Roy Simmons III, behind the wheel of his SUV on a beautiful October afternoon, made a turn off Valley Drive into the Onondaga Valley Cemetery. He handled a couple of quick bends on the narrow access road while heading toward a hillside trail lined with tombstones and monuments.
In the passenger’s seat, his dad — Roy Simmons Jr. — marveled that he had spent 90 years in Syracuse, going back and forth countless times through this particular neighborhood, yet had never seen the stunning vista from this high place in Nedrow.
Roy Jr., the legendary artist and coach who shaped a Syracuse University lacrosse dynasty, took that ride on a recent Sunday in the company of his sons, Roy III and Ron. They parked on a little road that required an uphill walk on a grassy incline to reach the grave of Alf Jacques, only a few steps from the rustling shade of the old woods on the edge of the property.
“I knew he would be around the trees,” Roy Jr. said of Alf, a thought that reinforced the whole point of this Simmons family mission. They were carrying a tiny potted sapling, a shagbark hickory — the tree from which Alf created wooden lacrosse sticks, the cultural art form that brought him international renown.
The air was warm enough — a touch of autumn gold spreading across the distant hills — for Roy Jr. to go sockless in his clogs. These days, amid recovery from a long illness, it is difficult for him to walk without assistance. As he pulled himself to his feet he was flanked by his sons, who gently supported their dad, step by step, as the three men walked as one from the SUV toward Alf’s memorial.
The grave marker is a black stone bench emblazoned with the image of a lacrosse stick, as well as the essential arc of an extraordinary life: “Alfred W. ‘Alf’ Jacques, Haudenosaunee stickmaker, March 2, 1949 – June 14, 2023.”
The monument also references Alf’s immediate survivors, his wife Kathy and their son Ryder. Roy Jr. made sure he had the family’s blessing before moving forward with any plans for planting the tree. Even so, at the cemetery, he was initially hesitant to rest on the bench, at least until his sons reassured him.
They told him: Dad. This is exactly where Alf would want you to be.
At the grave, the three men were joined by Connie Palumb, a longtime family friend whose son Matt played goalie for Roy Jr. at SU. Palumb — who often delivers apple, pumpkin or peach pies, a particular favorite, to the Simmons household — serves on the board of the Oakwood Cemeteries, which maintains the grounds at Valley. She checked in with administrators to make sure Roy Jr. had formal clearance for what was both a tribute and a statement.
He was there to plant the tiny hickory sapling alongside Alf’s grave — hickory being the type of tree Alf would always seek out, deep in the forest. He would bring down a tree and drag it back to his shop at the Onondaga Nation, the first step in the painstaking task of creating wooden lacrosse sticks, essential instruments of a game played — in its highest and original form — as an expression of spiritual gratitude by the Haudenosaunee.
Palumb said Simmons was unlike any coach she had ever seen. On road trips, he would take his players to famous museums when the team had some down time. After the 1988 bombing of Pan-Am Flight 103, over Lockerbie – in which 35 of the 270 people killed were students from Syracuse University – Simmons and his players traveled to Scotland to use lacrosse as a means of consolation and healing.
From countless conversations, Palumb understands how much Roy Jr. respects the Haudenosaunee roots and reverence for lacrosse. The hickory sapling brought by the old coach to the valley was a statement of friendship and gratitude for how art, sport and beauty intertwined in the way Alf lived life.
“This was just very special,” Palumb said, of seeing the tree planted.
While his sons gathered the tools, Roy Jr. threw one arm around the back of Alf’s bench and took in the whole scene. He and Alf knew each other for decades, but their friendship rose into a new level of trust and intensity when they both faced serious struggles with their health.
“He wanted nothing to do with calling it quits,” said Roy Jr., who used to be content to watch for hours at Alf’s shop as his friend crafted wooden sticks — each one taking about a year, from tree to finish. When Roy Jr.’s medical situation made those visits impossible, Alf would drive to the old farmhouse where Roy Jr. lives in Manlius for shared reflections about lacrosse, mutual friends and the world.
