by Mitch Albom | Nov 21, 2008 | Detroit Free Press
On the morning of Oct. 12, a homeless man was pushing a shopping cart down Lincoln Street in Highland Park. He came upon a body, lying near the sidewalk. It was a slender body, tall, athletic, only a teen, wrapped in two T-shirts, jeans and black athletic shoes. The homeless man took a better look. Maybe it was sleeping. Then he backed away. There was a bullet hole in the rear of the teen’s head and another in the front where the bullet exited — police call that a “through and through” — and this body wasn’t sleeping and it wasn’t waking up, not that morning, not ever.
by Mitch Albom | Dec 23, 2007 | Detroit Free Press
They enter the gym and peel off their winter clothes. The youngest one wears blue shorts, a white T-shirt and a silver cross around her neck. An older one keeps on his jacket and ski cap as he does jumping jacks. The lighting is dim, the rafters are dusty and snow is...
by Mitch Albom | Dec 24, 2006 | Detroit Free Press
The last time Robbie Doughty saw his legs, he was riding in a Humvee on a lonely road in Iraq. There had been problems in that area before, and his unit was on the lookout for problems now. Sometimes you get lucky and can spot something suspicious. An old tire. An...
by Mitch Albom | Dec 22, 2005 | Detroit Free Press
ABOUT THIS SERIES Mitch Albom’s Dreams Deferred has been a holiday tradition in the Sports pages of the Free Press since 1994. The next installment – about Michigan athletes and their families – will appear next week.Let us begin at the end, a few...
by Mitch Albom | Dec 22, 2004 | Detroit Free Press
How could they go that fast? You turn your vehicle at the blinking yellow light and you come off Northline Road to Murray Street, a straight line of asphalt into a working-class neighborhood. How could they go that fast? On this street? A dusting of snow covers the...
by Mitch Albom | Dec 31, 2002 | Detroit Free Press
His hands are bleeding. So are his knees. He picks up the rope and pulls it taut. He has beaten four others and now, across the rope, stands the last of them, a teammate, a younger teammate, no less, a kid he had taught to lift weights, a kid he had always been...
by Mitch Albom | Dec 30, 2001 | Detroit Free Press
Last in Mitch Albom’s Dreams Deferred 2001 series on challenges for Michigan athletes and their families.Their son played football. Mom sat in the stands. She wore a team jersey and waved a “K” for Kearsley High. Dad worked the sideline, carrying the...
by Mitch Albom | Dec 28, 2001 | Detroit Free Press
Am I my brother’s keeper? Well, yes, out there on the pitcher’s mound, calming Matthew down, getting him to throw strikes, Mark Lestan was, for all those years, from Little League to senior high, his brother’s keeper.Only now, the brother was dying...
by Mitch Albom | Apr 22, 2001 | Detroit Free Press, Comment
They were all so sure. The police. The prosecutors. The judge. The mourners. They were all so sure the killers were in jail. Justice was coming. A good kid had been murdered, shot while he was on his knees in a pizza parlor refrigerator. The town cried, the school...
by Mitch Albom | Dec 29, 2000 | Detroit Free Press, Comment
One night. One town. One bullet. One kid.
The kid was Justin Mello, barely 16 years old, a popular soccer player at Anchor Bay High School with a melting smile, a tall, athletic frame, a freshly minted driver’s license, and a dream of buying his father’s GMC truck with the money earned working at a pizza shop.
