Karl-Anthony Towns and Kathleen Reinhard have forged a friendship and kept in touch since her son died in 2012.
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In her dining room, Kathleen Reinhard can still see the tall teenager at her son’s funeral service in 2012. She is wearing a dark New York Knicks hoodie while sitting near a tray of her homemade banana bread, describing the church scene by pointing to different spots on her table.
The altar was here. The casket was there. There were rows of pews here and here, and Karl-Anthony Towns was right over there.
Reinhard didn’t know who Towns was on that winter morning inside St. Agnes Church in Clark, N.J. But she noticed the 6-foot-10 high school freshman, just like everyone else did. He happened to be the nation’s best basketball player in his grade.
Towns was also a St. Joseph of Metuchen class president who thought he should be present for a fallen alum, a 25-year-old member of the United States Marine Corps who was among six killed in a helicopter crash while supporting combat operations in Afghanistan. Kevin Reinhard was once a strong 6-foot-4 volleyball player on a powerhouse St. Joe’s team, and Towns was overwhelmed by the outpouring of affection and respect for him.
At 16, he was already used to being celebrated in print. “I grew up in an era when newspapers were making you feel like the best,” Towns said. But as the ballplayer watched a community shut down and pack a church to honor a soldier lost in a faraway land, he felt something change inside of him.
“For all the accomplishments I had, it meant nothing compared to what this man did,” he said. “It was one of the most humbling things to be a part of.”
Towns had to do something, anything, to honor a Marine he had never met. So the following day, he scored 25 varsity points against Perth Amboy — one for every year Reinhard spent on the planet — and then shut it down.
“I just stopped shooting,” Towns recalled. His grandmother lived in Perth Amboy, and his entire family was in the stands, wanting him to add on to his new career high.
“They’re screaming for me to shoot,” he recalled. But Towns was done looking at the basket, he said, “because I had learned what really mattered.”
Another 6-foot-10 St. Joe’s player, James Ziemba, recalled being stunned by his younger friend’s maturity and awareness. Towns had quietly laid out his plan before tipoff. “It’s a nice thing to want to do,” Ziemba said, “but then to actually do it, as a freshman?
“That was Karl. He always wanted to be part of that community. It wasn’t just a place for him to pass through and move on.”
The Reinhard family wasn’t aware of this small act of kindness until they talked to school officials about starting a scholarship in Kevin’s name. Someone mentioned what Towns did in the recent game.
“I was blown away,” Kathleen Reinhard said.
“It was the darkest time of my life when Kevin was killed, and you never know how you’re going to come out. That one little gesture from Karl was beautiful and meant the world to us. Kids his age don’t do things like that.”
As Reinhard remembered it, she first spoke to Towns by phone. The freshman asked the nurse if she might want to watch him play. Reinhard told Towns she would try, but that she was having a hard time leaving her house.
“And the thought of going to the same gymnasium that Kevin played in,” Reinhard said, “I didn’t know how I’d react to that.”
She ultimately called a girlfriend and asked her to join her at a St. Joe’s game.
“Do you think Karl knows you are here?” Cheryl Rudinski asked her in the stands.
“He knows I’m here,” Kathleen replied.
Towns played a great game, because that’s what he so often did, and afterward they talked and hugged and parted ways. For most teenage phenoms, that would have been a wrap, time to move on. But Towns had been raised the right way by his father, Karl, and his mother, Jacqueline, so he knew enough in the coming months and years to leave his table and his half-eaten pizza at Joey D’s in Metuchen to say hello to Reinhard when she stopped in.
But life is for the living, and Towns had dreams. Big dreams. He earned that Kentucky scholarship, and that No. 1 overall pick in the 2015 NBA Draft, and those four All-Star appearances for the Minnesota Timberwolves before these last two with his childhood team, the Knicks, who are trying to win their first championship since 1973.
All these years and tens of millions of dollars later, why did Towns stay connected to the 68-year-old woman whom he just hosted at a Knicks game last month? The woman whom he was texting before and after his Game 2 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers?
“I don’t think she realizes that she made a big impact on my life,” Towns said as he dressed at his locker Wednesday night. “I still think of her son all the time.”
