In the mid 1980’s when my mom, Laura Lally, was in high school attending Visitation Academy, she would compete against the best basketball players in the state and to play as well as them she would need to endure through some difficult physical training. My grandpa, who I call Papa Tom, is real pain when it comes to training for a sport, eating right and staying in shape. I imagine Papa Tom making my mom go through a living hell when it came to training for basketball. My mom would tell us kids what type of workout Papa tom made her go through everyday. It consisted of five hundred jumpshots, sixty free throws, five reps of theory second free throws, and running up and down flight of stairs. The stairs were steep and they were embedded into this hill.
This hill always brings back memories to me because during the Christmas parties we have at his house, someone would always be walking down the stairs and with it being icy at least one of my great aunts or aunts would fall down the stairs and it would be a lucky party if that did not happen.
Papa Tom lives in this woody area in Chesterfield and his house sits up on a hill and…show more content… He would come with Mr. Steuby, the father of Alice Steuby, who was a close friend of my mom’s in high school who also played on the basketball team
“He would be the type of parent that would yell at and tell you what to do from the stands”, that’s how my mom would put it to us. She claims that it was super embarrassing every time he would come because he friends on her team would think that her dad was a lunatic. One particular practice that Papa Tom had went to, there he gained an idea that would perhaps have affected my mom’s legs forever.
Papa Tom was born Thomas Angelo Lombardo Jr. in 1946. As a child he lived all over the place because his his father was in the army. Papa Tom always tells the same story when he talks about living in Japan as a
