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The Luci Bonneau Story: The Tragedy that Inspired a Bowling Tradition
By Gianmarc Manzione

10/20/09

Everything else in Luci Bonneau's life remained almost cruelly routine. At Crossroads Bowling Center in Beaumont, TX, bowlers wheeled their three-ball bags through the parking lot for the state tournament in which Luci had competed so many times before. Waiting behind the lanes for the next squad to begin, competitors indulged the kind of mundane preoccupations that Luci, too, once was able to take for granted: an adjustment of thumb tape in a spare ball, a digging for pocket change to buy a Coke at the snack counter.

The one person those bowlers did not find among them at that moment, though, was Luci Bonneau herself. Nodding off in a parked car outside the center to give her chemo-ravaged body the rest it so badly needed, Bonneau was grappling with an opponent far more formidable than any she ever faced on the lanes: breast cancer.

"She was sick and she would sleep out in the car before she came in to bowl," says Donna Conners, organizer of the Luci Bonneau Memorial Striking Against Breast Cancer Mixed Doubles Tournament held each year at Palace Lanes in Houston. "Then she went and bowled and we broke a state record and she went home. It's just such a sad thing, and it's a tough disease."

It was the last tournament that Luci Bonneau would ever bowl. And when she did go home that day, the memory she left behind was that of a woman who knew no obstacle powerful enough to deter her love of the sport – not the fingernails made painfully sore by radiation that she wrapped in tape to bowl the tournament, not the crippling exhaustion that sent her napping in her car between squads – nothing.

"She kept bowling all the way to the end," says former PWBA star Carol Norman, who had won a PWBA regional event with Luci Bonneau not long before that final tournament in Beaumont.

"She wasn't going to give up on her teammates as long as they didn't give up on her," says David Garber, Team USA High Performance Director for the United States Bowling Congress as well as a friend of Luci's. "Bowling gave her a purpose in life, she wanted to do it as long as she could. She had a passion that kept her driven even though she was facing a terminal disease."

In Luci Bonneau, breast cancer encountered the spirit of a woman who did not like to lose, a woman who even discovered a new passion in the very fight that threatened to take her life.

"She said ‘If I survive we'll put on a tournament to raise money for breast cancer research,'" explains Donna Conners.

As with too many of the 200,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer each year, though, Luci Bonneau did not survive. But even breast cancer could not kill the dream she shared with Donna that day.

"That was 3 or 4 months before she passed away," Conners remembers of that conversation with her friend and teammate.

That conversation became a promise that Donna Conners keeps each year when the Luci Bonneau Memorial Striking Against Breast Cancer Mixed Doubles Tournament attracts some of the country's most talented bowlers and tournament administrators for one of the most anticipated events on their calendars.

Each year you're as likely to spot a pair of hall of famers such as Del Ballard Jr. and Wendy MacPherson as you are to find a duo of house bowlers from the local Thursday night league up the block. The list of names that come from around the country to compete in Luci Bonneau's name each year reads like a scoreboard from a major stop on tour: Parker Bohn III, Carolyn Dorin-Ballard, Wes Mallott, Tommy Jones, Lynda Barnes, Mike Fagan, Sean Rash, Mike Scroggins.

"Every year we've sold out," Conners explains. "This is such a fun tournament. The bowlers have a great time. One guy who bowled a 103 told me he was ready to bowl it again next year. He just told me that bowling next to people that he watched on TV was the coolest thing he could think of."

"It's a great event," says Del Ballard Jr. "Everybody has a great time."

So great, in fact, that the people who convene from around the country to make it possible—the PBA's Carey Mogart to oil the lanes, Jim Welch to help keep track of scores and brackets, Connie Cotton who works the microphone and was the first bowling coach in the life of a then-8-year-old Del Ballard Jr.—all contribute their services for free.

"You don't just get people to come down from Vegas to help with a tournament for free," Del Ballard Jr. says. "That's how you know it's done for the right reasons."

