More than a year later, Inez "Peggy" Ritch can't let go.

Her Northeast Baltimore home is full of memories -- framed photographs, award certificates, handsome trophies. Mementoes of her son, Reggie Lewis, the basketball star.

Reggie Lewis, who died on July 27, 1993, at the age of 27.

"It's been difficult," Ritch says. "I'm trying to adjust to this. People tell you, 'Give it to the Lord, pray.' I do. But evidently, I must not have done it. It's still with me.

"Every day, I close my eyes to sleep. When I wake up, it's the first thing to hit me. Every day, it's, 'What in the world happened?' "

Lewis rose from a substitute player at Dunbar High School to become captain of the Boston Celtics, but his career ended at its peak, ended when he died of a heart ailment while shooting baskets at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.

The conflicting diagnoses Lewis received from Boston cardiologists were the subject of intense debate before and after his death. Ritch, 48, says she has "no peace" over the loss of her son.

She blames Dr. Gilbert H. Mudge Jr., the cardiologist who diagnosed Lewis with a benign fainting condition after a team of 12 physicians assembled by the Celtics warned of serious heart trouble.

She blames Lewis' widow, Donna Harris-Lewis, for steering him away from the Celtics' doctors, then failing to pursue the questions surrounding his death.

She blames the Celtics, whom she believes knew of Lewis' heart problems before he collapsed during an NBA playoff game on April 29, 1993.

Finally, she blames herself, for lapsing into a nine-year cocaine addiction that diminished her influence with her son, allowing Harris-Lewis to emerge as the principal force in his life.

"I wake up in tears," says Ritch, who underwent rehabilitation and says she hasn't used drugs in more than two years. "This thing bothers me so much, not a day goes by when it's not there."

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Ritch and Harris-Lewis were the two women closest to Lewis, but their relationship always has been uneasy. Lewis' death could have brought them closer. Instead, it drove them farther apart.

"I just can't communicate with her at all," Ritch says. "I know we'll never be close, but when you're around other people, she puts on a front that everything is OK. It's not for real."

Harris-Lewis, 29, declined to be interviewed for this article. In a three-way telephone conversation with her attorney, Peter Roisman, she was told by The Sun that Ritch held her partly responsible for Reggie's death.

"Reggie had a mind of his own," Harris-Lewis replied.

She then agreed to consider written questions submitted by The Sun. She responded after three days by sending a message through Roisman.

"Since Reggie's death a year ago, each one of us close to him has had to find a way to best grieve over his passing," Harris-Lewis said.

She declined to comment further.

Reggie Lewis met Donna Harris when they were sophomores at Northeastern University. Ritch says her problems with Donna began in 1988, and escalated when the only guests at their July 1991 wedding in Las Vegas were two friends, Mark Reeves and Darlene Dorcinvil.

Lewis' uncle, Russell Lewis, says Reggie told him that "it was best to get away" because of the problems between his fiancee and mother -- problems that were exacerbated by Ritch's cocaine addiction.

"I believe if it hadn't been for my addiction, I would have had more of an impact on his life," says Ritch, who raised Lewis as a single parent.

"He would call home, but I was not there for him, for advice, for anything. When he called, I wouldn't have any time to talk -- he'd be interrupting my high time."

But in this tale of two cities, nearly all of Lewis' Baltimore relatives are angry at Harris-Lewis, who lives with her two children in The House That Reggie Built, an $850,000 home in Dedham, Mass.

The relatives are upset that Harris-Lewis is blocking efforts to honor Reggie's memory in his hometown, most notably by withholding permission to rename his boyhood stomping ground, the Cecil-Kirk Recreation Center in Northeast Baltimore.

The Great Blacks in Wax Museum on North Avenue wants to build a sports pavilion in Lewis' name, but executive director Joanne Martin says the project hasn't even reached the planning stages, in part because of the family dispute.

Harris-Lewis is the mother of Lewis' two children -- Reggie Jr., 2, and Reggieana, 7 months. She learned she was pregnant with Reggieana the day her husband died, and gave birth to her on Feb. 7, less than seven months after his death.

The family's resentment of Harris-Lewis stems partly from the wealth she inherited. Harris-Lewis was the sole beneficiary in Lewis' will, and Celtics officials say they are obligated to pay her the remaining three years on Lewis' guaranteed contract, valued at approximately $10 million.

"She has everything he had," Ritch says. "It's like she just took over being Reggie."

