Goodbye, Steve

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I received a phone call today that, sadly, was like many others I have had in my life. I knew it was coming. But it's never a welcome phone call, even when it is expected.

A good friend of mine, Steve Davidson, died of cancer early today. I knew him when I lived in Little Rock in the 1980s. We haven't seen each other in quite awhile, but I have kept up with him through our mutual friend, Brady.

It was through Brady that I learned Steve was sick, and, in the words of Yogi Berra, it was like deja vu all over again. Another friend in our circle, Mike Culpepper, died of cancer more than 20 years ago, and I kept up with the changes in his condition through Brady. Steve, Brady and I were pallbearers at his funeral.

Brady and I spoke on the phone last night. He spent some time with Steve yesterday. Family and friends had been summoned to Steve's side in anticipation of the end, but Steve apparently surprised everyone. When Brady called me last night, I expected him to tell me that it was over. But, he said, Steve was still breathing when he left.

His breathing was increasingly labored, Brady told me, and he said he didn't expect Steve to live through the night. He didn't. Apparently, he died at 4 this morning.

The picture at the top of this post was taken when Steve and I arranged to meet in southern Arkansas in the fall of 1988. I had been living in Texas for a couple of months, and we got together one weekend. Steve was a deer hunter; I don't own a gun, but I brought my camera, as you can see.

See that little black lump behind Steve? That was my dog, Pepper, curled up into a ball and taking a nap. He was part black Lab and part something else. At that time, he was still a puppy, probably about 10 or 12 weeks old (I got him as a stray so I don't really know when he was born). He went everywhere with me in those days. He loved to run, to chase a rubber ball or do anything, really, and I recall that he thoroughly enjoyed that weekend in the woods. So did I — even though it was very cold.

Steve was Pepper's buddy, maybe moreso than any of my other friends (although Pepper really got along with everybody). I think it may have been because Steve was the first of my old friends to meet Pepper. As a matter of fact, they met on that trip to deer camp in October of 1988.

(I knew they would hit it off when I saw Steve giving table scraps to Pepper.)

When that picture was taken, we had been out hiking through the woods, and Steve had decided to sit down and take a breather. Pepper flopped down behind him and, as dogs do, caught a few Z's while we humans were resting and talking and laughing. When we got up to go, he was up and ready, too.

Somewhere, I have another picture of Steve with Pepper that was taken on that trip to deer camp. Steve was sitting in a folding chair at our campsite. Pepper was sitting next to him, and Steve was stroking his head. I'm not sure where that picture is, but, if I find it, I think I might have it framed. It's one of my favorites, and I need to have it on display.

Hard to believe that weekend was nearly 25 years ago. It's even harder to believe that I will never see Steve again.

Remember that circle of friends I mentioned earlier in this post? When I was living in Little Rock, we formed a computer football league, using a football game disk I had found for my old Commodore 64. The league survived for three years after I left Arkansas. Every time I came back for a visit, I packed up my computer, and my visits became football weekends.

Eventually, the league fell by the wayside. But our friendships never did. The league began to falter after Mike died, but it survived for another year or so. But that's another story.

When I left Arkansas, it was to enroll in graduate school. About a week after I moved, Mike and Steve came down for a visit. The three of us went to Six Flags Over Texas, and I'll never forget sitting on a bench with Steve and watching as Mike rode a roller coaster over and over again. It became a running joke with the three of us, one that Steve and I never mentioned again after Mike died.

Now, I'm the only living person who remembers that afternoon.

I was between my first and second semesters of grad school when Steve and Mike paid me another visit — around New Year's. As it happened, Arkansas was playing in the Cotton Bowl, and we decided, at the very last minute, that we wanted to go to the game. I tried to pull every string I could, never thinking that I could actually get something at the last minute — but, lo and behold, I was able to get three tickets, and we went to the game.

The Razorbacks didn't play too well that day, but the three of us had a fine time, anyway. I still have the game program I bought that day, and, from time to time, I thumb through it, and my thoughts return to that sun–splashed afternoon. For many years, it has been mostly a reminder to me of Mike. Now, it will remind me of Steve as well — and of the afternoon the three of us shared.

Again, I am now the only living person who recalls that experience.

Sports so often figured prominently in our friendship — and I am not speaking only of computer football or the Cotton Bowl.

When I first knew Steve, I was working on the sports desk of what was then the most widely circulated newspaper in Arkansas — the Arkansas Gazette. That job came with certain perks that appealed to Steve. For one, I had access to early editions of the newspaper, which came in handy on Saturday nights when the first edition of the Sunday paper complete with the coupons hit the newsroom.

