{"id":21315,"date":"2013-05-20T16:14:48","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T20:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=21315"},"modified":"2013-05-20T16:14:48","modified_gmt":"2013-05-20T20:14:48","slug":"former-hoops-star-dies-of-rare-blood-disorder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=21315","title":{"rendered":"Former Hoops Star Dies Of Rare Blood Disorder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>BY IRIS B. HOLTON<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sentinel City Editor<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A former Robinson High School and University of South Florida standout lost his battle with a rare blood disorder. He was 49 years old.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Charlie Bradley<\/strong> and <strong>Darryl \u201cCuda\u201d Patterson<\/strong> had been friends since childhood. <strong>Bradley <\/strong>said when <strong>Patterson <\/strong>passed away Thursday morning he couldn\u2019t breakdown at that moment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve had my private moments, but when I looked at his face, I saw a calmness and I couldn\u2019t get upset. He was finally at peace, no more pain for him. But, it\u2019s still tough to lose someone so close to you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Diagnosed in 2009, <strong>Bradley <\/strong>had watched his friend battle the disease. It reduced him to using a wheelchair and finally he was bed-ridden.\u00a0 The illness is known as the POEMS Syndrome and it attacks the nerves, organs and skin.<\/p>\n<p>The young men met at Booker T. Washington Middle School, where they both played basketball. The following year, they became championship playoff rivals on teams for different schools.<\/p>\n<p>The two then ended up at Robinson High School, where <strong>Bradley<\/strong> played center and <strong>Patterson <\/strong>became an outstanding point guard. Their paths parted again after graduation when <strong>Patterson<\/strong> went to Florida College and <strong>Bradley<\/strong> went to the University of South Florida.<\/p>\n<p>Once again, <strong>Patterson <\/strong>distinguished himself on the court and the team won the championship. He entered USF in his junior year, majoring in Sociology.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bradley<\/strong> said during their senior year, \u201che surged to the all-star caliber player that he was. After USF, <strong>Patterson <\/strong>went back into the neighborhood and I went overseas to play.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe got caught up in drugs and the system made an example of him. It was his first offense, but they gave him 10 years in federal prison. I admired him because he never blamed anyone for his mistakes. He was just a good person. It was losing family to me because we were together every day. If you saw one, you saw the other.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bradley<\/strong> said they remained friends and he would visit him in prison although he hated seeing <strong>Patterson<\/strong> like that.<\/p>\n<p>After his release in 1999, <strong>George Steinbrenner<\/strong> hired him in the maintenance department at then Legends Field.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bradley<\/strong> said <strong>Patterson <\/strong>show the same resilience in 2009 when he was diagnosed with the blood disorder. \u201cAlthough he was going through something, he never made excuses. He was the same <strong>Cuda,<\/strong> the same guy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Patterson <\/strong>was admitted to Tampa General Hospital around 6 p.m., Wednesday and died Thursday morning.\u00a0 His friend said, \u201cI think he just got tired.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Funeral services for <strong>Patterson <\/strong>will take place on Saturday, May 25<sup>th<\/sup>, at 2 p.m., at the Center For Manifestation. Aikens Funeral Home is in charge of handling arrangements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BY IRIS B. HOLTON Sentinel City Editor A former Robinson High School and University of South Florida standout lost his battle with a rare blood disorder. He was 49 years old. Charlie Bradley and Darryl \u201cCuda\u201d Patterson had been friends since childhood. Bradley said when Patterson passed away Thursday morning he couldn\u2019t breakdown at that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}