Syracuse, N.Y. -- Chris Gedney was the All-American who fiercely loved his hometown.
It was where the Liverpool High School graduate attended college, helping ensure Syracuse football continued its national renaissance into a new era.
It was where he met his first wife, a volleyball-playing transplant from Ohio who later gave birth to their four children who would bring him a new kind of joy.
It was where he chose to set down roots, a few years after his professional football career flickered out, to work for the university and help broadcast games on the radio, to raise his family and give back to the community that helped lift him to a prosperous life that ended far sooner than anyone expected.