Another way you know that it's done for the right reasons is that, more often than not, the iPods, DVD players and flat-screen TVs that are raffled off get sent right back into the drawing by the very people who win them.

"The items that people win get returned back a lot of the time to be raffled off again so they can raise more money," Davis Garber explains. "It's not about winning stuff, it's about the cause."

In Luci Bonneau's life, though, it was always about winning - whether through sharing the winner's circle with doubles partner Carol Norman on the regional PWBA tour or helping others feel her passion for the sport through teaching, Luci Bonneau found in bowling a purpose that endures even years after breast cancer claimed her life.

"She was a role model for a lot of people," Carol Norman says, "a beautiful woman, very knowledgeable, and someone who loved to teach the game. She was just a great bowler and always conducted herself as a lady."

And every time Jim Welch hops a plane to Houston on his own dime and the winners of raffled-off iPods return them to the drawing to raise more money in her name, the legacy Luci Bonneau left behind – the champion, the role model, the fighter – lives inside the people who make the Luci Bonneau Memorial Striking Against Breast Cancer Mixed Doubles Tournament possible each year.
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Shannon O'Keefe's Road to Bowling Stardom
By Gianmarc Manzione

10/8/09

Nobody tells Team USA member Shannon O'Keefe that she cannot do something. Nobody. And if you think it is easy to tell her otherwise, you try it.

"As soon as you try to tell me that there is something I can't do, I will do it until I prove you wrong," the 2007 Women's World Champion explains.

One person who proudly considers himself proven wrong these days is Shannon O'Keefe's father, a former pro bowler himself who one day dared to suggest that bowling was not exactly Shannon's strong suit when, a 16-year-old softball player who batted .411 as a freshman and finished among the top 160 women at the 1996 U.S. Olympic softball team trials, she took an interest in joining her brother on the lanes one day. But not before getting started in the rather inconspicuous confines of a Dick's Sporting Goods store, and a conversation with her father that she will never forget.

"My little brother started bowling, so I went to watch him one day and there were these cute boys," O'Keefe explains with a coy roll of the eyes. "So I figured I'd bowl the last couple months of league with him. My Dad took me to Dick's and let me pick out a ball. It was all about color - it had to be pretty."

Even the career of a future gold-medalist has its pedestrian origins. For Shannon, it was a teal plastic ball bought out of a sporting goods store. But as any teenage girl will surely agree, you just don't go out in public with a new bowling ball unless you have a pair of shoes to match. Unfortunately for Shannon, however, her father begged to differ - a disagreement in which a future champion was born.

"Then we get into the bowling center and he is making me rent these nasty shoes," O'Keefe continues. "I am looking in the pro shop and see these Linds shoes - they had the white shoes with the teal toe, and I remember my Dad saying 'Honey, I am not spending 150 bucks on shoes so you can look cute.' I said 'I have to have them - you don't understand!' He repeated himself and said 'In a sport that you're not even any good at.' I said 'Excuse me?' He said 'You're not a bowler, you're a softball player.' I thought 'You don't think I can be any good at this?' He told me I was just doing it to chase boys."

With husband and USBC Coaching Specialist Bryan O'Keefe in her corner as both partner and coach, any boy-chasing days Shannon may have experienced are well behind her now. As for finding the money for those white Linds shoes with the teal toe, though, those, too quickly found their place in the category of things that people told Shannon she could not do.

"I did get them," Shannon says. "I paid for them later on my own."

That defiance has produced many additional treasures since that 16-year-old beginner picked out a pair of pricey shoes at a pro shop one day. Just three years later, she was a 19-year-old runner-up for Rookie of the Year on the PWBA Tour who would soon shoot a televised 299 and tie Ryan Shafer and Pete Weber for the most consecutive strikes ever thrown on TV at the time - 18 in a row.

Somewhere along the way, though, Shannon O'Keefe learned that getting what you want sometimes means losing what you have. What Shannon had was a full-ride softball scholarship that would have put her through college, the need to move 3,000 miles away from her family to be with her husband and coach, and a softball team that she was terrified of letting down.

