By Roy Exum

Among our very greatest heroes for the past number of years have been the investment tycoon Bernard L. Madoff and the baseball icon Alex Rodriguez. Today both men are fallen; one is now in jail for surely the rest of his life and the other, although still a Yankee, is recovering from carefully-timed hip surgery hoping the stench of illicit steroids will blow away before he comes back.

So just when you don’t know where else to turn, allow me to beckon you to the Stone Mountain First Baptist Church this morning where funeral services will be held today for one who far lesser fools would initially have us believe was “a nobody.”

If you’ll stick with me a minute, you’ll learn her new address, high in the sky, is a mansion made of gold and silver and neither Bernie nor A-Rod could ever possibly match her life’s true worth. Her given name, first written by careful hand in the family Bible back in 1909,was Myrtice Pinckney McCurdy and what originally caught my eye in the Atlanta newspaper was that she’d lived to be 100 years old.

But, as I read the obituary with -- at first -- little more than passing curiosity, I found her God-given name was “Teacher” and, that in the 43 years she ruled over the fourth grade at the Stone Mountain Elementary School, she was better called “Miss McCurdy.”

The more I read I discovered she only wore clothes the color of purple. In all her years that was more than just her “signature color,” Miss McCurdy absolutely wore no other color. She also let no liquid pass her lips unless it was cold milk or a cold Coca-Cola. No coffee, no alcohol, no orange juice, no nothing, save a sip or two of water but then only rarely.

In a beautifully written tribute by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Donna Lewis, it was learned that Myrtice (no, I have no idea how to properly pronounce it, either) was just 6 years old when she and her other six siblings were forced to endure the death of their mother. Her father, a doctor in Atlanta, never remarried, devoting every moment of his free time instead to his ever-bustling family.

Miss McCurdy never married, either, and lived in “Papa’s House” the great distance of her life until she had to be taken to a nursing facility in just recent years. Get this; in the 100 years she lived on this earth Miss McCurdy never drove a car and she didn’t cook.

As a matter of fact, she and her spinster sister Mary would host huge family dinners every Sunday at the house, as many as 30 coming each week for pot roast or ham or chicken. And no matter what the dish, the heavy-laden side-table always had fried okra and yeast rolls.

Mary did the cooking while Myrtice set the table and then did the dishes. They never knew exactly which family members were coming, or who else they might bring, but they always had just the right amount of food, which is still quite a virtue in the South.

Are you beginning to tune in here? Miss McCurdy was hardly “a nobody,” not at all. Let’s listen to Annette Slaughter, a member of her 1945 fourth-grade class: “She taught us more than the three R’s. She taught us to respect our families, to respect our God and our country. And that’s something that stuck with us forever.”

Now, do you want to know how tightly it actually stuck? When Miss McCurdy was 90 just 10 years ago, that 1945 fourth-grade class had a reunion of sorts at her “Papa’s House” and -- let this sink in slowly -- 20 of the 28 kids were there. They were there for Miss McCurdy, just as she had once been there for them. And even at 90, she could tell each one what they were like back in the fourth grade.

Her sister Mary also taught at Stone Mountain Elementary and the number of children the McCurdy sisters sent to college is stuff of what legends are told. This is the truth. Listen to one niece, Emy Blair, “I can’t even begin to count them,” she said, adding the sisters either found the funds or even paid it themselves.

Maybe her best lessons of all were given at the very church where they will say last rites today. She taught Sunday School for 50 years at the Stone Mountain First Baptist Church. And every summer, right about when it would get insufferably hot in Atlanta, she would load up the kids from her Sunday School class and they would visit the mountains for a few days.

She and Mary also took their nieces and nephews to the beach every summer. From every account, the two McCurdy sisters were “into something all the time.”

Now, here’s the clincher. Every Christmas, without fail, she would give all her nieces a new pair of pajamas. They were all purple pajamas, of course. Then, for over 30 years at the least, she and Mary would have slumber parties every Saturday night for any of the nieces who wanted to come.

