manute bol has passed

i didn't know him personally, but i did see him and say hello from time to time. every once in a while he'd come into the half door too. i know you know he was tall. i can't even explain HOW tall he was.nice too! i'm not nice when people stare at me. HE was nice. you couldn't help but stare. i almost always saw him with a smile on his face as well. i'd love to actually watch others around him as he walked through town. people with jaws agape. manute did a LOT of walking when he was in town. he really was never the same after the accident. 

i remember thinking to myself, WTF, when i heard he was scheduled to 'fight' some ass (it was someone horrible like joey buttafuco) on a celebrety boxing show on tv  years ago. THEN, i found out he was doing it to raise money to build either a school or hospital in his homeland of sudan.

manute, rip

Manute Bol, Former West Hartford Resident And NBA Player, Dead At 47
By JEFF OTTERBEIN, jotterbein@courant.com

Manute Bol, known to state residents as a basketball player whose 7-foot-7 frame made him one of a kind and also for the passion he held for his native land, died on Saturday in Charlottesville, Va.

He was 47.

Bol, a native of Sudan who lived in West Hartford in 2002-07, sought to better the lives of the people in his home country.

That mission was cut short when he died at the University of Virginia Hospital. Tom Prichard, executive director of the Kansas-based Sudan Sunrise humanitarian group for which Bol worked, told The Associated Press that Bol was being treated for severe kidney trouble and a painful skin condition.............

pic: sportige.com
 



pic of manute and billy grant:
Manute Bol stands with Billy Grant,
owner and chef of Grant's Restaurant,

and his son http://www.sudansunrise.org/getinvolved.htm

this wapo article is pretty comprehensive

Manute Bol, former Washington Bullet and one of NBA's tallest players, dies at 47

By Matt Schudel

Manute Bol, who became a basketball sensation in the 1980s as a skeletally thin shot-blocking giant with the Washington Bullets and other professional teams, and who devoted his post-basketball life to improving the lot of his fellow natives of Sudan, died June 19 at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville. He was 47.

His cousin George Bol said Mr. Bol had internal bleeding and other complications from Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a rare skin disease that he contracted from a medication he received in Africa.

Mr. Bol, one of the two tallest players in NBA history, was also one of its most exotic and endearing -- and surely the only one to have killed a lion with a spear. His unusual journey to basketball stardom began in southern Sudan, where he was a cattle-herding member of the Dinka tribe and never touched a basketball until his late teens. After catching the eye of an American coach working in Sudan, Mr. Bol made his way to the United States without knowing a word of English.............