PITTSBURGH -- Richard Desrosiers never made it to Heinz
Field to watch his beloved Steelers play football, but his widow
helped him fulfill his dream in death.
Thanks to some help from sympathetic donors, Kathleen Desrosiers
attended Sunday's game, bringing an urn with some of her late
husband's ashes, as well as his ring and two pictures of him. He
had died in March of a brain tumor.
"I couldn't take the tumor away. I couldn't take the pain away.
I couldn't make him better. But I can do this," Kathleen
Desrosiers, 60, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Though he lived in Exeter, N.H., Richard Desrosiers adopted the
Steelers at an early age and followed them closely. He named his
dog Steeler and his wardrobe, by his widow's estimate, was 95
percent Steelers gear.
Braving the biting cold and the Steelers' disappointing 29-22
loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars, Desrosiers waved her new Terrible
Towel, showed off her painted face and warmed her head with a
Steelers hat.
She called it "an overwhelming experience."
"It's sad to think that he got here in death," she added.
"But this is where he wanted to be. It was what he asked me to do.
I got to be with him one last time while he did something he wanted
more than anything else in the whole wide world."
Amy Litterini, a western Pennsylvania native who now lives in
New Hampshire, was the couple's counselor during Desrosiers'
yearlong battle with cancer. She arranged for the purchase of the
two tickets to Sunday's game and raised money for Kathleen
Desrosiers and one of her sons to spend a night in a Pittsburgh
hotel.
Desrosiers was covered with a Steelers blanket when he died, and
at his funeral, his two stepsons honored his memory by donning
Steelers jerseys.