Of course, every girl in the family would have literally fought to be there it was such fun. Not one will ever forget that early the next morning, just before getting ready for Sunday School, all the girls would crowd in the kitchen where Aunt Mary would toast huge slabs of heavily-buttered pound cake while Aunt Myrtice would pour real cold milk and real cold Coca-Cola.

You want to know what heaven’s going to be like, with toasted pound cake so heavy with butter you can’t eat it with your fingers, or are you still thinking about Bernie and A-Rod?

I believe instead we may have discovered a far greater “real” hero where, later this morning at the Stone Mountain First Baptist Church, a very purple casket will be slowly rolled down its center aisle and the body of the saint it holds will then dedicated to the Lord.

At the church the crowd will be large, even though most of this 100-year-old’s friends and acquaintances have gone on before her. You see, there will be three nieces, one nephew; 21 great-nieces and great-nephews; another 26 great, great nieces and nephews; and even one great-great-great niece -- most of whom will all wear purple.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll take Miss McCurdy over the “big names” in the news every time. And if you think my vote’s pure, just wait until you see that gold and silver mansion in heaven, you know, the one with the purple front door.

God has a special blessing for people like Myrtice Pinckney McCurdy because, even though many of us in other states had never even tried to pronounce her name until after she lived for 100 years, her example now becomes a blessing to us each and every one.

royexum@aol.com

March 13, 2009

By Roy Exum

I remember how we all laughed last year when we heard a minor-league baseball pitcher had been traded to another team for just 10 maple bats. I remember it, late last May, and how those of us who were old enough also recalled with delight the day legendary Lookouts czar Joe Engel once traded another ball player for a live turkey.

This week the laughter stopped when it was learned John C. Odom, the rangy one-time pitcher who was mercilessly taunted as “Batman” later in the summer when he played for only a short while in Texas, had died of a drug overdose back in November.

It is everyone’s nightmare, to be publicly ridiculed on national networks like ESPN and then best remembered as the answer to an obscure trivia question, but Ben Walker, a brilliant writer for the Associated Press, offered a scenario even more chilling this week. Walker wrote a detailed story on the former San Francisco Giants prospect and let’s read one paragraph from his story:

“Details of his (Odom’s) final days are elusive. His death was obscure. There is no record of where he was living, no explanation of how his body wound up at a hospital, no police report, no public record of where he is buried. Numerous telephone messages left for his family and friends were not returned.”

Well, that kind of knocks a hole in the childhood saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Here’s a guy who was 26 years old and had a 90 mile-an-hour fastball, a splendid curveball and a solid changeup.

The tough news is that he quit professional baseball just three weeks after the famous trade was made and apparently became so deeply mired in his demons that the toxicology report from the coroner read that his death was attributed to a lethal mixture of heroin, methamphetamine, a stimulant called benzylperazine, and alcohol.

So where is the lesson for the rest of us?

It may be best explained by the axiom that 85 percent of the people you meet during the day are climbing a steeper slope than you are. Further, it has been proven that the greatest collections of “fellow strugglers” in the world actually gather in our churches, of all places, every Sunday.

In my morning reading the other day I was drawn to a day in May over 50 years before the famous baseball-bat trade when Roger Bannister, a young medical student in 1954, was eating his oatmeal at the breakfast table.

His mother said she would love to join the crowd in watching him run the mile that afternoon but Roger shook his head, “I won’t do well today. I don’t feel well.” His mother said she would be there anyway because she believed in her boy.

That day Roger became the first human being to ever run a mile in under four minutes. You need to know that as he was a studying medicine, he had read several journals, written by other doctors, that said to run a mile in such a short amount of time was physiologically impossible. He did just the opposite because somebody believed in him. Are you with me here?

Because he broke the barrier, the same thing was done again within a month. It happened yet again within only a few weeks and, since then, it has been done well over 700 times because other runners knew about Bannister and believed it was possible. Forget the medical journals. They saw it could happen, so they made it happen too.

