I remember that 1973 butt-whoopin’ like it was yesterday. What I didn’t remember were all the rest that went along with it.

No, I’m not referring to the time I was playing in my mother’s sacrosanct living room and broke her prized vase. The scalding that followed burned bright and hot. She regretted that one, as I recall, checking me later in the afternoon for “marks” and apologizing profusely, probably worried that Dad would get on her for being a little too rough.

I’m talking about the 77-6 smackdown that Bear Bryant’s boys, with their high-octane wishbone offense, laid on Charlie Coffey’s hapless crew of Virginia Tech Fighting Gobblers (aka, “The Hokies”) in October of that year down in Tuscaloosa. The Alabama record book still glows like Three Mile Island from that one: 833 yards of total offense, 53 runs for 748 yards, 4 runners over the 100 yard mark.

Afterward, The Bear knew how that one would be received. He offered up a mea culpa of sorts,  hemming and hawing in that gravelly baritone of his.  “The last thing I wanted to do was embarrass young Charlie Coffey,” he said. “The first team only played 12 minutes, and we were shoving in the reserves as fast as we could…I couldn’t do anything to stop it. We played 74 men.”

I couldn’t do anything to stop it. But what about the band, Bear, what about the band?

Alabama finished that year 11-1 and won the National Championship. As for “young Charlie Coffey?” All he got was a pink slip and a one-way bus ticket out of Blacksburg.

But as I rediscovered this week, the 1973 Beatdown in T-town was no isolated incident during that era. [...]

Regarding the various times that I worked construction jobs while in school, there are really only two words that need to be said.

I’m sorry.

Sorry for the outlet covers that were put on upside down, sorry for the insulation that wasn’t stapled in correctly, sorry for that door that just won’t shut quite right.

In numerous subdivisions and neighborhoods throughout the Southeast United States, homeowners are starting to do a double take at some of the so-called “quality craftsmanship” of their suburban executive homes and declare: “Who the @%#$&*! put this thing together?!”

Uh, that would be me, and I like I said, I’m sorry.

But you see, that’s what you get when some jackleg contractor decides to slap together as many houses as possible in no time flat. They hire cheap, inexperienced laborers, some of them with fresh college degrees, to pick up building supplies in old, dilapidated pickup trucks with no air conditioning, huge holes in the mufflers (if there’s a muffler at all) and three speeds on the column which are really only two and half since the shifter always sticks just when you get ‘er up to about 45 mph.

And after picking up 2x4s at Lowes, the contractors task those workers with jobs which in a perfect world would only be performed by experienced, unionized master craftsmen. The result is a house which looks Southern Living-perfect from a distance but will stay that way only if you’re not too concerned about fine details like trim that reaches all the way to end of the wall and if you don’t lean too hard on the banister rail.

The first time I worked construction was in Searcy, Arkansas in the spring of 1985. I had taken a leave of absence from the PhD program in clinical psychology at Virginia Tech in order to “find myself” and figure out if I had chosen the right career path. I figured a little time getting in touch with my “inner blue collar working guy” would do the trick. Well, that, and I was engaged to be married to the future Eyegal who was finishing up her senior year at Harding.

So I found a room to rent for the spring and a job working construction for a relatively young Harding grad who was a contractor and shall remain nameless, although his last name did closely resemble that of a semiaquatic rodent known for building dams in the darnedest places. There I was, one year out of college, basically a graduate school dropout, working a $5 an hour construction job (hey, it was good money in ’85), with no immediate prospects. My future father-in-law looked on anxiously at all this, and to his credit, he didn’t say a word (to me, anyway).

That entire spring can be summed up simply by describing my first morning on the job. I was dropped off at a new house project with instructions to work with a crew of brick masons and do whatever they asked me to do. I was told to start sweeping the mortar dust from some of the sidewalks and had been doing that for just a few minutes when the entire crew decided to take a break. Since I was now an official brickmason’s assistant and a valuable member of Team Mortar, I decided to take a break as well.

That didn’t go over very well with the furry rodent, uh, I mean The Boss Man, when he stopped back by a few minutes later. He yelled at me for slacking off already and told me to get back to work. I started to protest, summoning all the rhetorical skill of my bachelor of arts degree, but then I decided to let it go. Even the mortar guys thought it was a little unfair since they were taking a break too, but nobody exactly leaped to my defense.

