Richard Venne, 53; was hoop star in college
Richard T. Venne, was the kind of college athlete people remembered three decades after he hung up his number 30 basketball jersey at the College of the Holy Cross.
"There are very few people who could shoot a jump shot the way he could," said Stan Grayson, who, with Mr. Venne, was cocaptain of the Holy Cross team in 1972. "He was a great guy and a good teammate."
His promising youth led to a career as an insurance broker. He died Monday from complications from a brain tumor he had fought for 13 years. He was 53.
Thirteen years ago, Mr. Venne suffered a seizure a day after returning from Romania where he and his wife adopted their son, Nicholas Joseph. Doctors discovered and removed a brain tumor. Three years later, complications from the tumor and the radiation left him disabled. After 10 years of steady decline, he suffered a stroke three weeks ago.
Mr. Venne, known as "Bud," grew up in Sudbury and attended Xavier High School in Concord, where he was Massachusetts' leading scorer in basketball his senior year, averaging 35 points a game as a guard.
Mr. Venne was recruited as a starter at Holy Cross. Over lunch one day freshman year, he met Kathryn Fay, the daughter of a Holy Cross alum who had been following Mr. Venne's athletic career. The two dated through college and married in 1972 after he graduated with a degree in math.
He played basketball for the Racing Club de France for two years after college.
"The French aren't known for their basketball prowess," Kathryn Venne said, but his club was well-known and "tres snob," she said. With only one game a week and two practices, Mr. Venne had leisure time for French lessons.
"He liked his teammates, but they didn't take basketball too seriously. They'd be drinking wine before the games."
After returning from France, Mr. Venne earned an MBA at Northeastern University in 1976 and became an insurance broker at MF&T in Newton, and later Deland Gibson in Wellesley.
Realizing his skills on the basketball court wouldn't help his business career, he took up tennis.
He "used to say [you] can't go out and ask a client if they want to play one-on-one basketball,' his wife said.
Without a lesson, Mr. Venne won several doubles championships at the Weston Golf Club, where he played daily for 20 years. Mr. Venne was also an active member of the Holy Cross Club in Boston and a squash enthusiast.
Even during his illness, he used to say, "At least I'm still alive," said his wife. "The great tragedy is that the greatest thrill in his life was adopting his son, Nick, in Romania," said Tom Stemberg, chief executive of
In addition to his wife and son, he leaves his father, Richard C., of Sudbury; a brother, David of Portland, Maine; and two sisters, Ellen, of California and Ann, of Nova Scotia.
A funeral Mass will be said tomorrow at 10 a.m. in St. Paul's Church in Wellesley. Burial will be in Woodlawn Cemetery in Wellesley.