What if somebody somewhere had been able to get inside John Odom’s head and told him it wasn’t about maple bats, but it was about him? I know, they say “if if’s and but’s were candy and nuts what a great Christmas this would be” yet, casting that aside, what if somebody had told John Odom you’ve still got your” heater”– at 90 mph plus – and your curve breaks perfect and your changeup hasn’t changed a bit?

We know that Odom marched to his own drummer, that a “misspent youth” caused him to quit his high school team in Roswell but that he resurfaced at Tallahassee Community College and twirled his mound magic. He committed to play another two years at Oklahoma State but the Giants drafted him late and he dreamed of playing big-league baseball.

A fabulous guitar player, he remained aloof and when he once had “Tommy John” elbow surgery on the tendons in his pitching arm, he was the kind who went to the tattoo parlor and had the words “Poena Par Sapientia” inked above his scar. A rough translation of the Latin is “pain equals wisdom.” He loved to explain that.

So, yes, he was different but he was still just like you and me. Trouble is, during his climb through the minors he was traded for some baseball bats. Some feel, just maybe, if he’d been fostered a little better he could now laugh about it in the “bigs.” Obviously that didn’t happen and John C. Odom, who this time last year was at spring training, is today dead from a drug overdose.

How many people do you know right now who are going through a divorce, unemployment, substance abuse, or deep depression? How many do you know who are struggling with an English class, who are scrambling to find a car to drive, who are single parents working two jobs?

Go deeper: what if they are struggling with the same demons John Odom found? What do you think might happen if you, like Roger Bannister’s mother told her son over his morning oatmeal, said simply, “I believe in you. I’ll be there.”?

I don’t know about you, but I am willing to bet John Odom would still be alive right now instead of the answer to some baseball trivia question.

royexum@aol.com

March 4, 2009

By Roy Exum

Every day the kids who are getting chemotherapy at the world-famed Dana-Farber Cancer Institute crowd onto a third-floor walk-way and they wait. Outside, in the freezing cold and bitter winds, Boston ironworkers are building a new 14-story cancer center.

The kids aren’t watching the leather-tough men build; they are watching the huge I-beams for a far greater reason. You see, before the cranes hoist one I-beam after another, the ironworkers spray paint the name of child who is getting treatment onto each of the huge steel beams.

It sounds stupid but to the kids who patiently wait on that walkway, with their IV drips by their side, it is huge. They all yell and cheer and laugh when “Kristen” or “Sam” or “Taylor” or “Liz” goes up in the air. “It’s your name … it makes you feel important,” said a 16-year-old whose name is now emblazoned in green paint on a seventh-floor beam.

How the seemingly-silly but now much-revered ritual works, according to a wonderful story in the Boston Globe, is that each day the kids write their names in big letters and tape them to windows on the third-floor walkway. The ironworkers who crawl the girders see those names, holler down to the riggers and – presto --- “William” or “Alice” appears in big letters and bright paint.

In an intimate and touching way, this unspoken “act of kindness” is catching the hearts and throats of all who pass the construction site and see over 100 children’s names sprayed in different bright colors on almost every beam. “It’s fabulous,” said the mother of one child. “It’s just a simple little act that means so much.”

Mike Walsh, the iron crew’s foreman, said the idea first blossomed back in 1996 when another building was being built near the hospital. “Everybody saw the kids smiling. That’s what you want to do, to keep them smiling, especially if they are going through treatment.”

Mike knows more about what goes on inside Dana-Farber than most; his wife is a nurse there. Maybe that’s why a huge drawing of SpongeBob SquarePants has a prominent place on the crane that lifts the 4- and 5-ton beams in place. Sometimes there is a message if the beam is long enough; “Hi Hannah Get Well ASAP :)”

Earlier this week as a beam went up with the name of a very bald child, one whose chemotherapy has robbed her of her hair, her shy but bright smile was almost blinding. “Look out the window! That’s your name!”

A mother of another child told the Globe’s Michael Levenson in her rich Boston brogue, “They don’t have to do this, the guys. They could just do their job and do a good job at it and give us a building where we could get treatment at, but they go the extra step and that’s huge.”