Later that morning, I actually got to stick a shovel in a wheelbarrow full or mortar. I was supposed to heave it up onto some scaffolding where the masons were, but nobody told me about how hard I needed to turn my wrist in order for the mortar to land where it was supposed to.

You probably know where this is going by now. Down came the entire shovelful of mortar on my head. Oh, the hoots, hollers and catcalls which followed: “Whoo Hoo, check out the COLLEGE BOY, evra’body!”

Mercifully, they came up with something else for me to do after I had cleaned off a little. As the future Eyegal helped pick the dried mortar from my hair while feeding me dinner at the threshold of the door to her apartment later that evening (I say the threshold because that’s where I was sitting since Harding rules did not allow so much as my big toenail inside the door), I knew then and there that there was no future for me in brick masonry. No siree, I was going to have to find myself a career more suited to my talents and gifts, preferably one that didn’t involve shovels.

So one afternoon I told the supervisor that I needed to find my calling in life and asked if I could knock off for the afternoon and go over to the Harding career library. By that time I had developed quite a reputation as a handyman and figured that he would say no since he couldn’t do without my help, so imagine my surprise when his face lit up and he exclaimed, “Yes! And oh, by the way, take as much time as you need.”

Once there, I had spent a few minutes thumbing through career pamphlets when I spied a slick little brochure from the American Optometric Association entitled “Your Future in Optometry.” I had never even considered becoming an optometrist before, but after a few minutes reading, I was hooked.

I decided then and there that I would become an Eyeguy and spend the rest of my life actually working on something that I could fix with my hands and be done with it rather than spinning my wheels doing psychotherapy or shoveling mortar. Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those things.

Over the years, I’ve had several third-generation optometrists as students, people who knew from the time of their earliest memories that they would carry on the family tradition. When they’ve learned that I decided on optometry as a career in about 15 minutes after reading a brochure, they usually sit there silently, their mouths agape, thinking, How could anyone have put so little time and thought into choosing their career?

I’ll tell you how. Sometimes you’re so desperate that you just have to make a decision and go with it. I bet none of them had ever picked dried mortar from their hair.

I worked with the brick masons several more times that spring. By the end they had actually grown quite fond of me, and when I told them that I had decided to become an optometrist, there was much rejoicing. They reassured me that they thought it was a very good career move.

I worked construction jobs a couple more times while in optometry school, but by then I was well on my way to a white collar, air conditioned professional career. I endured those 100 degree Birmingham summers well because I knew that the day was coming soon when I would be rid of my “scut work” jobs forever and I would finally get the respect that I deserved.

Or so I thought.

To be continued…

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

–T.S. Eliot The Wasteland

I think Eliot was right. And that’s not even counting my own personal tragedies that have occurred in this month.

The Washington Post tells what it’s like to try to archive all the compassionate gestures directed toward Virginia Tech last year.

And here is my own contribution.

Duke’s done, but after the requisite 24-hour grieving period, I’ve done switched to another team. I’m now a Davidson Man:

That’s about how much my bracket is worth after week one: 15 cents

Number One and I visited Davidson’s lovely campus before his senior year of high school, so I feel I can lay somewhat of a claim. Also, I actually saw Stephen Curry’s dad Dell play when I was a grad student at Virginia Tech. That makes me old enough to be Stephen’s father, which, on this Monday morning, is just another depressing thought to contemplate.

Oh well. Go Wildcats! And Go Duke–next year.

JRB and I recently found ourselves in a discussion over the willingness of Alabama Coach Nick Saban to go for two points during the Vanderbilt game a couple weeks ago. He felt like St. Nick was “piling on” the points, and I felt that he wasn’t. One of the points I brought up was my memory of Alabama’s thrashing of the Virginia Tech Hokies when they came to Blacksburg in 1973. That final was 77-6 even after The Bear had gone through the entire 3rd string, the waterboys and a couple of tuba players.

As I pointed to JRB, 77-6 is something to complain about, not a measly 2-point conversion in a relatively low-scoring game in which your QB has had trouble finding his mark inside the Red Zone and simply needs the practice. I argued that the ability to throw under extreme pressure in short yardage situations might be critical in future weeks, and lo and behold, it turned out to be just that. But like any good lawyer worth his salt, JRB argued his point passionately and to the nth degree, even in the face of inexorable logic.

