Hundreds fill Prairieland Park for final farewell to Kelly Bowers

Kelly Bowers was remembered for his everlasting battery, his endless passion and his witty humour during a memorial service at Prairieland Park Saturday.

Bowers, a sports icon in Saskatoon for his involvement with minor, high school and college basketball and football in the city, died from a sudden heart attack last week at 70 years old.

That passion for sport was evident as many people at the memorial wore minor football jerseys as a tribute to the Kinsmen Football League’s greatest champion and spokesperson.

The memorial also taught everyone in the crowd what Bowers was like as a man off the field, what kind of grandfather he was and the impact he had on thousands of people.

Dave Hardy, the memorial’s emcee, borrowed a line from former Huskies football head coach Brian Towriss to best sum up Bowers’ presence.

“His infectious enthusiasm, work ethic and endless energy has had a huge, positive impact on so many young men and women in this community,” Hardy said.

That was the public Kelly Bowers.

The man affectionately known as “Biff” seemingly never failed to make a person smile and laugh.

Bowers’ second eldest grandchild, Quinn Hoffman, was one of the first people to the microphone and shared a story of Bowers’ encouragement with a near-perfect impersonation of his late grandfather.

“He always told me, ‘Come on, Quinn, basketball is a great sport!’ The thing is, I actually don’t play basketball, I play soccer,” Hoffman said.

Quinn also shared a story of a family ski trip where Bowers would take up to 20 minutes to get back on his feet after falling over, only to repeat the process over again. The only words he would speak when he was offered any help was: “I’ll be up in a minute.”

Many of Bowers’ endeavours can be traced back to his career as a teacher, which began in 1973. His daughters, Aerin Bowers and Kasie Hoffman, admitted to marking many of his physical education exams by matching the answers to a hand-written answer key Bowers prepared for them.

“Congratulations to all of you who got an A, you deserved it,” Aerin remembered before the crowd, who met her memory with loud applause and laughter.

Bowers’ sisters, Dawn and Shannon, shared numerous stories of Bowers growing up. They talked of how he would use his sports knowledge to entertain himself by taking coloured labels he ripped from cereal boxes and arrange them against one another. They remembered him adding numbers to the backs of the labels and going by himself in a room to pretend to be legendary broadcaster Foster Hewitt calling a Saturday night game between the Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs.

The pair of sisters also reworked Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s Casey at the Bat poem that Bowers famously recited for a public speaking competition in Grade 8. Despite winning, Bowers had one issue: the school principal liked Bowers’ performance so much that he encouraged him to keep performing it.

“He had to say the poem for every person who walked into that school,” Shannon said. “I tell ya, you would walk out of the bathroom and there was Kelly: ‘The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day…’ ”

The pair’s final sendoff to Bowers was reciting their own version of the poem’s final paragraphs.

“Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright, the band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light. Somewhere men are laughing and somewhere children shout, but there is no joy in Saskatoon; mighty Kelly — our brother Kelly — has called his last timeout,” they closed in unison.