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Dabo Swinney's extraordinary ability to lift a football program is known to everyone who even casually follows the sport.
But what about his gift, equally extraordinary, of lifting the spirits of those who are going through periods of struggle?
These to-date unpublicized gestures -- random acts of Dabo, if you will -- are very much worthy of being documented in a more official, complete form.
So Tigerillustrated.com reached out to a number of people who have shared their own behind-the-scenes stories with us.
ALSO SEE: LETTERS FROM DABO - Part 1 | LETTERS FROM DABO - Part 2 | LETTERS FROM DABO - Part 3 | LETTERS FROM DABO - Part 4 | LETTERS FROM DABO - Part 5 | LETTERS FROM DABO - Part 6 | LETTERS FROM DABO - Part 7
Here is Part 8
When Don and Lou Ann Sink returned home from Tampa in January of 2017, they discovered something Dabo Swinney told his team before the game.
Lou Ann was mesmerized when she heard the following words:
"Let the light that shines in you be brighter than the light that shines on you."
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Over those giddy days in the aftermath of something that still didn't quite seem real, she couldn't stop talking about the command that had become immortal when Clemson found a way to overcome Alabama in the second half of that national championship.
The plays on the field seemed perfectly scripted as Clemson won it with one second on the clock.
And so did the words spoken by the head coach in the locker room.
Soon thereafter, Don and Lou Ann drove to Clemson for a basketball game from their home in North Augusta. They stopped at Judge Keller's Store downtown and she spotted a long-sleeved, orange shirt that bore those very words Swinney spoke that night at Raymond James Stadium.
She had to have that shirt.
Not long thereafter, in early April, Lou Ann became sick and was admitted to the hospital for low anemic blood levels. Within two days, she suffered a stroke that paralyzed her right arm and leg.
Eight years earlier she had kicked breast cancer. But by 2017 doctors determined that a combination of three chemotherapy drugs administered in 2009 kept her bone marrow from creating healthy red blood cells.
She never made it back home, suffering two more strokes and passing away on June 27, 2017 at the age of 58.