That discussion triggered a few memories of my own, of days when I had to make the decision: Do I call off the dogs or not?

Over my years of coaching soccer, I’ve been fortunate to have been able to coach many good players and winning teams, some of which were real juggernauts. On many occasions, after getting up several goals and gaining a comfortable lead (more a problem in rec play than at the club level where teams are usually more evenly matched), I was faced with the decision of how to hold down the score so as not to totally embarrass the opposing team.

In soccer this can be accomplished in a variety of ways, such as requiring your team to make a certain number of consecutive passes prior to taking a shot, moving players into different positions or focusing on shooting only with a certain part of the body, such as the head or the player’s weaker (usually left) foot. This allows your team to practice a specific skill, holds down the scoring in a mismatch and allows the other team to save face and have more fun while feeling that they were more “in the game.” In most cases, it is the most rational and sporting thing to do.

In most cases. There’s always the exception.

A few years ago, I was coaching a match in which the opposing players were mouthy brats who complained to the ref at every turn while at the same time taking every opportunity to take a cheap shot at one of my players. Their sharply-dressed and well-coiffed parents were loud and preachy too, and they were coached by a British chap who just wouldn’t leave well enough alone (these things often flow from the top) and who kept crossing the midline and walking into my coaching area to complain about my players and what awful soccer I had taught them. It didn’t help matters that they hailed from one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Huntsville. They also weren’t very good.

At halftime, we were up 6-0 even though they had intimidated the young teenage center ref into calling everything their way. As the lads gathered around my feet for halftime instructions, my leading scorer, who had already notched four goals at that point, looked up at me and asked, “Are you going to call off the dogs, Coach?”

I thought about that for about one second. Then, calmly, and with great emphasis on each word, I issued the following charge:

“Fire at will, boys. Fire. At. Will.”

On the way to Roanoke last week, we took a turn on 460 West for a short side trip to Blacksburg and the campus of Virginia Tech. I had planned to walk the drill field area, check out any remaining memorials and perhaps take a picture of Norris Hall and post it here. But it was a gray, overcast day and spitting rain. The thought occurred to me that the weather was merely reflecting the sorrow and the tears that were still being shed in that place.

As we drove around the drill field, we noted that the spontaneous memorials had been removed, replaced instead by a permanent one currently under construction in front of Burruss Hall. I had planned to stop in front of Norris Hall and snap a picture, but there were several students and faculty in the area, and even going in and out of Norris–it just didn’t seem right to walk up there in their presence with a camera and put them through that again. I’m sure they’ve had quite enough of that. Norris Hall has apparently reopened though, and there are plans to use it again this fall (for a slide show of the renovated second floor, click here).

After driving around the drill field a couple of times, we exited toward the east side of campus by Cassell Coliseum and Lane Stadium. We looked to our right and saw Ambler Johnston Hall, the site of the first shootings. It was humming like a beehive, and apparently some undergraduates were already moving back in. Outside one of the doors hung a banner: Welcome Back Students!

I glanced at my watch. It was time for us, and Virginia Tech, to move on.

Philip Yancey is one of my favorite contemporary Christian writers. My first exposure to him was during my premed days at Harding when I read Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, a book he coauthored with Dr. Paul Brand. Since then, he’s only become better and more prolific. As someone who in the past has described himself as a “reluctant Christian,” Yancey to me feels like spiritual next-of-kin.

Two weeks after the Virginia Tech massacre, Yancey waded into the morass of grief that was Blacksburg, Virginia and delivered these words.

I sent this link to Number One Son, figuring that he might appreciate some of the things that Yancey had to say as he prepares to take up the tricky business of learning and living out his faith on a state university campus. This was his reply:

Wow. I’ve heard so many preachers, ministers, devotional leaders or whoever make it sound like God erases pain like it never happened, like the pain is an entirely bad thing. While I do believe that God will erase all suffering someday, I’ve always had a problem with the concept that he intend this life to be painless. This guy shoots that idea down and says that God intended pain, along with every single thing that happens in this life, to be used positively . . . even the pain of being a part of something like the massacre at VT to honor those killed. I like this guy, good find, you should blog it.

Good idea, Number One. I think I will.

As someone who has sat on the mourner’s bench as both the comforter and the afflicted, I know firsthand the paralysis that can set in as one ponders the difficulty of what to say in the midst of dire and death-filled straits. It’s all too easy to try too hard and strike the wrong note.

