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JOEY DOYLE: Crazy About the Packers

 

The Sunday ritual at Bill and Camille Doyle's home would make most N.F.L. fans jealous. Four televisions, four different games and 16 rowdy young men rooting at the top of their lungs, all day long. This, the Doyles did without fail, at the request of their youngest, Joey, a Staten Island "sports nut" who made it to Wall Street but still loved mom and dad's house best. Especially mom's cooking.

"He made Sundays this big holiday for us," said Mrs. Doyle. "You couldn't be around him and not like football, any sport."

The mantel in the Doyle house is lined with trophies, newspaper clippings and certificates from the days when Joey Doyle, 25, a rabid Green Bay Packers fan, was a a star pitcher at Wagner College.

Now the family is preparing to add another prize to the collection, an autographed football mailed to the family from the Green Bay Packers, a gift that Mr. Doyle would have surely coveted, and one that has helped to remind the Doyle family that they do not grieve alone. "Every day you think, I'm not going to get through this," said Mr. Doyle's father. "But the people, strangers a lot of them, they just keep reaching out. They help more than they know."

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times
Picture from http://www.september11victims.com/september11Victims