On those occasions, I often brought several copies of the coupon inserts to Steve and my other friends.

As a member of the Gazette's sports team, I used to get a season pass to watch the minor league baseball team in Little Rock, the Arkansas Travelers. This wasn't as valuable as it sounds — admission to Traveler games in those days was only about two bucks a head — but I used it frequently on my nights off.

Since admission was free for me, I would pay for half of Steve's ticket, and it was like each of us got in for a single dollar. Besides, as a Gazette copy editor, I could go up to the press box and visit whoever was covering the game for the newspaper that night, and Steve went with me.

Steve enjoyed rubbing elbows with people whose bylines he had been seeing for years. And he got a kick out of the bird's–eye view of the action on the field.

Same thing applied to horse racing.

I didn't get a free season pass to the races at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, but whenever Steve and I went there together, I did get us in to the press box where we could see the writer who was covering the horses for the Gazette — and, on one memorable occasion, I introduced Steve to Terry Wallace, the fellow who called the races at Oaklawn.

I don't think I ever saw Steve so starstruck. He'd been hearing that man's voice call every race he had ever seen at Oaklawn — and there he was, shaking hands with him, chatting with him.

"I'll never forget that," he told me when we left the press box that day. I hope that was a pleasant memory for Steve over the years.

There is even a sports connection to the timing of Steve's death. Nineteen years ago today, the Arkansas Razorbacks basketball team defeated Michigan in the regional finals to advance to the Final Four where they ultimately won it all.

I kind of think that might have appealed to Steve.

Perhaps my greatest regret after Mike died was the fact that I never said goodbye to him. I should have. I had a couple of opportunities, and I let them slip through my fingers. Maybe I was scared. I don't know.

I'm older now, and I truly believe that if I had been in Little Rock this weekend, I would have been able to tell Steve that he had been a true friend and that I will miss him.

I think he knew. I hope he did.

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A Tale of Two News Stories

For many years, I worked as a writer and/or editor for newspapers and a trade magazine.

In fact, one of my standing assignments for awhile was to write a weekly column about events that were coming up. That column was titled, "The Week Ahead." In that column, I told readers about things that were coming up.

I didn't confine myself to the county in which I lived and worked. I wrote about events that were scheduled in just about every part of Arkansas. I know it is difficult for natives of a place like Texas to understand, but, unless the weather is bad, just about any place in Arkansas is easily within a day's drive of any other place in Arkansas.

It was a unique job. Part of it was spent writing about things that had just happened — and part of it was spent focusing on things that were still in the future.

There were lots of dramatic moments during my years in print media — moments that often defined who we were — but I don't think I have ever witnessed a week like the one just past.

I hope I never go through one like it again, either — and I wasn't even part of the professional news media as this week played out — but I'm not sure what could be done to prevent it.

The week began innocently enough, I suppose, with the annual celebration of the Fourth of July. From my balcony, I was able to watch two or three fireworks shows that evening (when one is gazing into the dark horizon, I have found that it is hard to determine where one such show ends and another begins).

In hindsight, that was the proverbial calm before the storm.

The next day, all hell broke loose. In Florida, Casey Anthony was acquitted of killing her young daughter, and an anguished wail rose from coast to coast.

My impression, from the beginning, was that women more than men felt the sting of the verdict. I'm not saying that men weren't affected by it, too; some clearly were. But I heard and read far more quotes from women about it, and I saw far more women participating in protests against the verdict. And I have seen frequent posts about it on Facebook — again, mostly (but not exclusively) from women.

I think the verdict — whether it was the right one or not — cuts deeply against the grain of the protective maternal instinct.

As a young general assignment reporter covering murder trials for a newspaper in central Arkansas, I realized that the duty of an effective attorney is to present a plausible case in court. A prosecutor wants to win a conviction; a defender wants to win an acquittal. Toward those ends, they will construct arguments that benefit them the most.

While I did not watch the entire Anthony trial, it seems to me the prosecution was successful in offering an argument that women in particular found acceptable.

The members of the jury apparently did not feel that the prosecution met the law's requirements, though. I've heard a few jurors say, in recent days, that they wished the prosecution had given them the evidence they needed to convict — because many, apparently, believed the prosecution was right.

In their eyes, however, the evidence just wasn't there.

Every time I switched on my TV on Wednesday or Thursday, I saw someone talking about the verdict. Aware of the public's notoriously short attention span, I wondered what would seize its imagination next. I didn't have to wait long to find out.

