It’s been over 17 years since 22-year-old University of New Haven student Nathan D. Crowell passed away after blocking a slapshot during an amateur league hockey game in Connecticut — but nothing has stopped his family from turning that loss into a positive impact on the East Providence community, and beyond.

“He blocked a shot in the last three seconds of the game,” said his father, David, in a recent interview. “Right when his heart was in a down beat.”

The situation required for the dangerous condition, known as commotio cordis, is exceedingly unlikely to happen, but does occur from time to time, particularly in the sports world. It was most recently seen on the biggest stage when then-Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin made a routine tackle during an NFL game in January of 2023. Essentially, the heart can suffer a critical failure if it takes an impact during an extremely short, 40-millisecond time window during its beating cycle.

If medical attention is prompt, it can be treated and corrected, like in Hamlin’s case. But in Nathan’s case, there were no automated external defibrillation (AED) devices at the rink where the incident occurred, as they weren’t standard at athletic facilities at the time. He was pronounced dead at Bridgeport Hospital on the evening of Oct. 25, 2007.

In the years since, Nathan’s family has done everything possible to turn the tragedy into something positive. Thanks in part to their advocacy, all hockey rinks in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island now have AED machines at the ready, which have been used to save the lives of at least two other young athletes since, David said. Nathan was even directly responsible for saving other lives through the donation of some of his organs.

Nathan’s family then started the Nathan D. Crowell Memorial Fund in his name in order to hold large fundraisers, which garnered upwards of $15,000 during their initial years and went towards a variety of noble causes in the area, often for a sports-related endeavor.

The fund has routinely supported youth hockey and soccer in Bristol, Warren and East Providence, and they endowed a scholarship at the University of New Haven to go towards local student-athletes. One notable effort, which David said they want to try to do again, was making a large donation to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston to take children going through treatment to a Boston Bruins game.

In the past few years, the family has taken to selling wreaths and holiday swags as their primary fundraising effort to fundraise for those types of efforts. Last Wednesday, David and his daughter, Leah, along with her sons, Xander and Maxx Mosher, met up to gather all the wreath orders and personally deliver them to each recipient.

Nathan would have been 40 years old this Valentine’s Day, according to his father, and there’s no doubt that the pain of his loss still resonates even so many years later.

“He was a happy kid and one of the things we always said was he was actually a better soccer player than a hockey player,” he said. “One of the things we always noticed about Nate was any sport, if you gave him 10 minutes he could figure it out.”

David spoke about how bright his future was at the time, as Nathan was eying a career either with Homeland Security or the CIA. He said his quick learning ability also wasn’t exclusive to sports.

“His grandmother and grandfather were in the Middle East for two years and she had picked up some Arabic,” he said. “(Nathan) couldnt speak French or Spanish in high school but all the sudden he was gibber-gabbering back and forth in Arabic.”

Although the world has been deprived of the contributions Nathan could have made personally, there is little doubt that he continues to make a difference throughout the area.

“It’s something you live with every day but you have to go on,” David said. “It was just one of those things that happened, and good things have come out of it, anyways. Sometimes it’s also good to just talk about it. It keeps him alive in a way.”

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