Bill Lankhof

SLAM SPORTS

September 29, 2005

ELMIRA -- The telephone rings in the comfortable home just around the corner from the hockey arena on Snyder St., in the small, rural town of Elmira. Lu Ann Snyder answers and she sounds happy, buoyant and a woman at peace with herself and the world.

"He turns up for a meal now and then," she says, laughing, when asked if hubby, Graham, is at home. "He has been helping out again with our junior B team. They've got practice right now."

This is a story of reconciliation, pathos and bravery. It begins two years ago on that awful night of Sept. 29 when the phone also rang; when the voice at the other end told Lu Ann and Graham that their son, Dan, lay horribly injured in an Atlanta hospital after the car driven by his friend and teammate, Dany Heatley, had been in a ferocious crash, slicing the Ferrari from door to door.

It left Snyder in a coma and Heatley with a broken jaw, a wrecked knee and a shattered career. Six days later, Snyder lapsed into septic shock.

Dan Snyder died on a Sunday night. The Thrashers hockey player was 25. He left behind a father, a mother, a brother Jake, a little sister, many friends and a small Canadian town that has seen more than its share of tragedy.

Dan Snyder was the 14th Elmira resident to die in a road accident since New Year's Day 2000. The Snyder's phone has rarely stopped ringing since that day -- in a small town no family is an island in either joy or sorrow, says his mother -- but Lu Ann has accepted that the voice they most long to hear, that of her youngest son, will never again be on the other end of that telephone line.

"I guess (we're) coping. We cope in a lot of different ways. Sometimes we cope real well. And sometimes we don't cope at all," his dad, Graham says. "I guess it's never far from your mind. There get to be more positive things. You have those memories again that make you feel good."

Lu Ann is a nurse and volunteer firefighter with the local emergency service. Graham is back at work as a insurance adviser. He is a Mennonite who believes that the path to redemption is through forgiveness. And, so it is that on the night her own son died, Lu Ann walked down the long hospital hallway into Dany Heatley's room. She hushed his anguished apologies by placing her hand to his mouth and saying that it could have been her son driving. "Nothing to be sorry for," she said, then. "It was an accident, and we want you to know we forgive you. You and I, we're connected forever."

It was, she says, the way her son would have wanted: Just like her son would not have wanted Heatley to go to jail, or seen him barred from the sport they loved. Since then a rock group has dedicated a song to Snyder, and the Snyder and Heatley families founded the Dan Snyder Neurotrauma Fund at Atlanta's Emory University. The Thrashers have named a trophy after him, awarded each year to the player who best embodies perseverance and hard work. And Heatley? Through the grace of a family (and the empathy of the Thrashers) Heatley is today an Ottawa Senator rather than a convicted felon.

"Some days it is hard but we've conducted ourselves the way we were raised. We've done right by our family. We wanted to do what was right by Dany (Heatley), but most of all we've done right by Dan and that's what was most important to us," Lu Ann says.

John Manasso, a writer with the Atlanta Journal, has written a book "The Dany Heatley and Dan Snyder Story" due in stores at the end of October. It chronicles the family's struggles to deal with perhaps nature's cruelest hoax: "It's not the cycle of life. It's not supposed to work this way," Lu Ann says. "Your children aren't supposed to die before you, but it happens. We just felt it would be good to share our experiences with the public. It's very hard to read in places. It's so descriptive ... the accident, when he died ... but there's also funny parts and that's okay, too."

While her husband has found solace in returning to hockey, Lu Ann says she won't be attending Heatley's Senators debut, or any other hockey game, soon. "I don't have much interest in it anymore," she says, and for the first time there's a tone of sadness that fills her voice. "I used to be glued to Centre Ice. Dan bought it for us and you're looking at your own kid out there and you're so anxious to see them.

"It's hard for me to watch now and know that he's not coming over the boards. I even found it too hard to go to the local junior games.

