leave people in a better mood than when you first found them.

Jeff Duke was one of those rare people.

He stayed positive and upbeat while battling bone cancer for the past 71/2 years. He finally lost that battle Tuesday. He was just 54.

Duke was an area baseball coach for much the past two decades, spending 13 years at Allen and five at Emmaus. He was also a coach in the Lehigh Valley Prospects' Bill Fritzinger High School League.

He was also a player himself, and I was there for his last game in the Tri-County League in August 1994 when he was a member of the East Texas Longhorns.

The Longhorns won the Tri-Co title that day and Duke, who had earlier announced he was retiring, was the catcher for the final out.

"I've been playing this game since I was five and I've never won a title," Duke told me that day, wearing his trademark smile. "I know I gave everything I have and at my age [42 at the time], there's not much left to give."

But Duke gave so much more to local baseball since that day, even though his battle with cancer would soon begin.

Through his fight, he never wanted sympathy or pity; just a smile when he told you one of his jokes or wacky stories.

"Jeff affected people positively everywhere he went," Emmaus baseball coach John Schreiner said. "Jeff changed my life as well as many others. He never complained or wondered "Why me?' He always just said you do what you have to do. I remember him telling me that he doesn't have time to be sick. Jeff was never negative. He never mentioned dying, only living."

"You could not meet a better person or have a better friend than Jeff," said his Senior League baseball teammate Ed Dawson. "He stayed positive until the end. I was with him on Sunday and he was still talking getting out to the Emmaus baseball scrimmages."

Tom Gallagher, Allen's girls basketball coach, became friends with Duke in the 1970s.

They coached a lot of basketball games together at a variety of levels.

"He was my right-hand man," Gallagher said. "We've been close for a long time. He was a very good friend and if you're his friend, there's nothing he wouldn't do for you."

Gallagher was in need of a friend 19 years ago when his 19-year- old daughter, Kelly, died after a battle with leukemia. "Jeff stood by me and my family all the way," Gallagher said. "It's the worst feeling in the world to lose a child. It's a loss you never get over.

"But Jeff was there for me. Jeff was the kind of guy you could call any time of the day or night, and he'd talk to you."

Gallagher was touched by the gesture Duke made at the start of the 2005-06 Allen girls basketball season.

"It was my first game as Allen's coach and here comes Jeff into the back of the gym when he could barely walk and was really sick," Gallagher said, choking up. "I asked him "What the heck are you doing here?' He said, "Tom, I wouldn't haven't missed this for the world.' Seeing him there, knowing he had struggled so much to be there for me, well, it meant everything."

Gallagher and Schreiner were both with Duke at different times on Saturday. They both said Duke thanked them for being such good friends.

But it's the hundreds of people he touched over the years, especially the dozens and dozens of young athletes, who should be thanking Duke for having made their world a better, happier place.



keith.groller@mcall.com

610-820-6740

From The Morning Call -- March 7, 2007

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