Wes Leonard: Former NBA star Bo Kimble knows Wes Leonard's teammates' pain, offers advice and support
FENNVILLE — Wes Leonard hit the game-winning layup to cap Fennville’s perfect regular season and Hank Gathers slammed home an alley-oop dunk to extend Loyola Marymount University’s lead in a conference tournament game.And on Friday, the 21st anniversary of Gathers’ death, Bo Kimble mourned each the loss of Gathers, his lifelong friend and college teammate, and Leonard, a 16-year-old he had never met from a tiny West Michigan high school.
“It hit me and my heart just sunk, because it’s a tragedy all over again,” Kimble said Friday while talking about Leonard’s death from a heart attack. “To hit that shot to win a game, and then a moment later another young man in the prime of his life is struck down, it’s very eerie but it’s a fresh reminder of how this can affect us all.”
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Kimble watched as Gathers, 23, crumpled to the court and died in 1990 of cardiac arrest due to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a thickening of the heart muscle that forced the organ to work hard to move blood.
Dr. David Start, who performed Leonard’s autopsy, ruled Friday that the teen died from a heart attack connected to dilated cardiomyopathy, which weakens an enlarged heart and makes it unable to efficiently pump blood.
Kimble, who played for the Los Angeles Clippers and New York Knicks in an NBA career cut short by injury, has founded the nonprofit Forty-Four for Life Foundation that seeks to educate about heart illnesses and equip public areas with defibrillators that could save lives.
Mourning Wes Leonard
Enlarge Emily Zoladz | The Grand Rapids Press Wes Leonard's Fennville teammates embrace at a press conference Friday. (Emily Zoladz | The Grand Rapids Press) Mourning Wes Leonard gallery (4 photos)
He works to try and prevent people from becoming the next Gathers or Leonard by advocating people learn CPR and stresses improving the reaction time to cardiac events.
“It’s so important, and we need to be pro-active rather than reactive,” Kimble said.
Following Gathers’ death, Kimble led his Loyola teammates on a magical run to the Elite Eight in the NCAA tournament. The right-handed player honored his fallen friend by shooting his first free-throw of the game left-handed, a tribute to Gathers’ dominant hand. His squad, without Gathers’ nation-leading scoring and rebounding averages, lost to eventual champion UNLV.
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