This past Sunday, we honored Special Olympics Virginia coach Sarah Pettrone, who passed away two summers ago at age 38 after a courageous battle with cancer.
Special Olympics Virginia athlete and Global Messenger Frank Stephens spoke at the Potomac Region Swim Meet, in front of many of athletes and families touched by Coach Sarah: “Sarah was a very special woman whose life is best measured not in years, but in deeds. We miss her, and we always will.”
John Stephens, Frank’s father, then presented Sarah’s father with an iconic red Special Olympics ball to commemorate her incredible gifts to our community.
Read Frank’s full speech below:
It’s been almost two years and this is still so hard. I still expect to go to basketball practice and run into the Fantastics either coming or going. Running into them meant seeing Coach Sarah. Seeing Coach Sarah meant I would be smiling.
We miss her.
Some people just make you smile. Some people make the world a happier place. If this was all there was to say about Coach Sarah, it would be enough to equal a life well lived.
We miss her.
I always thought of her as Coach Sarah because she was so much a part of the Fantastics and Special Olympics. But there was so much more. She was Dr. Pettrone, too. The doctor who traveled the world to help people in need. She was also an athlete who ran marathons.
We miss her.
In my vision, she ran with a smile, because she did everything with a smile.
We miss her.
A few years ago, I was asked to accept an award on behalf of Eunice Shriver. I said of her that she had left a hole in the world that would take a lot of hearts to fill. Coach Sarah was one of those hearts. One that filled a lot of emptiness in the troubled hearts of others.
We miss her.
Sarah was a very special woman whose life is best measured not in years, but in deeds. In the words of Edward Kennedy about his brother Bobby Kennedy, “[S]he saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it.”
We miss her, and we always will.