Yet, Ritch adds, "It's not about money. It's about a person's life. You can't take something away from me that I never had. And money is something I never had."

In addition to her home in Massachusetts, Harris-Lewis now owns the house she and her husband bought in Ruxton, which was assessed for $401,720 in 1993. Ritch, meanwhile, lives in a Northeast Baltimore home that Lewis helped her purchase for $65,500 in 1988.

Ritch says the Lewis estate is paying her $814 monthly mortgage, and also the $529 monthly mortgage on her daughter Sheron's $30,000 home in East Baltimore.

As executor of the estate, Harris-Lewis writes the checks.

"She told me that she didn't have to pay for this house, but it's something she's going to do, something Reggie wanted to do for me," Ritch says. "It's part of his estate. It's something that has to be done. I don't think Donna would pay the mortgage if she didn't have to."

Ritch earns $5 per hour as a part-time security guard for Wackenhut Security Services, and says she cannot afford medical insurance. She previously was a production mechanic for Sweetheart Cup in Owings Mills, but because of her own heart trouble, now is restricted to more sedentary work. She sits at her current job, viewing closed-circuit monitors at a downtown office building.

Ritch raised Lewis with three other children -- Sheron Lewis, 31, Irving Lewis Jr., 30, and Jon Ritch, 25. She says the family lived in seven different houses in East Baltimore.

"Reggie would be very upset if he knew all that was going on," says Jimmy Myers, a Boston media personality who was friendly with Lewis.

"Reggie, being the type of person he was, would want Donna taken care of and his mother taken care of -- probably his mother first. He was a family man. The Reggie I knew wasn't like this."

To some, the issue boils down to the natural break that occurs when a son takes a wife -- especially when that son "may have been a momma's boy," as Lewis' former Northeastern coach, Jim Calhoun, described him.

"When a man chooses his wife, that bond is sacred," says Jerome Stanley, Lewis' agent at the time of his death. "That's what happens from that point forward. That's what those vows are all about -- who you create your child with, who you grow old with."

A stable influence

Some viewed Harris-Lewis as just what her husband needed.

"She was always a good student, and I thought she gave Reggie stability at home," says Karl Fogel, who, as assistant coach at Northeastern, recruited Lewis out of Dunbar High.

"I knew what Reggie was making in his early years, and it wasn't a lot of money," Fogel says. "But the first thing he did was buy his mother a house -- nothing extravagant, but it was comfortable.

"Once the money started rolling in, a lot of people became friendly with Reggie, and he wasn't sure what to do with it. He started throwing it away.

"Donna took control of the situation. She made Reggie aware of a lot of traps, took care of his home and his children. She solved more problems than she created. She was good for him."

Lewis' first cousin, Perry Dozier, agrees.

"I see Donna as a person who loved him, and helped him grow as a person," says Dozier, 28, the manager of a Big & Tall clothing store in Columbia, S.C.

"We all have our way of looking out for people we love, and Donna has her way. I don't think she intentionally tried to hurt anyone in our family, but she looked out for him inside and outside the family.

"Donna is an outspoken, strong black woman, and it's hard to find women like that, like the old black women. Reggie was over-generous with his money, but Donna believed Reggie should not give anything without a person earning it."

Reggie and Donna Lewis were an American success story -- children who grew up poor in single-parent homes, then realized great riches and a family of their own.

To Fogel and Dozier, it seems only natural that Harris-Lewis, a native of Bridgeport, Conn., grew fiercely protective of what she and her husband had earned.

Yet, it isn't only Lewis' relatives who feel cut off.

Mark Reeves, a classmate of Lewis' at Northeastern, the best man at his wedding and godfather of his first child, once considered himself close to Harris-Lewis.

L Now, she no longer responds to his letters or returns calls.

When asked if he is still the godfather of Reggie Jr., Reeves says, "I don't know necessarily how true that is anymore. I don't know if it's written in stone. I would assume someone else has that role at this point."

Kevin McDuffie, a childhood friend of Lewis' from Baltimore and later his teammate at Northeastern, says he has received one call from Harris-Lewis since Reggie's death.

"She's very difficult to get along with," McDuffie says. "Why? I'd rather not say. Donna is just Donna. That's all I got to say about that lady."

A threat to Harris-Lewis

On the bus ride to Lewis' wake, Lynette "Cookie" Dozier could contain herself no longer. Dozier, Lewis' aunt, never had liked Harris-Lewis. And, on a bus full of grieving relatives from both families, she lashed out.

