He started out as a contracted writer, but by the time he was through, Bryant Carpenter was a member of the family.

The transformation was due to the nature of his subject, Rob Szymaszek. Carpenter says he came to feel like a brother.

"You're fortunate when you know really good people, just because they're really good people," Carpenter said. "I was fortunate to know him and so were a lot of other people."

Szymaszek. Coach Smaz. A lot of people knew him as a remarkable coach with a remarkable record over 26 years at the helm of Maloney High School's football team. Thanks to Carpenter's work, everyone now has an opportunity to know him a lot better.

The story of Szymaszek's illness, a brain tumor, begins the day before the terrorist attacks in 2001. What ensued were years of ups and downs, recoveries and disappointments. Szymaszek died on Sept. 20 of this year.

Carpenter's recently published account of Szymaszek's experience is called "Life is Still Good." He'll discuss the book and sign copies Tuesday, Dec. 11, 7 p.m., at the Southington Public Library, 255 Main St. For more information, call the library at (860) 628-0947.

Szymaszek approached Carpenter, now the Record-Journal's sports editor, with the idea for a book in 2004. He'd been looking for books of inspiration for brain cancer patients and hadn't found any. So his thought was to do his own. "Talk about can-do attitude," Carpenter said.

It was Carpenter's idea to blend the story of Szymaszek's struggle with brain cancer with his experiences as a football coach, a notion Szymaszek initially resisted.

"He didn't want it to be about football," Carpenter recalled.

But the author saw a connection "between preparing a football team and preparing for an illness."

There were other connections, between one man's struggle and that of his family, which included Szymaszek's wife, Diane, and their daughter, Jennifer. There was also an expanding extended family of sorts, which increasingly began to include Carpenter, as well as the doctors, medical professionals and others who rallied around the coach as he confronted the biggest contest of his life. They were his team, too.

That makes Carpenter's book much more than the story of an illness, said James H. Smith, the former executive editor of the Record-Journal who served as the editor of Carpenter's book. Carpenter also gives a large share of editing credit to his wife, Colleen McClain.

"The Rob, Diane and Jen Szymaszek story is a gripping saga of strength, love and inspiration," Smith wrote in an e-mail. Smith is now editor of the Connecticut Post.

"It is about guiding, teaching, coaching high school kids in the art of football and how to face anything that comes at you in life," Smith said. "Bryant Carpenter has captured a man and his family in the most expansive sense - at home, on the football field, in the guidance office and in the city Rob loved."

In the summer of 2004, Carpenter and Szymaszek spent nearly two months working intensely on what became the start of the book.

"His main goal was to help other people, basically," Diane Szymaszek said. "He was always so positive, he didn't think the book would end and he wouldn't be here."

Rob Szymaszek eventually had the chance to read all but the final chapter, and was pleased with how the book worked out, she said.

"Bryant writes really well and he has a way of making it more of a story," she said. "I think he was really the right guy to do the story. He became more than an author; he's become part of the family."

Initially, the book was written in the first person, from Rob Szymaszek's point of view. But Carpenter recognized there were missed opportunities in that approach.

The switch in narrative technique loses no immediacy. "Life is Still Good" is full of gripping passages, not the least of which is the account of the day in which Szymaszek's life changed suddenly.

It was an afternoon following Maloney's first scrimmage of the new season. Szymaszek was on the highway, fretting about the team, when it slowly became clear to him that something wasn't right. He lost control of the car and was pulled over by a police officer.

"Looking back, he gives the state trooper the benefit of the doubt," Carpenter writes. "He must have been incoherent; another officer had recently been assaulted. But at the time Rob was growing more queasy and confused. Cars flew by on the highway, heads turning and then turning back away, leaving a windy concussion in their wake, heading somewhere safe and fun and normal on a beautiful late-summer Saturday. And here was Rob Szymaszek, coach of Maloney football, son of Sgt. Bob Szymaszek, the All-American boy, handcuffed, disoriented and ducking his head to get in the back of a police car that had its lights flashing."

That opening chapter is a compelling account of how a life can change in an instant.

"Rob's world, his wife's, his daughter's, was turned upside down between a sunrise and sunset, in a single pass of the sun over Meriden from eastern ridge to western," Carpenter writes. "Light to shadow on the trap-rock faces. That day the Szymaszeks learned how quickly life can drop off a cliff. How steep the fall they would come to know."

When Carpenter and Szymaszek started on the book, that summer of 2004, Szymaszek was in a fairly healthy state. But setbacks ensued, and Carpenter found himself being drawn further and further into the story.

"It came to the point where I went from being Bryant Carpenter, the guy who signed on to do this guy's book, to being involved with the guy," Carpenter recalled. That transformation is fully evident in the second part of "Life is Still Good." The deepening involvement gave the author a keen insight into what made his subject so special.

"Rob is so damn positive it's usually irresistible, and it sure as hell beats the negativity that infiltrates too much of our lives," Carpenter writes at the beginning of the second section.

It was what Carpenter describes as the "core" of the man. It included the optimism for which Szymaszek was widely noted, but it was also something more than that.

"You'd have the setbacks and you'd take the blow," said Carpenter of the reversals of fortune Szymaszek faced at the end of his life. "It would hit him. But I was always amazed, almost tickled, by the way he would buck himself up. It was rendered with a smiley face. It was easy to be with Rob, even in the tough times.

"That was just his core personality."

It also gives insight into why Szymaszek was such a successful coach, why he was able to consistently field competitive teams against far larger schools. When it came to the gridiron or the illness, Szymaszek was "never beat before he started," Carpenter said, "even when it wasn't going to get better."

The coach also had a special way of connecting with high school kids, of pushing them when they needed to be pushed. He knew how to put up a fight.

"He was the most competitive person," Carpenter said. "I'd be holding his hand, on his deathbed, and he wants to arm wrestle. He was a battler. And yet he had this other soft, sensitive side."

Szymaszek had the title of the book, "Life is Still Good," "even before he had the book," Carpenter said. It took the author a while to understand just how deeply the words resonated with his subject.

It wasn't just about the good times.

"That's what I always thought," Carpenter said. "But it was life is still good, right now. That's just how he lived, that's how he went about his business."

The book is now a part of the man's legacy. Carpenter says Szymaszek knew it was going to be published and knew what the cover would look like. It's a photo of the coach embracing his daughter.

"It's a good story, and I'd like to think I did it justice," Carpenter said.

"Life is Still Good" is published by Plaidswede Publishing, of Concord, N.H. It can be found on the Internet at www.nhbooksellers.com.

The Record-Journal also has extensive information about the book, including an audio interview with the author as well as upcoming signing dates, at www.myrecordjournal.com.

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