"I was terrified to tell my coaches," O'Keefe explains of her decision to give up her full-ride softball scholarship. "I hate letting people down. I knew they would be disappointed, and that tore me up."

But with a chest of medals from international competition, a win at the Women's World Championships in 2007, making Team USA in her first attempt in 2005 and remaining with the team each following year, and finishing runner up at the 2007 Women's U.S. Open, it is safe to assume that none of her former softball teammates begrudge her these days for following her dream. But that does not mean that Shannon O'Keefe is done checking off items on that list of things that others might dare suggest she cannot do - a modest collection of ambitions including "winning all the majors, and being on Team USA for ten years."

As for the father who once dared to doubt her? "He is one of my best friends," Shannon says. "He has been with me on this journey from day one. To have somebody in your corner with you like that, I am very blessed."
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Memory Lane: The Legend of Buzz Fazio
By Gianmarc Manzione

10/1/09

It is 1924 somewhere in Akron, Ohio, the town where a teenage Basil Fazio will soon scrape by on a job at the rubber plant and, later in Detroit where he would become known only as "Buzz" after captaining the Stroh's bowling team for nine years in which he would win the 1955 Masters and bowl the first-ever 300 game in the finals of the "All-Star" tournament, as a desk clerk for Chrysler and salesman for the Stroh Brewing Company.

But this morning "Buzz" is known by his real name of Basil - "Basilino" if we're going by the name his Sicilian-born parents preferred-and he is just a boy who knows only that he has discovered the thing he loves and that it is found here at Butchel's Recreation in Akron which, on this particular Saturday morning, he finds shrouded in darkness and closed.

But just like the two tumors that failed to defeat him in his 70s, the car crash in '74 that took his spleen and nearly a leg as well but couldn't take his life, or the bowling thumb a barber sliced down to the bare bone while wiping off a shaving blade on a rag in Fazio's lap-an injury that still could not keep him from finishing the final stretch at the All-Star that year-young Basil Fazio is about to discover another passion of his: an adamant refusal to accept defeat.

And that is why Fazio finds himself feeling around in the dark of a cellar for half an hour now after slipping down a coal chute to get into Butchel's and set the pins up himself and bowl before his friends arrived. It is, after all, only 6 o'clock in the morning-the kind of hour when you're only awake if you have to be.

Then again, the sight of a 14-year-old pinsetter finding a way into a closed-down bowling alley at 6am might not be all that unlikely in the scheme of things. This is the Basil Fazio who finds himself nearing a time in the 20th century when Bill Lillard will walk into a hardware store to the instant recognition of those inside who have seen him on one of the several weekly bowling shows they tune in to watch on TV throughout the week, a time when even bowling announcers like "Whispering" Joe Wilson had stage names and no masking units concealed those B-10 Brunswick semi-automatics as you bowled, a time when Basil Fazio would even find a bowling alley on the grounds of that rubber plant he'll work for in Akron.

By then, though, Basil will be "The Buzzer" and he will find much more than rubber plants with bowling alleys in them. He will find himself freezing behind the wheel of a "beat-up roadster" on his way to the next booked match somewhere in Ohio with a filthy tarpaulin draped over himself and his friends to keep the cold away.

"After the rides, we looked like coal-miners!" Fazio would remember later.

He would find himself on the roster of Brunswick's bowling stars and hopping flights from Hawaii to Europe, when a Bowlers Journal story from 1953 would report that Buzz "found champagne didn't cost as much in Germany as it did in France" and, by the end of a trip that included a ride on the Orient Express, that he had "gained eight pounds."

By the time that Fazio found himself a frame away from winning another Masters title in 1968 at 60 years-old, though, the little "Basilino" once described as "too small to take the pounding" of the football career he once pursued had gained a lot more than a few pounds on a jaunt through Europe for Brunswick. He had gained a reputation as the "swarthy little grandfather" who had not an ounce of "quit" in him, the wildly eccentric competitor who would leap and click his heels in the air as he converted two 7-10 splits on the way to winning a 1955 Masters title that would be described as "the greatest individual triumph of Fazio's long career."