"I'll hang her by her neck," Dozier said.

Dozier, 39, the younger sister of Lewis' mother, denies making that comment, but other family members recall the incident vividly. It captured the rift between Lewis' wife and his Baltimore relatives.

The rift was never more evident than at Lewis' funeral. His relatives wanted the funeral to be in his native Baltimore, but Harris-Lewis decided it would be in his adopted Boston.

Ritch and Harris-Lewis did not speak at the services.

"We were just going through the motions," Ritch says.

A memorial service was held for Lewis in Baltimore three days after the funeral, but Harris-Lewis did not attend.

"She was afraid somebody here would get her, do something to her," Ritch says.

Family members say Harris-Lewis was overprotective, distancing Lewis from his family and persuading him that all his relatives wanted was money.

Ritch says two other relatives from her side of the family also sought financial help from Lewis, but no one on his father's side did. Andrew Brandt, Lewis' agent from 1987 to 1991, saw nothing unusual in the family's requests.

"I did not view Reggie's family as leech-like or sucking him for money," says Brandt, now a law professor at American and Catholic universities.

"I never got that sense. What he did was on his own. It wasn't a huge amount. It was benevolent."

Lewis' half-brother, Jon Ritch, 25, says he understood Harris-Lewis' concern that his mother would pester Lewis for money to feed her addiction. But other family members contend that was only part of the problem.

"I have observed from the outside, but anyone raised in a right way knows she hasn't treated us fairly," says Lewis' uncle, Mack Lewis, 75, a boxing trainer and manager who is a member of the Maryland Boxing Hall of Fame.

"We're a very close family, and when Reggie used to come to Baltimore, all his uncles and friends would come over to his house or to his games. Then we stopped because of her. The reason for the alienation is monetary. She wants to keep it all to herself.

"She is selfish, that's what she is, nasty."

Jon Ritch tries to see both sides.

He's one of the few Baltimore relatives who still speaks to Harris-Lewis, but he recalls an incident that took place the day before the funeral, when he was screening calls for her at the Lewis home in Dedham, Mass.

Ritch recalls Harris-Lewis saying: " 'Here are all these people who feel they didn't have to go through me to get to Reggie. Now look at them.'

"It was very cold for someone to say something like that the day before her husband's funeral," says Jon Ritch, who works as a chemical processor for Barre-National. "She's real cold. It's such a power thing to her. She wants control of everything."

Addiction problem

Ritch's cocaine addiction played no small part in her dispute with Harris-Lewis.

"Donna always held that over Peggy's head," recalls Lewis' aunt, Lynette Dozier, a secretary for the state department of health and mental hygiene for the past 21 years.

"She would tell Reggie that once a drug addict, always a drug addict, that Peggy wasn't right and would never change."

Ritch says she didn't discuss her addiction with Lewis until shortly before she began her recovery. She says, however, that Lewis knew about her problem much earlier; he told her that Harris-Lewis detected it first.

Ritch says the first two times she asked Lewis for money, it was because all of her income was going to cocaine and her utilities had been turned off. Lewis honored her requests for $900 and $1,100.

At the time, Ritch was working for Sweetheart Cup. She earned $11.43 an hour when she quit after 10 years on Nov. 20, 1991, to enter a drug-rehabilitation center in New York, with Reggie and Donna saying they would pay the bill.

The plan, Ritch says, was for her to complete the program at the center, then work for the Reggie Lewis Foundation. But she says she was rejected by the center because she had suffered two heart failures, the first in 1963, the second in 1990.

"I was like, 'What the hell am I going to do?' " Ritch recalls. "Donna screamed on the phone, 'Why did you quit your job before you heard from the doctors?' But they said once they got the medical records, I could start the program."

Now, Ritch was furious with Harris-Lewis -- and, by extension, with her son.

"He said, 'Ma, find yourself another program, and I'll take care of you,' " Ritch says. "I told him I didn't want him taking care of nothing, I would handle it myself."

Ritch says she proceeded to go on a "bender" that lasted virtually all of December. But on Jan. 17, she entered a center in Wilmington, Del., working in a factory warehouse to pay for her room and board. Her stay lasted three months. She says Harris-Lewis wanted her to remain at least a year.

She returned to Baltimore in April 1992, and started drawing unemployment in June. Ritch could not work for the Lewis foundation -- she says Harris-Lewis was going through a difficult pregnancy, and all foundation activities were on hold.

Asking for money

It wasn't until May 1993 that Ritch approached her son for money again.