"Maybe sometime ... "

The pain of loss cost Snyder's brother a job and a marriage. Jake is 31 now. "He was a locksmith. He has been unable to work for quite a while. He had a bad stretch ... He couldn't focus. He couldn't concentrate. He was in a bad way up until the court stuff and afterward," says his mom. "It wasn't until this summer that he was himself again. It's coming."

Jake was supposed to get married in the summer of 2004 "after Dan got home," says his mom. "They still haven't got married. I know they want to ... but it's going to be one of the happiest, saddest things he'll do because he won't have his brother standing beside him."

She says neither she, nor Graham, talk with Heatley but that Jake has maintained a regular contact. "Jake talks to him a lot ... you know, about guy stuff. I'm not sure what we'd talk about." She laughs. It sounds rich. It sounds good.

There are a lot of vacant chairs around the dinner tables in Elmira - an area criss-crossed with twisting country roads, dangerous two-lane highways holding a lethal combination of big trucks, cumbersome farm vehicles and slow-moving Mennonites in buggies. Combine that with speed, maybe a couple drinks too many, a moment of inattentiveness, or just kids being high-spirited and it's a recipe for tears. Nobody has really ever explained the "why" but this is a town where few residents have not been touched with tragedies similar to that of the Snyder family. At least 15 Elmira residents, mostly young males, have died as a result of auto wrecks since 2000. "We scratch our heads. That's all we can do. Nobody has been able to analyze it. I don't think there's a reason," Graham says.

The population of Woolwich Township is about 18,500. Elmira, the largest of the 10 hamlets in the township, has 7,800 residents. Larry Farr, who took over the local Elmira Sugar Kings junior B team from Graham when he had to deal with the death of his son, is one of them. "I just couldn't handle it," Graham says. "As general manager part of your job in the spring and summer is recruiting and getting ready for training camp. I didn't have the drive and Larry stepped up."

It is a cruel twist of fate that this autumn Graham has stepped back in to take over from Farr - a move resulting from the afternoon of June 30 when Farr's wife, Dawn, was killed in a head-on collision with a truck.

The volunteer firefighter who saw her friend pulled from the wreckage and identified her body was -- Lu Ann Snyder.

"Larry had just taken over from Graham when it started to be too much and everything was crashing in on us. I was called out to the accident. It was awful. Tragic," Lu Ann says. Her profession has made death and injury familiar companions, but this one opened a barely healed scar.

"I've known her for over 25 years. I was the one who told Larry and," Lu Ann says, "it was very fresh and raw for all of us. He has two teenaged daughters and it has been an incredibly difficult time for them. (Dawn) was one of those people when tragedy struck she'd be first at your door. I remember she was first at my door. Always helping out."

So, Graham is back pulling the strings for the Sugar Kings. "When he's not at the office he's at the rink a lot now," Lu Ann says. He's busy. And, maybe that's a good thing. Life may never be normal again because a parent is never equipped to bury his child. "It's a journey that we take ourselves and nobody can take that burden away from you," Graham says.

But the Snyders appear as if they have found a solace in their faith and a peace in the community and family that still surround them.

A monument now stands in the centre of town, Graham says, as a memorial to the young people in town who died too soon.

"One year alone there were seven boys died. When Dan passed away it was like, oh-oh, it's starting all over again," Lu Ann says. "We had two personal friends lose their sons in the past year. One was 16 and he fell off a silo ... 90 feet to his death. I was the first person his mom called. She said, 'I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say. I don't know who to talk, too. You've been through this.' I didn't even know what she was talking about and then she told me her son had been killed that morning.

"We have friends living behind us. Their son died the day after last Christmas. He was 25. He and Dan grew up together."

Three black marble pillars stand 10 feet high, encircling the Fountain of Memories. A plaque reads, "Dedicated to the memory of the youth of Woolwich Township who have died. Remember, Honour, Celebrate. Aug. 19, 2001."

There are 54 names carved in the marble. Dan Snyder's will be just one -- a lasting legacy from a community that can celebrate the lives of the Dany Heatleys and others it has merely touched and, at the same time, lovingly embrace the memory of its own lost dreams.