That makes two of them.
Gestures matter
Kathleen Reinhard was drinking from a coffee mug graced by the image of Kevin in his Marine Corps uniform. She turned over her left shoulder and pointed to the spot in her kitchen where her only son informed her one night that he was enlisting in the military. Kathleen wanted no part of it. She urged Kevin to finish college, but the decision was already made.
As she told the story of her boy’s final days, gusting winds snapped at the large American flag flying high above a small Marine Corps flag in front of her three-bedroom, ranch-style home. Her husband of 44 years, Jim, a longtime chemical operator, was tending to his green grass, pink azaleas, and his red, white and blue flowers in the back.
Their son had been stationed in Hawaii at Kāneʻohe Bay. Kevin was a crew chief with HMH-363, a heavy helicopter squadron, who could take apart a helicopter and rebuild it by himself. His squadron was known as the Lucky Red Lions.
“Not so lucky in my book,” Kathleen said.
Kevin completed his first nine-month deployment in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, which was launched in 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He told his mother that he was shot at almost every day. “But I’m OK,” he assured her. “I’m up high enough.”
The crew chief loved nothing more than being in the air. “That’s where he was always the happiest,” Kathleen said.
Her son returned to New Jersey in 2011 before his second deployment, and Kathleen, Jim, Kevin and Kevin’s only sibling, Kathleen Jr., took a trip to Ocean City, Md., where they had vacationed during the kids’ childhood. They made sure to work in some go-kart racing, just like the old days.
Shortly before his death, Kevin admitted to his mother that he should have listened to her and finished school so he could become a pilot. He spoke of completing his service and earning his bachelor’s degree. Kevin and his sister agreed they would apply together for jobs with the New Jersey state police — she wanted to work in the detective bureau, and Kevin wanted to work on — what else? — a helicopter.
Kevin and his older sister were best friends who took trips to the Jersey Shore during all seasons, walking through the snow on the beach and taking polar plunges on New Year’s Eve. They made a promise to each other. If one died, the other would never leave his or her side.
Kevin placed a short video call home on Jan. 17, 2012, thinking it was his sister’s birthday, the 18th. The family laughed and discussed Kevin’s college plans. They showed him his Shih Tzu, Stubby, waiting for him in his room. Kathleen and Jim had their airline reservations booked for a trip to Hawaii to see their son, who was only six weeks from the end of his final deployment.
“He couldn’t wait to go home,” his sister said. Among other things, Kevin wanted to be reunited with his pride and joy, his black Nissan 350Z. He planned to reach out again the next day.
That call never came. At 11:58 p.m. the following night, the Reinhards heard a knock at their door. Kathleen looked out the window. “I didn’t even turn the front light on,” she said. “I just saw stripes.”
She turned to her daughter and said, “This isn’t going to be good,” and walked away. Kathleen Jr. opened the door to find three military representatives and a police officer on the other side.
“And everybody says, ‘What’s it like? Is it like the way it is on television?’” Kathleen said. “Yeah, they come in, and they read a piece of paper. ‘On behalf of the President of the United States and a grateful nation, I’m sorry to inform you that your son, Cpl. Kevin J. Reinhard, was killed in Helmand Province.’ I have it. I have that paper somewhere.”
The Reinhards turned off the electric candle that remained lit in the window whenever Kevin was deployed, lowered their flag to half-staff, and drove to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to recover Kevin’s remains. Kathleen Jr. kept her promise to her brother. She rode in the hearse on the way back home.
Kevin’s mother still doesn’t believe she has the full story of what happened to her son’s helicopter, which had been transporting ammunition and food to forward bases. NATO officials said there was no indication of enemy involvement, and she was told “catastrophic mechanical failure” was to blame. But Kathleen can’t understand how one of two helicopters that were waiting to land that day suddenly fell out of the sky in flames, claiming the lives of six American heroes.
On her fireplace mantel, across the room from Kevin’s framed St. Joseph graduation picture, Kathleen keeps a silver box containing letters of commendation and condolences from high-ranking government and military figures. The House of Representatives. The Secretary of the Navy. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“I’ve got them all,” she said.