She and several other relatives were visiting Lewis at a Boston hospital after his collapse during an NBA playoff game. Lewis was in a jovial mood, having just been diagnosed by Mudge as suffering from a benign fainting condition, not serious heart trouble.

Ritch, though, was facing her own medical problem -- a blockage a major artery. Her health insurance was running out, and she needed money to make three $188 payments.

She asked her son, Jon, if the time was right to ask Reggie to pay for the insurance.

"I don't see why it would be a problem," Jon replied.

Peggy Ritch says Lewis agreed to make the payments. But the next day -- Mother's Day -- he called back to say the matter would have to wait.

Ritch now lacks medical insurance, and says she cannot afford the procedure to remove the blockage in her artery.

"That was the lowest point for Peggy," her sister, Lynette, recalls. "She asked Reggie to help her, and he said fine, he would. The next day on the phone, after talking to his wife, Reggie told his mother no.

"At the end of the conversation, he said, 'Oh, by the way, happy Mother's Day.' It hurt Peggy deep inside."

Ritch bursts into tears recalling the incident.

"She [Harris-Lewis] said it was very poor of me when he was on his sickbed to give him a bill," Ritch says. "But they had told me everything was OK. I didn't know he was so sick. I would never have done anything to hurt him."

At the time of his death, it seemed Lewis was growing closer to his mother.

"They had just started talking and were starting to understand each other," Jon Ritch says. "It was getting better. Reggie had things on his mind he wanted to confront my mother with. It was definitely going in a positive direction."

Ritch says the third opinion he received from a team of Los Angeles heart specialists "woke him right up" -- not only about the seriousness of his heart problem, but also about his fractured relationship with his family.

The Los Angeles specialists concurred that he had a fainting condition, but said he also might be suffering from a potentially serious heart defect and should be closely monitored during activity.

Ritch talked with Lewis for the last time four days before he died. She says Lewis planned to return to Baltimore to undergo further testing at Johns Hopkins Hospital and to pay off the mortgages on his mother's and sister's homes.

"He said he was going to take control of everything," Ritch says. "No one was going to be speaking for him anymore. He was going to be handling things himself."

Now, more than a year after his death, his mother and widow are barely in contact.

"It seems like Donna is making an effort to get closer to my mother, but at the same time, she's distancing herself," Jon Ritch says.

"She'll do things like send her flowers on Mother's Day or her birthday. At the same time, she'll change her phone number and not tell anyone. It's contradictory."

Harris-Lewis recently sent Ritch a book -- "In the Spirit," the inspirational writings of Susan L. Taylor, the editor-in-chief of Essence magazine. Ritch says she found it helpful.

On the other hand, Ritch says she won't accept an invitation from Harris-Lewis to attend the Celtics' retirement ceremony for Lewis' No. 35 this season.

"If the Celtics don't get in touch with me, then we won't be there," she says.

And so, more than a year later, the Reggie Lewis tragedy endures.

"Sometimes, you wonder how one group [of doctors] could see one thing and one see another, but that's life," Harris-Lewis told the Boston Globe in July. "We cannot say whether it was his time or not. That's up to God."

"I harbor no ill will against anybody," Harris-Lewis said. "It's wasted energy."

Ritch fumes over such words.

"In Boston, everything is forgiven, everything is forgotten," Ritch says. "Not here. It's not forgiven. It's not forgotten. My child is dead. He's never going to come back.

"Just to say, 'Everything is OK, the slate is wiped clean,' it's OK for those people to say. It was not their child. Donna can replace her husband. I can't replace my son."

How will divides Lewis estate

The only way Reggie Lewis' relatives in Baltimore would receive money from his estate is if they survive his widow, Donna Harris-Lewis, and her two children, Reggie Jr., 2, and Reggieana, 7 months.

In that event, the estate would be divided into 10 shares, each worth 7 percent, according to a copy of the will obtained by The Sun from Norfolk County Probate Court in Dedham, Mass.

OC Five Baltimore relatives would receive shares -- Lewis' mother,

Inez "Peggy" Ritch; his father, Irving Sr.; his brother, Irving Jr.; his sister, Sheron; and his half-brother, Jon.

The five other shares would go to Harris-Lewis' mother, Sarah; her twin brother, Donald; her aunt, Laura Surles; the best man at their wedding, Mark Reeves; and the maid of honor, Darlene Dorcinvil. The other 30 percent of the estate would go to the Reggie Lewis Foundation.