On Thursday evening, about 25 miles from where I sit writing this, a firefighter from central Texas who brought his 6–year–old son to this area to see a Texas Rangers baseball game lost his balance reaching for a baseball and fell 20 feet to his death.

In the aftermath of that tragedy, I have heard of the special bond that existed between this man and his son, how they shared a passion for baseball and how they stopped on their way to the ballpark to get a baseball glove, hoping to catch a foul ball to keep as a souvenir of their special day together.

I think this story has reverberated with men because it has been my experience that most men really treasure these times with their children. Perhaps it is because I share their gender, but I think a lot of fathers resent the stereotype impression society has of abusive, distant or deadbeat dads.

Now, it is true that there are abusive, distant or deadbeat dads — more than I would like to acknowledge — but my experience is that the majority of fathers are dedicated to their children. They just don't get many opportunities to show it.

Most fathers miss out on the day–to–day stuff, not because they aren't interested but because they are busy with the jobs that put food on the table and keep a roof over their children's heads. Meeting one's obligations can be a lonely business.

It is more common for women to work outside the home now than it was when I was growing up, but my guess is that it is still the mothers (primarily) who put band–aids on skinned knees and provide milk and cookies after school. My guess is that they still do the prep work for birthday parties and have heart–to–heart talks. They just do it all a few hours later than they used to.

For fathers, a baseball game is a rare opportunity to share something with their children — and it really is the kind of thing that creates memories that last a lifetime. (There was a lot of truth in what the little girl said in "Field of Dreams" about adults being drawn to that Iowa field by the lure of memories.)

I still remember the night my family went to a major league game for the first time. It was in St. Louis, which was a day's drive from my hometown. My parents wanted to visit friends who were scattered along the eastern half of the continent, but we made the first stop on our road trip in St. Louis, where we knew no one, checked into a Holiday Inn near Busch Memorial Stadium and went to see the Cardinals play their rivals, the Chicago Cubs.

It was not a good evening for the Cardinals. The Cubs won, 12–0. It wasn't too bad early on. Neither team scored through the first four innings, then the Cubs scored twice in the fifth. That wasn't so bad. Going into the seventh, it was still only 2–0.

But then the roof fell in. Chicago scored 10 runs in that seventh inning, most after the Cubs had two outs.

You can look at the box score if you want to see how truly terrible it was. What I remember is sitting next to my father and watching run after run score — and, with each run, more of the fans around us got up to leave.

I don't think my father has ever been much of a baseball fan, but I was an avid collector of baseball cards in those days, and most of the kids I knew were Cardinals fans. Like most kids, I craved acceptance so, at that time in my life, I guess you could say I was a Cardinals fan, too.

Anyway, that game didn't turn out to be much fun for me. I remember looking at my father when the Cubs scored one of those runs in the seventh. He smiled and chuckled, then put his arm around me and held me next to him for a few seconds.

"Not much fun, is it?" he asked. I remember shaking my head. "Want to go back to the motel?" I nodded.

So we all got up — except for my brother, who had dozed off in his seat — and my father picked up my brother and carried him all the way to the car. I don't think he ever woke up.

On our way out of the ballpark, though, we stopped at a souvenir stand so I could get a cap. I wore that cap nearly every day — and almost constantly on weekends — for a couple of years, not because it was a reminder of a remarkable game but because it was a reminder of a rare evening with my father.

When I was a kid, I didn't see much of my father. He taught at a local college. He often left the house before I got up in the morning and usually returned either just before or after I went to bed at night. My mother was the one who observed the early milestones of my life.

Dad always attended school functions and things like that, but he was usually busy during the days. I didn't hold it against him. That was just the way it was — not just for me but for everyone I knew.

That night in Busch Stadium was special for me, and it remains special to this day. I believe that memories of similar experiences have made what happened in Arlington the other night so poignant for so many men. It cuts against the grain of the father–child relationship that they cherish.

No father wants his child to witness a horrifying accident like that — or to have an eagerly anticipated trip to a baseball game end with that child riding in the ambulance that carries his dying father from a ballpark to the hospital.

I think the two stories that have dominated the news for the last week have been chilling to both genders more for what they represent than what they actually are.

Guilty people sometimes go free, and loving parents sometimes die. We know that. But these two cases were special.

Casey Anthony is believed by many to have violated what may be the most sacred trust in humanity — the one that exists between a mother and her child.

And Shannon Stone died because he selflessly tried to catch a baseball to give to his son as a souvenir.

It all seems like a waste, doesn't it?

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