But at a memorial ceremony in Hawaii, Kathleen was hurt and angered when a sergeant major started to leave to catch a flight without approaching her individually. “My son came home in a box,” she told him, “but you don’t have the decency to say you’re sorry?”
Gestures matter. Simple things are big things to a mother with a broken heart that time can’t heal.
That’s how a young, gifted basketball player made a difference one day by scoring 25 points instead of 30.
Getting to a game
Karl-Anthony Towns finally got Kathleen Reinhard tickets to a Knicks game, April 10, against the Toronto Raptors.
“It was the first time she ever asked me,” Towns said. “I said, ‘You text me all the time, and I told you if you ever want to come to a game, let me know.’”
Reinhard started as a Kentucky fan when Towns played for John Calipari. As part of her therapy, she made blankets for Kevin’s friends and for Towns and sent them with letters that said, “I hope when you put this around you that you can feel the warmth and strength of Kevin’s hug.” Towns told Kathleen he became emotional when he read her note.
Kevin’s mother became a Timberwolves fan for Towns’ first nine NBA seasons. Now, as a Villanova graduate with KAT playing alongside her fellow Wildcats — Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart — she’s in all her glory as a Knicks fan. She even sends Towns messages during games so he’ll get them when he’s done playing, just to let him know she’s watching.
“I always text him, ‘Please stay safe both on and off the court,’” Kathleen said. “Every time.”
She feels deeply for Karl’s own profound losses in his life — his mother and seven other relatives died after contracting the COVID-19 virus — and remains thankful that he’s allowed her a chance to partake in his journey. “But Karl has such little privacy,” Kathleen said, “I don’t want to infringe on whatever little time he has for himself.”
So she waited years to ask for her first set of tickets. “I finally said, ‘Karl, I’m going to be 68. I want to see you in a game,’” Kathleen said. They decided that the first time she would see Karl play an NBA game in person would be the Raptors game five days before her birthday.
Towns reserved four Madison Square Garden seats for Kathleen, her sister, Mary Beth Gerrity, her nephew, Michael, and her nephew’s fiancée, May, near courtside. His seats. After finishing with 22 points and 10 rebounds in a victory, Towns got Kevin’s mother a photo on the midcourt logo and spent quality time with her. He signed her Knicks shirt and gave her a KAT jersey and some team gear.
“He’s one in a million,” Kathleen said. “Most people would push you aside, but Karl has not forgotten where he came from.”
As he dressed at his locker following the Knicks’ Game 2 victory over the 76ers, Towns said he was raised to be a contributing member of his community and a man of his word. He wants to be defined by his philanthropy, not his perimeter range.
“Treating people the right way and doing what’s best for others, that’s what a true legacy is,” Towns said. “Kevin made the ultimate sacrifice for all of us.”
Kathleen said her son shared some of Towns’ best qualities. Kevin was a fun-loving and gentle giant who could walk into a room as a complete stranger and walk out knowing everyone. While once leading a race in a grade-school track meet, Kevin noticed a fellow runner struggling to keep up with the pack. He hit the brakes, doubled back to run side-by-side with the boy and let another competitor win.
Kathleen never asked her son why he did that. “I knew why,” she said.
It’s hard for her now to see Kevin’s friends and classmates with their spouses and families, enjoying the life he was denied. But to keep Kevin’s memory alive, she has her annual golf outing fundraiser at Forsgate Country Club on May 19 and a scholarship at St. Joseph in her son’s name.
And, of course, through KAT, she has her connection to her son and her beloved Knicks, who have a reasonable shot to win the NBA title. “I know they’re going to do it,” Kathleen said.
Karl-Anthony Towns can expect a few text messages between now and the parade.
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Ian O’Connor is a columnist for The Athletic. He is the author of six straight New York Times bestsellers. O’Connor was a columnist at various major outlets who earned multiple first-place finishes in contests run by the Society of Professional Journalists, Associated Press Sports Editors, Pro Football Writers of America, and Golf Writers Association of America. He is a proud former copy boy at The New York Times. Follow Ian on X @Ian_OConnor.
