(Photo: Dale G. Young)
How do you knock 92 years of life when every day of that life was celebrated with the verve and cheer Gus Ganakas brought to a surrounding world?
Philosophically, you don’t. Personally, you wince and groan and ache that a gentleman so endlessly decent and even radiant no longer is with us.
Ganakas died Friday almost 43 years to the month after he was fired as Michigan State’s basketball coach.
That awful firing isn’t by itself the story of a man’s life. Gus and his personality and humor and individual gifts transcended anything that might have happened professionally during his long and blessed life.