As the workers refurbished the basketball courts at Tamblyn Field in Rutherford, N.J., Peter Finnerty had made a habit of summer strolls past the cracked asphalt and bent rims, the jagged fences and overgrown grass. Before his eyes, the father had come to see a small, sliver of his late son's life, his legacy reborn.

	Tamblyn Field was once a neglected park in Rutherford, N.J.

Around the one-year anniversary of his son losing his life on Sept. 11, 2001, the elaborate ceremonies and services and tributes were never as comforting to Peter as taking those walks to the basketball courts, watching the work that the tens of thousands of dollars friends and family had raised to honor the memory of Timothy J. Finnerty, to remember a life of love bonded with basketball.

These were the times that Peter remembered his son slurping down a bowl of cereal and running out the door for long days of games at Tamblyn. Peter remembered Tim's basketball seasons for Queen of Peace High School and the University of Scranton, reaching the Division III championship game in 1988. Remembered his son dancing in the Meadowlands as a peach-fuzzed Fordham University graduate assistant celebrating an improbable victory over Seton Hall, "acting like he was Jimmy V. winning the national title."

The father remembered his son's well-worn Ford Escort breaking down in the Bronx on a recruiting trip for Wagner College at 1 a.m., and how Tim called him every 15 minutes until the tow truck arrived. Remembered his son living in the dorms at Wagner College, on Staten Island, earning $7,000 as an assistant coach and telling his old man about how it broke his heart to walk into the impoverished homes of recruits, and about the burden he gladly bore to make sure those kids earned a degree under his watch.

And ultimately in the mid-1990's, Peter remembered his son conflicted over the cutthroat nature of college basketball coaching, refusing to ever compromise his ethics and principles, and understanding this left him little room for upward mobility. After several long heart-to-heart talks with Wagner coach Tim Capstraw, his old boss recommended his top assistant to a friend on Wall Street in 1994.

	He worked on Wall Street, but Tim Finnerty longed to coach basketball again.

It wasn't long until Finnerty had evolved into a rising star for Cantor Fitzgerald, a partner and senior broker for emerging markets working on the 105th floor of Tower I of the World Trade Center. "Right away, they put him on the toughest assignment, communicating with people in London, throwing him at the biggest jerks they dealt with," Capstraw says. "Over time, he wore them down. He wore you down with nice-ness."

To the end, to his 33rd birthday, Tim Finnerty was still a coach. This is the way it goes for the truest teachers of all, the ones who touch lives and leave legacies. These are the truths that get lost in the college coaching profession, a school of sharks so furiously chasing fame and fortune that they often forget the reasons they once had for getting into the profession.

How many would leave the profession and find fulfillment coaching grade school kids at St. Catherine in Glen Rock, N.J., and assisting on a local AAU team, the way Finnerty did? How many would be plotting to leave the prestige and wealth of Wall Street to become a high school teacher and basketball coach?

Do you know where Finnerty spent his final night, Sept. 10, 2001? He was playing pick-up basketball with those kids at St. Catherine, a night of hoops that ended with Ryan Santonacita dribbling end to end on Finnerty, throwing a left-handed lay-up over his coach and into the basket for the winning shot. Together, the two had worked over and over on that lefty shot for months. Ryan and Tim had a good laugh, clasped hands and soon bid farewell. As Finnerty walked out the door that night, those kids still can't get over that goodbye was forever.

"My brother was George Bailey from 'It's a Wonderful Life,' " Kevin Finnerty says. " 'You never asked for anything,' and 'you will never know what you meant to us.' "

One of Tim's AAU players, Jim O'Hara, remembered his new coach reassuring him when he was a frightened, lonely kid standing alone to the side at the team's tryouts. O'Hara dedicated $1,000 of the senior class gift at Leonia (N.J.) High to Finnerty's memorial fund and invited the family to an assembly to hear his eloquent essay.

Southern Utah assistant coach Quincy Lewis remembered Finnerty watching over him as a young Wagner recruit so far from home, instilling in him the responsibility to care for the kids he now recruits to play college ball.

"The last thing in the world I wanted to be was a college basketball coach, until I met Tim," Lewis says. "What you get in college coaching are people all about the show, about dressing nice, about making money. He was someone so pure. He was about the coaching, the teaching. ...

"What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that Tim Finnerty cared."

Ryan Santonacita slipped the Mass card from Finnerty's memorial service into one of his sneakers and played a season of freshman basketball at St. Joseph High School in Montvale, N.J., with it there as a reminder of his old coach. He never pulled it out until Tim's widow, Theresa, came to watch one of his games. The old St. Catherine kids still stop at her house to visit and do yard work.

"I don't want to lose that connection with them," Theresa says. "It was part of Tim's life, but it was also part of my life. I enjoyed going to watch the games. I loved watching him coach.

"It's something I don't want to lose," she said. "I'll always have that connection with them."

	Thanks to the Timothy J. Finnerty Memorial Fund, the park is playable again.

And so, on a perfect fall Saturday afternoon this year, those forgotten and forlorn Tamblyn Field basketball courts were alive again for a dedication ceremony, sparkling with shiny rims and freshly painted lines and a bed of flowers surrounding a beautiful plaque perched on a rock. As a collection of family and friends and perfect strangers started to disperse that day, they will always remember the sight of the neighborhood kids flooding past them, bouncing balls and shooting shots into the blue sky.

Around this Christmas, there have been some strangely warm December days in Rutherford when the courts are never empty on the weekends, the children's games going morning until night. And an old neighborhood father can still stroll down the street and remember a life and legacy bonded by basketball, remember a good coach, a good son, to the noble end.

Adrian Wojnarowski is a columnist for The Record (N.J.) and a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at ESPNWoj@aol.com.

For more information on the Timothy J. Finnerty Memorial Fund, see www.fundforfinn.org.