Sooner Great Rick Bryan Dead

Rick Bryan died at the age of 47 last night of an apparent heart attack. The Tulsa World has an excellent article here. My condolences to the Bryan family and friends.

In an unrelated note, two county deputies were killed in my hometown of Seminole, Ok while attempting to serve an arrest warrant last night. My prayers are with the families.

What a crappy way to start out the day.

Wayman Tisdale

Wayman Tisdale died yesterday. a few perspectives from my side:

1. Wayman didn't resurrect OU basketball. Resurrection presumes a prior life. He breathed life into it. OU had one trip to the Final Four in 40 years and one conference championship in 30 when he got there. Per game attendance was less than 5,000 the season before his arrival. Two years later, it was 10,000 per game. I am a huge college hoops fan, and was blessed to be a college student after he and Coach Tubbs breathed life into the program in the mid 80s.
2. Wayman holds the season record for most points in a game. As a freshman, he broke Alvan Adams record of 691 points. As a sophomore he broke his own record. As a junior his broke his record again. Presently, those seasons are 6th, 2nd and 1st in Sooner history. As a point of reference, Blake Griffin's 2009 National Player of the Year season yielded the 7th highest point total in Sooner history. His turnaround jumper was special. Wayman caught the ball with his back to the basket and the ball was almost immediately redirected to the basket. There was no bounce, no attempt to knock over the defender. He was 6'9" and 240 pounds, but that size was not used to bull his way to the basket. There was just a quick shot up on the glass, and more than 57% of the time it went in.
3. As an ambassador for Sooner hoops, there was none better. Tisdale wore a huge grin on his face most of the time. He lit up a room, when he entered. Tubbs knew he had a cornerstone of a program when he recruited Wayman. College and NBA teammates are saying wonderful things about him. there are no scandals about Wayman.
4. As an NBA player, Wayman averaged 15 points per game and 6 rebounds over a 12 year career with the Indiana Pacers, Sacramento Kings and Phoenix Suns, making an impact on and off the court with teammates, foes and media with his smile, generosity and concern for others.
5. As a musician, he was superb. Wayman was an accomplished jazz musician who wrote most of his own music. He recorded eight albums, all of which made Billboard's Top 10 for Contemporary Jazz, and one spent four weeks as the Billboard No. 1 Contemporary jazz album.
6. As a man of God, few mortals have walked the walk better. He was a pleasure to be around, and his faith made him stronger. Coach Tubbs said it best, "If God wants to build a basketball team, he has a great player now," Tubbs said. "And if he wants to build a band, he has a great bass player. Write a great story about him. He deserves it. Wayman Tisdale was a great man."

My condolences go out to all his family and those who knew him personally.

Wayman was a native of Tulsa, and the Tulsa World has a lot of stuff paying respects to Wayman.

Memorial Day

Work and travel made it difficult to properly memorialize Sooner great Jack Mildren last week.

On Memorial Day, in a completely insufficient tribute to those who died fighting for our freedoms to do stuff like post stuff online for free, here's a link to a fabulous SI story by William Nack about Sooner Bob Kalsu, who died serving our country during the Vietnam War.

Take a moment to remember those who paved the way.

Veterans Day

I'm sure with the expansive readership out there a veteran will read this. Thanks to all the veterans who serve or have served in the United States Armed Forces. We wouldn't have the freedom to waste time on blogs, or even some more improtant things, without the service you all model.

I'm attaching a link here to an article about former Sooner All American Bob Kalsu, who died in the Vietnam War.

The 1967 Sooners were Big 8 Champions, and had a 40 year reunion this weekend. Kalsu was on that team.

Thanks again to all those servicemen and women out there.

Reason for the unannounced absence

I took a break from blogging this week while traveling to the promised land of Oklahoma to spend time with family after the death of my grandmother. My grandmother, Loreeta White, was 86 years old, and in her last few years she battled Alzheimer’s, then Parkinson’s, and finally uterine cancer. I am comforted that I know she is in heaven now, and that those wicked illnesses are not prevalent there. I’m taking a break from the normal drivel of this blog to tell you about my grandmother.

Loreeta Kessler married Harry Oscar Dickerson when she was 19. My grandfather had health ailments most of his life. He had scarlet fever as a child, which resulted in complete hearing loss in one ear and partial hearing loss in the other. An accident in a machine shop took the sight in one eye. He was a diabetic, resulting in the loss of one leg and his remaining eyesight, in 1966. My grandfather maintained a wonderful spirit and attitude through this; it’s not like he was a freeloader.

Grandma just gutted it out. Loreeta had a servant’s heart, and the work ethic that was prevalent of so many of those raised in the Depression. She worked in an assembly line in Oklahoma City, and was active in her church and was blessed to have a close knit family. She was a twin to Lorraine, and had a brother Claude and sister Vella Emma. Their vacations tended to be trips to see extended family that lived in California, Florida, Arkansas, wherever.

One of my memories of my grandmother is that in the car, she was always talking…about the weather, road signs, anything that was of interest, or even not, that was coming up. It made sense when my blind grandfather was in the car, but after he died in 1979, I didn’t think it made any sense. I was a stupid teenager and didn’t realize she had programmed herself to talk through these things to be my Grandfather’s eyes to the world, and that she couldn’t be reprogrammed.

After my Grandfather died, Grandma remarried a gentleman named John White a couple of years later. John and Loreeta were married two years before John had a massive stroke in a mall in OKC. He never regained consciousness, but my Grandma White faithfully went to his side at the nursing home daily for eight weeks, praying for his healing. That day never came, and he passed away. Grandma resigned herself at that time that she was solo, and poured herself into helping “the little old ladies” at her church, where she taught the ladies’ Sunday school class and sang in the choir. Grandma was 63 at the time. She continued serving others until Alzheimer’s made it unsafe to do, and many times was helping out, taking meals, and driving folks around that were younger than her.

My grandmother loved to garden and grew roses and tomatoes. She prided herself on mowing her own lawn, well past her 70th birthday.

The biggest lifelong lesson I learned from Grandma was forgiveness. She has a son who has not been a model son, more prodigal than model. I won’t belabor the various missteps nor the pain and inconvenience that his actions caused, but I do remember a conversation where someone asked her, “Why do you put up with this?” and her answer, paraphrased, was “Because he’s my son, and he’ll always be my son.” I’ll never forget that statement, as I thought it such a model of what we should do, but in such contradiction to what we execute on a day to day basis.

Grandma, thanks for the lesson, and for everything. Please tell Grandpa I said, “Hello.” We’ll see you later, and I look forward to that day.