A Terrible Loss In Storrs

STORRS

This late Sunday morning crept gray and cold and ugly on the campus of the state university. Police lights flashed in the downpour. Yellow tape cordoned off 300 yards of Hillside Road, guarding a crime scene that seemed unreal, screaming of a crime unimaginable.

Tears fell hard from the October sky.

Jasper Howard, who had helped lead UConn to a football victory over Louisville on Saturday, lay dying, stabbed shortly after midnight by an unknown assailant outside a school-sponsored dance at the Student Union. Rain gathered on the Husky Dog statue outside of Gampel Pavilion. Yes, Howard was stabbed fewer than 100 yards from the symbol of all that is good and endearing about UConn athletics.

He had come to UConn from Miami to play football, the first in his family to attend college. A junior cornerback, he lived for the game. He wanted nothing more than to play professional football, to follow in the footsteps of Patriots defensive back Darius Butler. He wanted nothing more in life than to take care of his mom, Joangila, a woman who had worked multiple jobs to keep him clothed and fed.

"When Jazz first came here, he didn't trust a lot of people," coach Randy Edsall had said in the late August heat. "We've had to gain his trust, and it's had to be hard at times on him to get him to understand that we don't want him just to be a football player. We want him to be a total person."

As UConn President Michael Hogan, athletic director Jeff Hathaway, Edsall and one of his captains, Desi Cullen, met with the media Sunday afternoon at the Burton Family Complex, the pain of Howard's death only grew deeper. Edsall had spoken to Howard's girlfriend. Jazz was going to be a father.

Recounting the tragic circumstances, Edsall never stood taller than on this day. He took us through a 1 a.m. phone call from director of football operations Tim Pendergast and through another from Jerome Junior that led to a mad rush to Hartford Hospital, only to find he should go to St. Francis. He took us through the calls to Howard's mom in Florida and how he met with students and athletes holding vigil overnight at the hospital. He told us how, ultimately, he was called in to identify Howard's dead body around 4 a.m. and how a team meeting was called for 6 a.m. on campus for him to tell all his players, heartbroken, devastated, they had lost a brother and teammate.

And then Edsall said something especially profound and chilling.

"One of my sons has been taken away," he said. "There is nothing in my job description that says you have to identify bodies."

Edsall would throw an arm around Cullen's shoulders as the senior punter fought through tears. For six minutes, in a conference room stunned silent by the beauty and passion of his words, Cullen showed us what a man is.

"We create a bond here that never will be broken, that's thicker than blood," Cullen said. "Where he grew up, through childhood to high school, to get through it was a miracle in itself. The idea of him coming all the way to Connecticut, where his mother thought he was safe ... is heartbreaking.

"To hear the news he is a father ... and that [the child] will grow up without a father tears me apart. As Jazz looks down on us, I can promise his son or daughter will have 105 uncles. We will be better men because of Jazz."

Howard grew up hard in Miami. When we spoke in August for a column, he talked about how his mom made so many sacrifices to support him and his sisters Keyondra and Jasmine. Jasmine had been afflicted with meningitis.

"My mom was my mom and dad," Howard had said. "My father was never around. I call her every day and before I go to sleep every night. And I'm very close to my sisters. When Jasmine was younger, the meningitis of her brain was real bad. She's just a little set back now. She's 13. She's going to be OK."

Try to imagine being a mom, sending your child from the tough inner city to rural Connecticut, believing all would be safe.

"He didn't deserve this." Joangila Howard told CNN affiliate WSVN.

The shock and horror Jasper's mom felt spread swiftly through the UConn campus. Heads dropped in the Sunday rain. Inside Gampel Pavilion, women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma stood quietly and watched as his All-America center Tina Charles walked past, tears on her cheeks. Butler, Howard and a number of football players play pickup basketball with the women. There was a bond among many of them.

"They are a tight-knit group," Auriemma said. "It's incredibly sad."

Young people come to college to be safe, to learn and to find their future. A campus should be, must be, a safe place. Yet as we have seen in Connecticut, around the country, in so many different ways, college campuses have become crimes scenes of unspeakable tragedy.

I bumped into Jonathan Mandeldove coming out of Gampel Pavilion. He knew Howard. Yes, hurt would run deep in Storrs. Mandeldove said coach Jim Calhoun had talked to the team at practice about the overwhelming sadness and how each of the players had to be vigilant, "to watch each other's back."

"You go to college to get enlightened, to see things you didn't think you'd ever see, to learn there's a whole new world out there," Auriemma said. "It comes back to you that it's the same world that you left behind. It's not supposed to be that way.

"I didn't know Jasper. I didn't know his family. But there can't be anything worse in the world than getting a phone call that something has happened to your son or daughter. I guarantee you last night when I went to bed I wasn't thinking what my son [Michael] was doing at St. Joe's. But I guarantee you tonight I'll be thinking what's he doing, who's he with."

Howard was a chatterbox. It didn't take much to get him going. We shook hands in August and 30 seconds later he was showing me the tattoos across his midsection dedicated to his younger sisters. He loved to needle, to talk trash, exhort his teammates. There had been a time in Howard's freshman year when he thought about going back to Florida, things at home weren't that good and he considered going to work to help his family.

He stuck it out and by this year he embraced freshman receiver Dwayne Difton, calling him his little brother, taking him under his wing the way Butler had with him.

"He's in my thoughts and prayers," Butler told reporters after making his first career interception in Foxborough. I'm not really ready to talk about it yet."

Oh, sure, Edsall yelled at Howard after he dived into the end zone during spring practice after an interception. No showboating! But there was so much to love about Howard's energy. He picked off passes. He ran back punts. On Saturday not only did he force and recover a fumble, he made a career-high 11 tackles. He was as exciting and excited a player as UConn had. Edsall worked him hard to understand how important academics are, putting his foot down last school year. Jazz came around. He became a leader even as he matured himself.

The one thing Howard always understood was the love of his mom. He always called her before he went to bed. Tragically, unspeakably, he will not make that call tonight.