Shattered, November 13, 1979, What My Mom and "Chocolate Thunder" Share:

Pictured clockwise around Dawkins, from lower left: my mom, Diane Bowen Paknis, in a 1957 College Graduation Photo, leading Rhythm Band at Vacation Bible School (I am in the red hat), with her children in a cherry tree at Branch Brook Park, Newark, NJ in 1968, watching the 1979 Madison Dodgers from our car, the last time she saw me play. Bryan Fennelly – photo credit. 

 

 

Darryl Dawkins, aka Chocolate Thunder, first shattered an NBA Backboard with a thunderous dunk on November 13, 1979, the same day my mom died following her courageous eight-year battle with cancer. She was diagnosed with Stage IV Malignant Melanoma in 1971 when prognosis was five months. My brother was four, my sister was thirteen, and I was nine. A miracle, she lived eight years post-surgery, close to twenty times longer than expected.

 

After diagnosis, she underwent radical surgery, requiring over 2,000 stitches, to remove her infected lymph system. This left her with lymphedema, or a swollen leg, and massive scars wrapping around her leg and lower torso leading to the place on her back’s right flank where the large misshapen, discolored, infected mole perched.

 

Despite her pains and trials, until she died when I was a senior in high school, few of my friends ever knew she was sick. Her spirit and her love spread and wrapped around her community. People only sensed her strength and goodness.

 

Like the 6'11", 260-pound Dawkin’s shattered backboard, my mom’s death, and her respective illness, people assumed, would shatter our family and our lives. It took its toll.

 

The game at Municipal Auditorium was delayed for about an hour while arena staff cleared excessive glass and replaced the entire broken backboard assembly. The Philadelphia 76ers lost to the Kansas City Kings 110–103. This incident forced the league to adopt breakaway rims. The game continued as normal.

 

The toxic stress induced by my mom’s prognosis, surgery, and uncertainty had a combustible impact on our family. This combined with two other, most destructive, adverse experiences distracted me with OCD, hair pulling, truancy, and fear. I could not function and, from embarrassment, tried to keep it secret. My siblings, I hoped, did not experience the same torment. They appeared to adapt better.

 

After four years of hell, in her wisdom, realizing I was tortured, my mom helped me get the help I needed. I had a growth spurt and started wrestling. It came natural to me. When I used it to stop the other traumas in my life, I felt control. This calmed me. I focused. Between my 5th and 8th grades, the highest grade I received was one “B” grade. I turned the corner in ninth grade and got involved in football and track along with wrestling. One “B” became my lowest grade over the next three years.

 

My mom was buried on Friday the 16th of November. By then, I was a co-captain of the Madison Football Dodgers, the high school team my dad played for and for whom my mom was a cheerleader. By my senior year, we were the Newark Star Ledger’s top ranked NJ high school football team, marching towards our third consecutive, undefeated state championship season under legendary Coach Ted Monica. I was the sole three-year starter.

 

I always wonder whether my mom knows we beat Orange on the day after she was buried and how we took a special SAT makeup exam the day after this game. Being part of this team and community helped me be resilient, to keep it together. It hasn’t been easy. Healing is a journey, and peace is possible.

 

There’s so much I’d like to share with my mom about how we won the state championship, how I stayed in touch with my teammates, about being recruited, graduating college, being invited to play in the NFL, falling in love with my future wife and coaching and teaching and having three beautiful children, and a new incredible grandchild, her first great grandchild. How I started a business to build healthy team cultures and wrote a book to stop workplace bullying.

 

Friends are now losing parents who made full life expectancy. I think parental loss is harder for them because they knew their folks three times longer than I knew my mom. Losing a parent is difficult, regardless. We can never just clean up the class shards and wreckage and replace a parent as was done with Dawkins’ backboard, but how we respond and decide to change makes all the difference.

 

Organizations can heal from scandals involving bullying and abuse with leaders who hold all those responsible, including themselves, accountable with just consequences, clear out bullies, prevent future abuse, and eradicate destructive values, beliefs, and behaviors with healthy, thriving, cultures. #LeadersArentBullies