It is huge indeed. Hope is, too. “Kristen will always be a piece of this building, which is a good feeling to have.”

Better yet, her mom said she wants to take her terribly sick child to the building after it is finished, after all the names have been covered and her daughter is well, because she’ll never forget where the beam is that says “Kristen.”

“Maybe I’ll take her over for a little walk. She can step on her name!”

So the lesson a rough-and-tumble group of ironworkers in frozen Boston are teaching the rest of us is that just a can of spray paint – and less than the 10 seconds it takes to spell out a child’s name -- can turn a mighty steel girder into a simple yet gigantic symbol of hope and courage to a child who laughs in such a never to be forgotten way.

How magical is that?

royexum@aol.com

February 21, 2009

By Roy Exum

Just last Sunday afternoon, John Wooden sat down at his desk and wrote a note to his wife Nell, telling her pretty specifically how much he loved her and how much she meant to him. His was the ultimate Valentine, not some flowery card but written in his own hand.

He then placed the carefully folded note on the top of her pillow and, as he did, it was yet another reason I consider Coach Wooden among the smartest men who have ever walked on earth. Here is a guy who won 10 NCAA championships in the last 12 years he coached basketball at UCLA, who had a 671-161 record in the years he lead the Bruins, but who – as a cupid – was absolutely undefeated.

I bring him forth today as an example for any of us – young or old, male or female – to follow because today is St. Valentine’s Day and, trust me on this one, you don't want to miss a chance.

I’ve studied love a lot. I’ve listened to as many country songs about broken hearts and “crying in the rain” as I‘ve could and still missed the mark most of the time. But, as I keep trying and studying the masters of the heart, Coach Wooden is far and away the best for the way he never fails to woo Nell each and every Sunday afternoon.

That’s right, ever since he met Nellie Riley at a carnival in 1926, he’s been relentless in his affection for her. They were married in 1932 and went to hear the Mills Brothers instead of having a reception. That first Sunday they were together the weekly letters started, ones she would always act surprised to find on her bedroom pillow, and they continue to this day.

Nell – that’s what Coach Wooden called Nellie – died of breast cancer in 1985 but, still, “The Wizard of Westwood” writes the letter each and every Sunday. When they pile up just so, he takes a pretty ribbon and ties them into a tiny bundle and then puts them with the rest of the letters in the bottom drawer of her dresser that he quietly hopes to one day deliver.

That is how “the big people” do it as the rest of us try to learn the steps to this dazzling dance every February. The merchants have skillfully made us think our Valentine’s cards are incomplete without glitter and perfume and candy but the true pros scoff, saying a simple handwritten note is all it takes if you really mean it.

Coach Wooden, who used to urge his players to “make each day your masterpiece,” had another saying that fits Valentine’s Day even better: “If you don’t have time to do something the right way, when will you have time to do it over?”

Valentine’s Day is today -- right now. You've still got time to put a hand-written letter on somebody's pillow before they go to bed. Coach Wooden also said, “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”

Now, to take Saturday’s "Rite of Romance" one step further, when Coach Wooden graduated from grammar school in tiny Hall, Indiana, his father gave him what has been widely circulated in the last 50 years as Coach Wooden’s “Seven-Point Creed.”

If you want every day of the year to seem like Valentine’s Day with your “squeeze,” here are the seven tricks each of us should master:

• Be True to yourself.
• Make each day your masterpiece.
• Help others.
• Drink deeply from good books, most especially The Bible.
• Make friendship a fine art.
• Build a shelter against a rainy day.
• Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day.

Well, I believe any couple that takes those seven cornerstones that made Coach Wooden such a legend has one heck of a chance as a year-round Valentine’s success. Not too many years ago the giant ESPN sports network, in an effort to name in top coach of all time, regardless of the sport or the level on which it is played, named John Wooden as the best there ever was.

In my way of thinking, the fact he continues – at age 98 --to put a love letter on Nell’s pillow every Sunday had a lot to do with that.

royexum@aol.com

February 14, 2009