Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Saturday, December 14, 2024 80° Today's Paper


Sports Breaking

LeBron Grandmothers’ Fan Club celebrates NBA title

CLEVELAND.COM VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Canons blasted confetti into the air as the parade for the Cleveland Cavaliers moved through downtown Cleveland.

CLEVELAND >> This is one bunch of grannies that shouldn’t be trifled with.

Nothing was going to stand between them and their man.

Not a traffic jam for the ages.

Not even roadblocks.

A mission was accomplished, and they were not about to miss the party.

Members of the LeBron James Grandmothers’ Fan Club gathered at the crack of dawn today to board a bus to join an estimated 1.3 million other revelers for the Cavs victory parade in Cleveland.

Grandmother Cathy Kauf of Goodyear Heights showed off her fresh Cavs championship tattoo from the night before to the other grandmothers.

They were impressed, but not exactly ready to be inked themselves to show off their mad Cavs love.

“I’m the only crazy one,” Kauf said with a sigh.

Kauf now has 11 Cavs tattoos, including two in her mouth.

Amid chants of “all in” and “mission completed” and “L-B-J,” the grandmothers munched on muffins and cranberry juice as they inched their way toward Cleveland.

Someone on the bus quipped that some think grandmothers should be home baking cookies.

One particularly feisty grandmother took exception.

“Stay home making cookies? No not today,” said Patricia Moore of Kenmore. “No. No. No. We are not staying home to make cookies today.

“We are all in.”

With the Cleveland skyline in sight and the chance to cheer on their adopted grandson LeBron, the grandmothers hit their first roadblock — literally.

The exit they planned to take had been closed by Cleveland police.

They did what grandmothers do. They sent another adopted grandson — this time bus driver, Herman Lennon Jr. — out to tell the officer that the bus is full of LeBron’s grandmothers and they have a parade to get to.

Like another adopted good obedient grandson, the officer moved his car that blocked the exit so the bus could pass through.

The victory was short-lived as another police roadblock was just a few feet down the exit on East 9th Street.

So they sent Lennon out again.

Not wanting to cross a bus full of grannies, a group of Cleveland officers not only opened the closed parade route, but also arranged an escort for the bus to the rally site.

It didn’t take long for the tens of thousands gathered along the parade route to realize this wasn’t just any old charter bus full of gray hairs — this bus was full of LeBron’s favorite grandmothers from Akron.

Perhaps it was the chants of “Go Grannies” coming from the bus that tipped them off, but the crowd cheered and waved as the bus passed along the same route that the “kid from Akron” would soon traverse on his way to Cleveland sports immortality.

The significance of the ride along the parade route as police officers waved them through closed intersection after closed intersection was not lost on Alder Chapman, the club’s president and founder.

She looked out at the adulation from the crowd and simply waved and repeated “oh my” over and over again.

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “It is like something out of a movie.”

Chapman, like the 20 or so other grandmothers on the bus, have supported LeBron through the highs and lows of his storied NBA career.

He made a promise to bring a championship to Cleveland and they promised to support him every step along the way.

And now that journey brought them from Akron to Cleveland as Northeast Ohio celebrated its first championship in 52 years and their collective grandson LeBron James was the MVP who made it all possible.

“Pinch me,” Chapman said looking out at thousands and thousands of Cavs fans. “This seems like a dream.”

Leave a Reply