stillers4me
05-09-2016, 05:35 AM
As draft day dawned on South Florida, John and Barbara Cason parked their pickup near the back fence at Caballero Rivero Dade North cemetery and stepped outside. They have come here often, to think and pray, in the six months since their daughter’s death.
Dana Smith was 44 when she died Oct. 27 after a heart attack. She left behind three boys: Artie, now 21, Thomas, 16, and Jordan, 13. With their father stuck in a South Carolina prison since 2006, she had raised the boys to be dreamers, as devoted as they were driven.
Draft day had to begin here, with her. The NFL was as much her dream as it was the dream of Artie Burns, now a Steelers rookie.
So, before the Casons went to their grandson’s watch party at The Betsy Hotel on South Beach, where ESPN and NFL Network cameras would broadcast Artie Burns’ football fate, they dressed up their daughter’s gravestone with a fresh bouquet of roses and chrysanthemums, red and white, pink and yellow............
Read more @ http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/s...s/201605080129 (http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/steelers/2016/05/08/Rookie-Artie-Burns-road-to-NFL-and-Pittsburgh-Steelers/stories/201605080129)
Dana Smith was 44 when she died Oct. 27 after a heart attack. She left behind three boys: Artie, now 21, Thomas, 16, and Jordan, 13. With their father stuck in a South Carolina prison since 2006, she had raised the boys to be dreamers, as devoted as they were driven.
Draft day had to begin here, with her. The NFL was as much her dream as it was the dream of Artie Burns, now a Steelers rookie.
So, before the Casons went to their grandson’s watch party at The Betsy Hotel on South Beach, where ESPN and NFL Network cameras would broadcast Artie Burns’ football fate, they dressed up their daughter’s gravestone with a fresh bouquet of roses and chrysanthemums, red and white, pink and yellow............
Read more @ http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/s...s/201605080129 (http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/steelers/2016/05/08/Rookie-Artie-Burns-road-to-NFL-and-Pittsburgh-Steelers/stories/201605080129)