Athletes sometimes seem superhuman — they jump higher, run faster, and hit harder than the rest of us. But in their final words, these players’ instincts have been to reach out to the ones they loved the most. When promising young English soccer player Duncan Edwards was killed in a plane crash along with eight other Manchester United players in 1958, for example, he addressed his last words to his mother as he lay in a hospital bed. “Come on, Mum, get me home quick. We’re playing Wolves on Saturday and I can’t miss that,” Edwards told her, according to the Mirror, before dying of his injuries.
And sometimes last text messages can tell us even more about a person: what their priorities were in their final days, who was important to them, what was on their mind. Keep reading to find out what star athletes were texting about before their final moments.
The world was shaken by Kobe Bryant’s sudden death in 2020 when the basketball great was killed in a Calabasas helicopter crash alongside his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others. He was 41 at the time and had won five NBA championships over the course of his impressive career with the Los Angeles Lakers.
And shortly before his death, Kobe had been trying to help a family friend. At a memorial service for the Laker and his beloved daughter Gianna, friends and family shared their last moments with the Bryants. His widow Vanessa told the crowd, “They were funny, happy, silly, and they loved life.” She added that Kobe and Gianna’s bond had been so strong, “God knew they couldn’t be on this earth without each other.”
In his speech, friend and Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka recalled that Kobe had been texting him right before the crash, per NBC News, asking Pelinka to set the young daughter of fellow crash victim John Altobelli up with a baseball scout. The Altobellis were family friends and their other daughter, Alyssa, had been on the same team as Gianna before she died on the same helicopter flight. “Kobe’s last human act was heroic,” Pelinka stated. “He wanted to use his platform to bless and shape a young girl’s future.”