A Fortunate Son

After a rather cryptic tease yesterday evening over on Instagram, I suppose it perhaps best if I explain a little. So, here goes:


Twenty-three years ago I received a phone call from my sister. It was late in the day (probably best described as early evening actually) on Tuesday, December 10, 1996. “Richard, are you there?” My sister didn’t regularly call me. That fact alone was an indication that something was out of the ordinary. “Yeah.” Her immediate response to my answer was a second indication. “Ok, hold on.” As she handed the phone to my mom, my first thoughts turned to my paternal grandmother, who had recently been placed in a nursing home due to Alzheimer’s disease. It ended up Nanny was fine (or as fine as one suffering from that dreaded disease can be). For a few years more, in fact.

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But not everyone was fine. “Are you there?” And that fact became ever more clear as my mom took the phone and made me answer the same question my sister had asked not even thirty seconds earlier. “Yes, I am.” What came next was completely unexpected and I remember it vividly now nearly a quarter of a century later. “Charles Lucas died last night.” I remember it vividly, in part, because everything else became a blur after those five words.

All I could think about were those five simple words. And, frankly, they didn’t quite make sense—even though I knew exactly what they meant. She shared what few details she knew at the moment. And I began making plans to make the five-hour drive home. Those plans included trying to figure out what I was going to do regarding final exams, which started for me the next day. It was my last semester of undergraduate studies and my last few final exams. In the end, I never took those three, I think, exams. I went to campus the next morning (this was before the days of email) and talked briefly with each of my professors, explaining that I had to go home to be with family.

And that was what I did. The next few days were spent in varying stages and displays of grief with close friends who I counted and still count as family. And then I drove back to Mobile. But the details of those days and especially that Tuesday night phone call remain with me.

So, you might legitimately ask: “Who was Charles Lucas?” It’s a really simple question. It is by no means a simple answer. For me anyway.

Charles was someone I had met about seven or so years before. I suppose it was in the spring of my eighth grade year of high school as I started looking toward playing basketball the following year (after a broken ankle that fall had kept me from doing so). Charles was a Tanner High School alum who gave back to the community and the school by helping especially with the basketball teams. What’s more, he invested in specific individuals when they were seriously willing. Both of those words mattered. If you were serious and willing to work hard, then he would gladly give of his time and of his person to work alongside you. And give was exactly what he did over the next several years with me. Many early mornings and late evenings. Pushing. Challenging. Encouraging. Teaching.

Did he help me develop into a better basketball player, teammate, and leader? I believe so, though I imagine other people could more readily answer that question . Did he make me a better person and man? Unquestionably.

And really that was what he was all about anyway. Charles was investing in his “place.” The school. The athletics. The jobs. The land. He invested in people and those people influenced all those other elements of the “place.”

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I never look forward to December 10. I wouldn’t say it hurts less some twenty-three years later. It’s crazy, really. This year I am ten years older than Charles was when he passed. His and Margaret’s children are adults. With children of their own. And they are following their parents’ examples, caring for their community and investing in their “place.” Lots of other young men that Charles worked with are now doing much the same thing, mentoring younger generations about games they are playing at the moment. But also about life.

With said craziness in mind, my son, who is named after Charles, is about the same age I was when I started working out regularly with him. Whether Lucas ever knows it or not, I feel certain some of the good things I do as a father come from Charles. From those moments beating on each other in the post or trying to get by the other on the perimeter. And especially from those conversations on the bleachers or standing around his car. Pushing. Challenging. Encouraging. Teaching.

I am a fortunate son.