Peterson, Grant battle their disease like champs

On Sports

By kerry eggers

The Portland Tribune, Aug 18, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

GRANT

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They’re just two of thousands of professional athletes who have added to the sports scene in Portland in the past 35 years.

Brent Peterson and Brian Grant.

Peterson, the former Winterhawk player and coach who played 11 seasons in the NHL, and Grant, the ex-Trail Blazer forward who spent a dozen years in the NBA.

Former major-league athletes bound by a city and a disease.

Peterson, now associate head coach of the Nashville Predators, and Grant, a West Linn resident who retired in 2006, had never met until they shared lunch Tuesday at Cafe Du Berry on Southwest Macadam Avenue.

In town to participate in a Winterhawks alumni golf tournament, Peterson sought a meeting with Grant, who earlier this year revealed he had been diagnosed, at 37, with young onset Parkinson’s disease.

Peterson, 51, learned in 2004 he has Parkinson’s, a progressive degenerative disease of the brain that impairs motor control, speech and other functions.

“I just wanted to reach out to Brian, to get together with another Parkinson’s patient and talk about how he’s doing,” Peterson says. “I’ve dealt with it a lot longer than he has.”

Grant appreciates the gesture. They have become instant friends.

“He’s a great individual — a warrior, man,” Grant says. “I’ve never been to a hockey game, don’t know much about it. But just listening to him in conversation, about how he loves his sport and approaches coaching, you can tell he is a warrior.”

Grant is still in the initial stages of getting used to the reality of living with Parkinson’s disease. Peterson is beyond that now.

“Parkinson’s is weighing very heavily on me,” Grant says. “Meeting Brent was definitely a bright spot, a bright moment for me. He went through the exact same things I’m going through now. To hear him talk about dealing with it gave me some encouragement not to get too down about it.

“He reminded me of other people with other diseases who aren’t as fortunate as we are, to be able to survive what we’re going through. We had a great conversation. It was very uplifting. He’s somebody I’ll definitely stay in touch with.”

I arrived in Portland in 1975, first working with the now-defunct Oregon Journal, the afternoon newspaper owned by The Oregonian Publishing Co. The next year, the junior Winterhawks (who changed their name recently from Winter Hawks) moved from Edmonton to Portland. Sports Editor George Pasero — perhaps as some sort of macabre joke — assigned the beat to me.

At the time, I was about where Brian Grant is now in terms of hockey. I’d never seen a game before the first one I covered. Peterson — a talented, heady center iceman and the team’s captain — made my job much easier. It was the start of a relationship that has spanned more than three decades, including a seven-year run as the Hawks’ head coach.

In 1998, I covered Peterson’s final Portland team, which won the Memorial Cup.

We’ve kept in touch since. I have as much admiration for Peterson as anyone who has come through Portland during my 34 years on the job here.

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