Damon’s mother also aided son’s success

Pete Warner’s page one article (BDN, April 5) about UMaine hockey player Derek Damon was enigmatic: A huge, basically well-written article extending onto two different pages, but not one photo of the subject of the article?!

Even more perplexing, however, was the description of Derek’s “rise to excellence, power, and fame.” The article mentions Derek’s father, Doug Damon (whose middle name should be “Determination”).

In spite of a full-time military career as an aviator, that included many and sometimes lengthy deployments, Doug was a driving force in engendering the love of hockey in both of his sons. For years and years of dedicated coaching, Doug’s mantra was “kids on ice don’t get in ‘hot water,'” and if his time spent coaching youth hockey could be tallied, the total would literally boggle the mind.

The article also mentions inspiration provided by Derek’s older brother, Shawn. There’s a lot to be said for “inspiration.” But missing entirely from mention in the article was the fourth member of the Damon family: Doug’s wife, and Shawn and Derek’s mother: Cheri – 25 percent of and a key player in the Damon Dynasty of Determination!

For all of those years in the lives of that man and those boys, Cheri was there encouraging, supporting, agonizing, cooking, transporting, and performing any of the other myriad tasks required to personify the role of “Hockey Mom.” The article mentions the Damons serving as a surrogate family for Dave Capuano – that surrogate family had a mother, who no doubt at minimum took on extra cooking and cleaning: That was Cheri Damon.

And I’m confident that it wasn’t easy for that mother to “relinquish her child” for two years of his life so that he could attend a distant high school in the interest of perfecting his ice talents.

That Derek is an excellent hockey player is common knowledge; but his excellence and drive and determination and work ethic were and are derived from the strong unit that is the Family Damon, and Cheri, was a key player on that team; and deserves equal recognition.

Michael P. Gleason

Bangor

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