Of Margherita Grassi
The NBA star lived in the Emilian city for three years, from 1989 to 1991. Kindergarten children wrote thoughts dedicated to him
Years go by, but Reggio Emilia certainly does not forget, quite the contrary. Kobe Bryant is increasingly ‘reggiano forever’, ‘reggiano forever’. The star of the NBA he died three years ago, together with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, in a helicopter crash in Calabasas in California: he was 41 years old, the world was shocked.
The “Reggiano” period
For the loss of a champion whose sporting exploits will go down in history and for the loss of a friend of many, including the kids who knew him, also a teenager, in the various Italian cities where Kobe followed his father Joe, a basketball player like him . And among these cities right Reggio Emilia, where Kobe stayed from 1989 to 1991. Years in which he could be seen at the Palabigi in via Guasco on Sundays behind the barriers to watch the father on the pitch with Reggiana basketball; years in which he was saying, not without arousing a few smiles among his teammates: “I will become an NBA champion”. Just the Palabigi for some time now has literally the face of Kobewhich appears on a huge mural created on the entrance wall of the recently redeveloped sports hall, and not only: a plaque commemorating him and his daughter stands in the center of what on the first anniversary of his death was renamed ‘Largo Kobe and Gianna Bryant’.
The tribute of the city
A tribute to father and daughter but also to dreams to always cultivate. Today a bouquet of yellow and purple flowers, the colors of ‘his’ Los Angeles Lakers, was placed at the foot of the plaque by the city administrationand the mayor Luca Vecchi, together with the councilor for Sport of the Municipality Raffaella Curioni, recalled in presence and on social networks the champion who found a home in Reggio that he had never forgotten, keeping relationships with friends for life that every teenage boy knows. The children of the Otello Sarzi nursery school this morning ‘hung’ their thoughts on the tree that was planted to pay homage to him next to the plate: «He has a yellow shirt, it’s gold» wrote a little one. “He has now become an angel, his home is the clouds” is another message. On the evening of 26 January, at the city cinema Rosebud, for the first time after the streaming release last September, the docufilm “Kobe – An Italian story” was screened free of charge and for all citizens, where Reggio Emilia takes the lion’s share in the story of the champion’s childhood through the words of those who knew him at the time. A lot of filming was done in the city, for example at the San Vincenzo school that Kobe attended. The documentary was made thanks to the contribution of the Emilia-Romagna Film Commission, which obtained the collaboration of the Municipality of Reggio for the particular identification of locations and people to involve.
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