The inspiration for the bench — a symbol of welcome and community — came from Alf’s widow, Kathy. After losing her husband in 2023, she thought of how much he savored the kind of sweeping and thoughtful conversations demonstrated by his friendship with Roy Jr.
Kathy knew Alf wanted his grave site “to be peaceful and surrounded by trees,” and she embraced a chance to put the bench at a high point in the cemetery, close to the woods — a location so removed from city sounds that you can stand there and hear the wind going through the trees.
Roy Jr.’s vision for a tree by that bench fits well with that landscape: Many families caring for nearby memorials made similar decisions to plant saplings and flowering shrubs. For Kathy Jacques — whose long romance with Alf began with a 1970s conversation in a War Memorial corridor, where Alf had a lacrosse game — the spot is perfect.
Alf was a storyteller, which demands one particular quality: He listened. He would call Kathy each afternoon before leaving the shop and they would decide on a meal, because Alf had a passion about cooking. Often, he stopped at Green Hills Farms on the way home to get whatever was needed for stir fry or soup or any meal he was preparing.
Once he arrived, the couple would talk in the kitchen as he cooked and then talk some more once they sat down to eat.
They were married 42 years. She loved the conversation. So many people “would stop by and just hang around the shop” while her husband crafted wooden sticks, Kathy said, visitors drawn there not only by the ancient skills he knew so well but also by the sense of welcome and the chance for lively talk about a multitude of subjects.
That is what Kathy misses most about Alf, all “the noise around the house.” She often goes to Alf’s grave with a friend simply to sit on the bench for quiet talks, and she likes to think that when visitors stop by, Alf hears it all and savors each discussion. In that sense, the friendship with Roy Jr. became increasingly meaningful, Kathy said, especially in the last years of Alf’s life — and she was quick to give her support when Roy Jr. asked about planting a hickory near the grave.
“They really formed a bond beyond lacrosse,” Kathy said. After Alf’s death, she sent Roy Jr. a note of gratitude for what he meant to her husband. He sent her a stone in the shape of a heart – that, too, is at the grave – and a small medal of an angel, which he associates with the compassion and memory of his late wife Nancy.
Roy Jr. keeps a pocketful of those medals to distribute to friends, describing each one as “a prayer to keep you safe.” He scattered a few on the loose soil behind Alf’s grave, on the afternoon when he and his sons showed up to plant the hickory.
“There’s not a day when I’m visiting that he doesn’t bring him up,” Roy III said, of just how much his dad misses those long talks with Alf.
For a few minutes, at the cemetery, they talked about the best way to do the planting. Roy Jr. and his boys wanted to be sure it was in a place where the little sapling would not be accidentally mowed over. They obtained the tree through the Aspinall Nursery of Chittenango, just before Roy Jr. brought it with him last month to the Bellevue Country Club, setting it on a table while he and an old friend, Onondaga Faithkeeper Oren Lyons, received a prestigious lacrosse “Ambassador Award” named in honor of Jacques.
During that dinner, Roy Jr. recalled that whenever Alf felled a hickory tree, he would always plant a hickory in the woods before he headed home. The hope was that another strong tree would rise up in that spot, just as Roy Jr. imagines a great hickory as a living tribute at the grave of a stickmaking legend.
“No one knows the effort he went through,” Roy Jr. said of Alf, thinking of just how many detailed and wearisome steps it requires to finish even a single wooden stick.
In the end, Roy Jr. and his sons agreed: They would plant the hickory just behind the bench. Roy Jr. picked one brown leaf off the sapling and tucked it in his pocket, then watched as Roy III and Ron dug the hole. Finally, the brothers carefully removed the sapling from its little pot and planted it.
By hand, they packed in the loose dirt, before Roy Jr. and Connie Palumb poured on some water, and Ron Simmons used a wooden mallet carved by Alf to pound a tall piece of wood in the ground to protect the fragile plant.
For a few quiet moments everyone stopped, contemplating this little tree for Alf Jacques, so close to the woods.
“Done,” Roy Jr. said, and his sons helped him to his feet.
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