Goodbye, Fayetteville

      In 1973, my family and I lived at Fayetteville, Arkansas. I had been coaching basketball at Woodland Junior High for seven years.

      Dad was not doing well while we were at Fayetteville. He was still struggling to keep the farm going at Wing, Arkansas until my brother Harold retired from the Air Force and could take over the farm.  Dad had several bad spells, and my sisters and I swapped off a lot, being there to help them out. One really bad time, he got so weak he could not take care of himself, Mom was not strong enough to lift him, and my sister Jonnie and I had a hard decision to make. We checked him in at a nursing home at Ola. I’ll have to admit, Jonnie was the stronger one in making that decision we had to make. Personally, I spent a lot of time crying along about then. I had heard on the family grapevine that Aunt Lula was pretty high on me, but that ended when Dad went to that nursing home.

      As he began to get stronger, he worked hard on creative ways to take care of himself, including using his walking stick to help put his clothes on. We were finally able to take him home.

     Harold retired from the Air Force and he moved his family back to the farm, which was his plan all along. He got more than he bargained for. All the old Gillum’s around him started dying off quickly when Harold returned home.  With Dad relieved of the responsibility of the farm, Rhumatoid Arthritis became his master.

      He had a stroke, and went to the hospital at Ft. Smith. The preacher at the Rover Baptist Church was there visiting at the same time I was, once, and Dad introduced me as “My son, a teacher at Fayetteville."

      After Dad went home, every time I came down on the weekend to see them, the preacher kept trying to get me to preach at his church. I told him, "That's just not my thing." He looked puzzled by that, but he just kept on trying. I finally realized, Because of his stroke, Dad was not speaking clearly when he introduced me, and the preacher thought he was saying, "My son, a preacher at Fayetteville." Well, I didn't waste any time setting him straight about that, and the preacher finally left me alone.

      Aunt Lula, Dad’s sister, had held a grudge against Dad for decades. When Dad was in the hospital the last time, she got my cousin Juanita to take her there. "I've got to make things right with John." Dad was in a final coma state when she got there. She went in, Dad came out of the coma, and they talked a few minutes. Then Dad passed away. Aunt Lula settled her grudge with Dad in his last few moments. Dad was 78. I figured out later that at the moment Dad died, I was doing an interview with a radio station in Fort Smith about basketball stuff. My priorities were not in order. I should have been at the Danville hospital.

     By 1973, coaching was wearing thin. I had made some key enemies among the Fayetteville coaching staff, and that was not a pleasant time. I could tell you my side of it, but I'm sure they have a side of it too.

 

     I was never a good football coach. Having never seen a football game until I was grown, I never knew the game well enough. I judged myself a fair + basketball coach. I never had a losing season, but that alone does not constitute a great coach. I was a better teacher than coach. Some of the coaches I was around were good coaches, but I never knew one during my coaching career that I would judge to be a good, true man. When I read Tony Dunge's book last year, I finally realized that good, Christian coaches do actually exist, even at the highest level. But I never worked with one.

     One year, my weakest team lost seven straight games before Christmas, usually by two or three points. Some teams, and maybe some coaches, just don't have the stuff to finish an opponent off. The killer instinct.

 

     I sat down during the Christmas break, and tried to figure how we could possibly come out on top. I looked at the schedule, marked the games I thought we could possibly win, and those we couldn't. We came out 13-12, with every game going the way I had it marked.

      Coaching tends to suck you, all of you, into the game, and leaves time for little else. I now had two babies, and it was hard to be a good family man. At least, that's the effect it had on me. I wanted out.

 

      In August, Barb and I sold our trailer, loading everything in Dad's old pickup, packed the babies into our old car, and headed for Hannibal, Mo. to a physical science job without enough money to do that, at the time. We could really not afford to take that pay cut, because the new job was teaching only, no coaching. But in my heart, I knew I could not afford to stay in coaching. Barb knew I had to get out of Fayetteville, she supported me completely, and never complained. I've never forgotten that. Many years later, we moved to McCrory, Arkansas. Barbara was starting girl’s athletics under Title Nine, equal opportunity for girls. She did not coach like me. Her coaching was based on love, not fear. To my surprise, that worked much better.

      Eventually, she told me she wanted to get out of coaching and buy a failing photography studio in Arkadelphia. It would mean I had no job. But I just said, “OK.” What goes around comes around.

      When Mom found out we were moving, she said, “I want to go with you. I could cook and clean for you, and grow a garden.” I knew mom hated living alone. But we had very little time to get there and get set up before school started. I told her I would come back for her, when we got a house and got set up. I could see the disappointment in her eyes. Had I known what the future held, I would have done differently. I still have a lot of trouble about the decision I made that day. Sometime, a person just has no second chance to redo a bad decision. Mom died just before we bought a house.