from Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star,
The email came from a 25-year-old in New York; we’ll call him Brian. He enclosed a picture of his older brother, who we’ll call Henry. Henry is 27, and lives in Chicago. He has Down’s syndrome. In the picture he is looking off to the side but he is smiling, and Darryl Sutter’s arm is around him. Darryl is smiling, too.
Brian wasn’t looking for a story, and Henry doesn’t want to be famous, so their names have been changed. But Brian had just watched Sutter’s press conferences, with that plain Prairie voice and that unimpressed rubber face and the clipped short answers that are becoming famous. Brian saw people calling Sutter rude, or laughing, as if that was the measure of the man.
He knew it wasn’t, because his father once read an article that mentioned Sutter’s third child, Christopher, who has Down’s syndrome. The father read the piece aloud with Henry. Henry wrote Sutter a letter. Sutter was the coach of the San Jose Sharks.
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