Red Wings prospect Jack Adams lost his brother, Mark, recently, and Jack spoke with the Daily Gazette’s Mike MacAdam regarding his attempts to grieve his brother:
So you’re looking at Union College’s 2018-19 season opener at Messa Rink against Army on Saturday with the optimism and the self-assuredness of a 21-year-old pro hockey prospect prepared to show what all the behind-the-scenes offseason grind has produced.
Then your coach shows up at Fox Hall one morning, less than three weeks before the highly anticipated season opener, and says he has to drive you home to Boxford, Mass.
And Jack Adams doesn’t remember much of anything from that car ride, because his older brother, Mark “Roo” Adams Jr., the leading light of Jack’s life, is dead.
A week goes by before Jack picks up a stick or puts on a pair of skates again. He loses 15 pounds.
But Jack Adams will be in his Union Dutchmen uniform Saturday. While the aftermath of his brother’s death lingers, so does the afterglow of his life. It’s a measure of Roo’s enduring impact on his younger brother that Jack Adams is back on campus and raring to go for the Army game, even if he remains befuddled by life and in a deep state of grief.
“I don’t know, just being alone in my house was making me more upset, and I just knew that if I wanted to get ready for Army, then I needed to start skating again, because I was kind of out of shape,” Adams said before practice on Thursday afternoon, sitting on a bench in the Messa Rink lobby in front of a glittering trophy case.
“It was terrible, man. But there was never a thought in my mind that he wouldn’t want me to play. He was my biggest fan.”