Dwight Howard drives hard to “the bucket.”
Earlier this week, Dwight Howard hit the winning bucket. He did not suit-up, lace-up, or even take the court, but he nailed it. Visiting with Kay Kellogg, who has stage three multiple myeloma, Howard delivered the one and only item she had on her “bucket list.”
“He has become my seven-foot-tall bottle of medicine,” Kellogg beamed. “Dwight Howard is just such a precious, wonderful kid. Whenever I watch him play, he just makes me feel good inside.” Before her cancer kept her housebound, Kellogg wrung out a few extra dollars from her fixed income, buying season tickets for Magic Games. Seated way up in the Bob Uecker seats, she barely could see him. Still, “I felt like I was in heaven,” Kellogg says wistfully.
In constant pain from her incurable, inoperable cancer, Kellogg inspires her family and friends with her indomitable good cheer. She clearly had the same effect on Howard, who spent more than two hours visiting Kellogg at her Orlando apartment. The two of them talked, joked, and laughed as if they had known one another for years. They put no subject off-limits, talking openly about life, death, and faith. According to the Orlando Sentinel, “She told him how she was in show business her whole life and loves basketball. He told her how he’s been in basketball his whole life and loves show business.”
When Kellogg described her career as a professional dancer, Howard gingerly picked-up one of her tiny little feet, grinning and playing the ingénue, “How could this little foot hold-up anyone?” They laughed heartily as they beheld Howard’s built-in swim fins. When Howard wondered aloud why his was the only name on her bucket list, Kellogg simply smiled a satisfied smile.
