Visiting Barbara...

While I was the Athletic Director for the university, I had the chance to visit regularly with an incredible man who graduated from St. John's in the 30's.  He was a singularly intelligent, hardworking and wise individual who spent most of his time in the garden.  Jade plants were his most prized possession and the list of recipients (most of whom bid on these magnificent plants at auctions of one kind or another) was too long to track.  Nearly two years after his death, his widow told me a very touching story that she had not shared before.  In his final days her husband had a plan:  he was going to return to St. John's and fulfill his dream...to be a Johnnie coach.  This idea became so persistent that it was all he ever talked about.  As he lay dying, his mind took him back to Collegeville where he lived some of the best days of his life and he imagined himself again to be a part of that place.  It is no secret that the ordinariness of our lives can mask the true value of all its immediacy.   When we fall into routines, we can sometime miss the extraordinary places and people we experience.  Her story gave me an opportunity to reflect (again) on where we live and work and just how special a place it is.  It is sad that Larry never made it back to coaching here but standing at his grave just a few days ago in Seattle, his widow surmised that he was esctatically coaching a game somewhere because that was his notion of being in paradise.