By 1968, the bowler known in living rooms across America as "the little Italian guy who jumps around all the time" was back and on the verge of becoming the oldest player ever to win the Masters, and stood one tenth frame away from defeating Pete Tountas to achieve a place in history which, as any bowling fan aware of Fazio's career will agree, he already owned even with a loss.

Click here to get a glimpse of one of the most flamboyant performers in the history of the sport, as Buzz Fazio's kneeling prayers and belly flops at the foul line factor as heavily into his repertoire at 60 years old as they did when that 14-year-old pinsetter slipped down a coal chute in Akron for a little extra practice at dawn.
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100-Year-Old Bowler Awarded on Live! With Regis and Kelly
By Aaron Smith

USBC Communications

9/30/09

Emma Hendrickson, a 100-year-old bowling sensation from Morris Plains, N.J., once again found herself in the spotlight as she won the Sensational Senior award from "Live! With Regis and Kelly" earlier this week.

Hendrickson's rise to fame started in April when she competed at the 2009 United States Bowling Congress Women's Championships in Reno, Nev. She became the oldest participant in tournament history, breaking her tie with Ethel Brunnick of Santa Monica, Calif., who competed in the 1987 event in Hartford, Conn., at 99 years old.

Word of Hendrickson's achievement spread quickly as video of her bowling at the USBC Women's Championships made its way onto ESPN Top 10 Plays and ESPNEWS. This followed with a challenge from television personality Regis Philbin.

The Philbin-Hendrickson bowling match aired on "Live! With Regis and Kelly" in May.

Philbin ended up with the higher score at the end of the match, but Hendrickson earned the admiration of a brand new audience.

Upon receiving the award, Hendrickson had a few heartfelt words for all of those who watched the show and helped her win the award.

"The biggest word is thank you. And if I don't say thank you now, it's never too late to say thank you," Hendrickson said. "This was an experience that I never thought I would ever see."

Hendrickson said on the telecast that she was still active on the lanes. She already has signed up to compete at the 2010 Women's Championships in El Paso, Texas. When she takes to the tournament lanes, it will mark her 51st appearance at the event.
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USBC HALL OF FAMER JUNIOR POWELL DIES AT AGE 84
Mark Miller

USBC Communications

ARLINGTON, Texas - John "Junior" Powell, a United States Bowling Congress Hall of Famer and Toledo, Ohio, area bowling legend, died in his Springfield Township, Ohio, home Sept. 22 at age 84.

A 2000 USBC Hall of Fame inductee, Powell's prominence came from the 1950s through the early 1970s before his competitive career was cut short because of a knew injury. He had six top-10 American Bowling Congress Tournament finishes including second places in Classic all-events in 1962 and in the team event in 1971. His other top-five finishes were fourth in the 1950 doubles with Bill Meyers and fourth in the 1959 Masters. He also was runner-up in the 1959 Petersen Classic singles.

Powell won 23 championships outside Toledo and 11 local association titles. He was the Ohio match-play winner twice, took the city match-play event 14 times and captained the Fort Worth, Texas, team in the National Bowling League in the early 1960s. He was named to the Greater Toledo Bowling Association Hall of Fame in 1966 and also was a member of the Ohio bowling hall of fame.

The former bowling pro shop owner was an investor and partner in several Toledo-area bowling centers. He also partnered with USBC Hall of Famer Don Carter on a number of centers nationwide and bowled with Carter in the 1991 ABC Tournament in Toledo, the last time he bowled.

For the last 30 years, he owned and bred harness racing horses while he and wife June split time between Toledo and Palm Harbor, Fla.

Services for Powell will be at 11 a.m. Friday in the Ansberg-West Funeral Home in Toledo. The family suggests tributes be made to the American Diabetes Association or to the American Heart Association.
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