“This one was for Dad.
“Just a day after the emotional funeral for his father, Jordan Wiener threw a no-hitter Thursday in a playoff game for Robert F. Kennedy High School.”
From Assistant principal Wiener’s son throws no-hitter to honor dad (New York Daily News, 5/22/09):
This one was for Dad.
Just a day after the emotional funeral for his father, Jordan Wiener threw a no-hitter Thursdayin a playoff game for Robert F. Kennedy High School. His father, Mitchell, was the Queens educator who died on Sunday night, becoming the city’s first swine flu fatality.
Jordan said that after breaking down during the funeral, he decided that he was going to pitch in RFK’s B-League first-round matchup, just as his father would have wanted him to.
“When my father was put in the hospital on (May 13), I told myself, ‘Death or survival, I was going to pitch,’ ” Jordan said. “I knew that’s what he would have wanted from me, to go out there and pitch. I was going to pitch no matter what”…
The Panthers wore caps with Mitchell Wiener’s initials on them. Wiener served as an assistant principal at Intermediate School 238 in Hollis for 30 years. He is survived by his wife, Bonnie, and two other sons, Adam and Farrell.
Mitchell, a lifelong Mets fan, taught Jordan the game and coached his son’s Little League team.
“People shouldn’t feel bad that we lost our father,” Farrell, 18, said on Wednesday. “We had the greatest father in the world.”
Hundreds of mourners, including 400 students, gathered at Sinai Chapels in Queens on Wednesday to .remember Mitchell Wiener, three days after he died at age 55. He was the country’s sixth swine flu fatality.
On Wednesday, Jordan sobbed while quoting from the college application essay he wrote about his father:
“Although my dad would look awful ridiculous in tights and a cape, he had the elements of a hero. Mitchell Wiener is the rock of my family.”