Yancey, however, is pitch perfect.

Hokies. They’re everywhere–including Baghdad.

And God bless ‘em every one.

Among the more curious reactions to the Virginia Tech killings that I’ve seen bandied about in various circles is one that goes something like this:

The tremendous outpouring of grief over the death of 33 Virginia Tech students and professors is proof positive that Americans are selfish and egocentric and care more about their own lives than lives lost around the world everyday from other far worse atrocities, civil wars, preventable diseases, etc. Why not more outrage and grief over innocent lives lost in Iraq and Darfur, or the thousands lost to AIDs on the African continent? Stupid, myopic Americans; so much grief over their own kids, so much blindness toward the suffering of others around the world whose lives are just as important.

Or something like that. On the one hand, it’s a fair point; we do tend to react more strongly when something horrible happens in our own backyard as opposed to the other side of the world. And we can all (institutions, countries, churches, individuals) be a bit too parochial at times.

But the irony of pressing that particular point is that the moment one starts to call into question the amount of grief and concern shown toward the innocents at Virginia Tech, one runs the risk of devaluing their lives and the suffering surrounding them in an attempt to increase the value of lives elsewhere. It seems to me that grief is not a zero-sum game. Is it not enough to say that all human life is valuable, and that the death of innocents for any reason anywhere is tragic?

But is it necessary to grieve all death “equally?” Each morning on my drive to work, I listen to NPR and hear about the latest death toll from Iraq. I usually sigh, feeling a small twinge of sadness and a little kick in the gut–and then I drive on. I feel the loss, but being far removed, it doesn’t stop me dead in my tracks the way that the Virginia Tech killing did–for obvious reasons. It seems that all of us are naturally inclined to be affected more by events and tragedies to which we are more personally connected. I’m not sure that’s an indication of American nationalism and self-interest so much as it is simply a fact of human nature.

And there may be a good reason for that. I wonder what it would be like to experience–in full measure–the sadness and horror of every death of every innocent the world over? I would imagine that it would be more than I could take. It’s difficult enough to have to deal periodically with the sadness and death in my own circle, much less that of everyone everywhere all the time.

But to call into the question the proportion of another’s grief seems to me a bit like a sour, off-key note in the middle of a symphony–it stands out like a sore thumb, causing one to cringe. The mourner’s bench is no place for mental masturbation or chatter. There is a time to talk–and there is a time to simply shut up and grieve.

Saturday I ran another half-marathon. My time was 1:50:40, a full five minutes faster than February.

But it wasn’t easy. Whereas in February I felt I still had a little gas in the tank at the end, this time I was running on fumes. My calves were knotting up as I slouched toward the finish, but finish I did. Of course, this morning I can barely move, but that’s the price a 45-year-old must pay for such “glory.”

I can remember several times thinking about how hard it was and about how it would be nice just to stop and hang it up and start acting my age. But you see, I couldn’t; I was wearing Hokie orange. And on that particular day, considering how so many were hurting so much more than me, there could be no quitting.

I have unfinished business–breaking four hours in the marathon. I plan to attempt that before the year’s out, and when I do, I’ll be wearing maroon and orange.

I know there are some out there who think that’s a little, well, “hokey.”

Deal with it.

It’s been said that there are no more than six degrees of separation between every person on earth. But when I heard that 32 innocents had died in Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech, it hit me how large and complex that particular web of relationships would be and how far it would extend across the country and even the world. I grew up in Southwest Virginia and was a graduate student at Virginia Tech and a resident of Blacksburg for 2 years. One of my first thoughts when I heard the news was, that in this particular case, there would likely be no more than two degrees of separation between one of the victims and me.

Unfortunately, I was right.

Paul is my best friend from my Blacksburg days. I met him and his wife Janette at the Blacksburg Church of Christ, and when Eyegal joined me there in June, 1985 after we were married, the four of us became fast friends and remain so to this day, despite the geographical distance which separates us. Paul graduated with a PhD in Engineering Mechanics and is now a professor of civil engineering at Colorado State University. I emailed him yesterday and asked him how he was and if he had heard from any of our mutual friends.

