Dan Le Batard opened Tuesday’s show by sharing the news that his young brother, David, had died following a battle against an undisclosed illness the last year.
“My little brother, my only sibling, my closest family member in a very small family, responsible for all the art around here, and my best friend for 50 years passed away last night at 2:00 a.m.,” Le Batard said on The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. “I don’t have a lot of experience with grief, but I have been grieving him for a year because when he was diagnosed more than a year ago he’s been steadily deteriorating since, and it’s been brutally hard to watch a poison eat him up from the inside, and one of the biggest spirits I’ve ever seen consumed by illness.”
David Le Batard, who was 50, was an artist also known as “LEBO.” All of the unique logos and artwork in Dan’s studio, as well as the show’s merchandise, were designed by David. Known for his work as a street artist and muralist, he created the iconic “Welcome to Miami Beach” mural in 2016. He once described his work as “a world where mythology, history, metaphysics, and illustration all join seamlessly.”
Le Batard played “If We Were Vampires” by Jason Isbell in tribute to his brother and shared more about the difficult final moments their family shared together.
“The hospitals and the sickness, and basically I’ve worn one of those X-Ray-leaded vests draped on me for over a year with something I’ve never imagined that I would encounter. I was preparing for the death of my parents, so to have my father whisper to my brother last night, ‘We’ll see you soon,’ was a special kind of heartbreaking, because this is inconceivable to me,” Le Batard said, eventually tearing up.
“It’s something that I never considered possible. But I would tell everyone listening here, when you put a clock on it, because you hear about all these things changing people and life perspectives when you put a clock on it and you value moments you get because you don’t know how many you’re gonna get in a way that’s uncommonly present, what you get is the gift of gratitude that I had for the past year I have spent, because it wasn’t a sudden finality of a car accident, I’ve spent the last year saying all the things — getting the chance to appreciate him and say good-bye and ask for forgiveness for the family stuff and pour out my heart to him.
“There was grace and freedom at 2 a.m. as I’m watching the monitors go down, to be in his ear and physically mouth to his ear, telling him that it was OK to go, that he was safe, that he didn’t have a reason to be scared, and to see him stop suffering, and to see him peaceful. Amid the horror of that was a seismic and great beauty that I’ll forever be grateful for.”
[The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz, transcription by New York Post]
