LINCOLN — The kids wanted a dog. How could Milt Tenopir say no?
So the Nebraska offensive line coach hunted through the newspaper and found an overpriced cocker spaniel. His two young stepchildren named him after their favorite football player, a Husker center who spent a lot of time at the Tenopir house.
Jake.
“Doesn't sound too flattering,” Tenopir says, “but that's what the kids wanted to name him.”
He tells the story from a quiet sports bar, stopping to spit tobacco into an empty water bottle. It's Oct. 12, a cold, gray Lincoln morning, a decade to the day after a terrorist bomb annihilated an Indonesian nightclub.
Of all the memories of Jake Young, his old coach remembers the dog. And what happened next.
Tenopir left for work one morning, steering his Chevy pickup down his long, narrow, wooded driveway off South 40th Street. He received a call from his wife.
The dog had followed him to the street. Got hit by a truck.
Tenopir went home and told the kids. They had a ceremony in the backyard. They buried Jake beneath two pines next to the garage.
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