He replied that he had not, but he went on to reminisce about the three years that he had spent cordoned off in Norris Hall, “becoming one” with the intricacies of dynamics and structural analysis and also about a man he met there–Liviu Librescu. He was the 75-year-old professor and Holocaust survivor who held shut the door of Room 204 of Norris Hall as the assailant attempted to enter his classroom. That brave deed allowed enough time for most of his students to escape through the windows. He and another student were eventually shot and killed, however.

Their offices were located close together in those days, and Paul had come to know Librescu when he first arrived on sabbatical in 1985. Librescu apparently liked what he saw in Blacksburg (what sane person wouldn’t?). He decided to stay there and gained a full time teaching position at Tech. He had continued to teach to the ripe old age of seventy-five, impressing his students and colleagues with his depth of experience and wisdom and his gentlemanly and scholarly manner.

As he faced the dark wrath of Cho Seung-Hui, Librescu was staring into the face of a familiar evil. He stood in the breach protecting his young charges as a man who had suffered–and survived–the senseless brutality, atrocities and nihilism of a Nazi concentration camp. But this time, there would be no escape.

Last night, I called Dave and Terri, close friends from Harding who now live in Blacksburg. Dave is director of human resources for a large automotive parts manufacturer while Terri teaches in a local public elementary school. Dave was still at work, but I talked with Terri who understandably sounded exhausted and somber. As you might expect in a university town like Blacksburg, everybody knows somebody, and in her case, the web of connections hit very close to home.

Among the dead was one of their neighbors, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, a French instructor who was gunned down in Room 211 of Norris Hall. She was the wife of Jerzy Nowak, a horticulture professor, and had a teenage daughter who is a friend of both of Terri’s children.

Dr. Kevin Granata, a world-renown researcher in biomechanics whose speciality was the movement dynamics of cerebal palsy, was also an acquaintance. Terri had worked with his wife, who was a PTSA leader and active volunteer at the elementary school, and taught their children as well.

For Terri’s daughter Brooke, a senior at Blacksburg High, star lacrosse player and future Hokie, Black Monday was a cold and harsh reminder that the killer angels among us know no bounds. Austin Cloyd, a freshman who had moved to Blacksburg from Champaign, Illinois when her father took an accounting professorship at Tech, was in the same French classroom as Ms. Couture-Nowak. A year ago, she had been in the same French classroom as Brooke at Blacksburg High.

I saw an interview with Austin’s parents last night on NBC. They bravely faced the world through their tear-clouded eyes and reminded us all of how important it is to make good memories when you can, because, as her father said, “you never know when that’s all you’re going to have left.”

Terri and Dave have talked with Brooke in recent days. Their question: “Are you sure you want to stay and go to school here?”

Her steely reply: “Now more than ever.”

Thirty-two innocent lives, two degrees of separation. As I watched the chilling footage of Cho Seung-Hui’s “multimedia manifesto” last night on NBC news, it occurred to me that we are all connected to this event, two degrees or not. Everyone, that is, except him.

For Cho Seung-Hui, who apparently wasn’t connected to his own humanity much less that of his neighbor, the degrees of separation were infinite–a number so large as to be ultimately incomprehensible.

A number so large as to be ultimately fatal.

On this day we are all Hokies. And we grieve with you.

True story:

In the fall of 1984, I was a skinny, malnourished first-year graduate student in clinical psychology at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. This was just shortly before I realized that I wasn’t cut out to be a psychotherapist and needed to work with something I could actually fix–like eyeballs–but I digress.

Moving back to Blacksburg had reignited some childhood allergies which in turn had set off a touch of asthma, and that was the reason that I was in Ellett’s Drugstore on Main Street looking for drugs–any and all, please–that would give me a few moments of relief. After scooping up and paying for enough OTC medications to anesthetize a herd of charging elephants, I started out the door.

As I neared the entrance, I noticed a large shadow enveloping me, much like that produced by a 747 jumbo jet passing overhead as it’s silhouetted against the sun. Anxious to get back to my apartment and start popping some pills, I ignored the danger sign and pressed forward.

But not for long. I soon collided with what I first thought was the sturdy and immovable trunk of a California Redwood. I stumbled backward a few steps, dropping the drugs, and gazed upward, slowly focusing my watery, red eyes on the mammoth hunk of man blocking the door. The “tree” was 6’4,” weighed about 260 lbs and was wearing a Virginia Tech letter jacket.

“Sorry man, you awright?” [...]