We always have a seven-foot Christmas tree.
We know this because ever since my wife and I moved back to
the Triangle in 1994, we have bought our annual Fraser fir at a grassy open lot on
Cary’s Kildaire Farm Road. That’s where, since 1992, former NC State basketball
All-American Tommy Burleson—all 7-feet, 2-inches of him—and his three sons have
sold trees they grow on their farm in the North Carolina mountains.
For five weeks, starting at Thanksgiving, either Burleson,
his sons or one of their farm hands are at the lot, trimming trees and loading
them up on the cars of loyal customers and a fresh crop of newbies who wonder
what the story is with the guy who is taller most of the trees he sells.
During their five-week selling season, someone stays on site
in a small camper in the back of the lot. They are next to a church and a
hospital, so they aren’t too worried about what might happen. Tommy returns
home to Avery County, where he’s the head of the planning commission, but comes
back every weekend with a fresh load of trees to check on business and
sometimes to catch a Wolfpack basketball game.
Ever since our first son was born in 2002, we’ve taken our
kids to have their picture taken with Mr. Burleson; they look forward to it as
much as seeing Santa.
It’s always breath-taking to watch him pick up our tree and
place it down on top of our SUV.
The other day, we stopped to get our tree on the way home
from the NC State-UNC football game. Tommy’s whole family—sons Robert, David
and Quentin and his wife Denise—were there, and we reveled in the big football
win. It was pretty eye-opening that our oldest kid, not yet a teenager, is chest
high to Burleson.
He’s always been tall for his age.
Tommy’s known for playing basketball, of course: in the
Olympics, in college and in the NBA. Coached by Norm Sloan, inspired by fans
and driven by the desire to be the best center in the Atlantic Coast
Conference, Burleson helped NC State win two ACC titles and the 1974 NCAA
championship. Sure, he got assistance from his best friend, All-American David
Thompson, and point guard Monte Towe, but Burleson was the centerpiece Sloan
began with when he built one of the best teams in college basketball history.
But this isn’t a basketball story. Burleson doesn’t sell his
home-grown trees because he needs the money, even though he had some
agent-related financial troubles after he his professional basketball career
ended in 1981. He doesn’t sell them to pay for his professional speed boat
racing career, death-defying hobby he picked up after his on the court were
over. And he doesn’t do it to fuel his time at the poker table, though he’s
something of a cardsharp too. Last fall, he won first place—and more than
$10,000—in a World Series of Poker No-Limit Hold ‘em Tournament he and his son
David entered on a lark in Indiana.
Tommy sells trees to help his friends in Malawi. He raises
thousands each year to pay for travel expenses to the impoverished landlocked
country in southeastern Africa, one of the world’s least developed countries,
with a low life expectancy and a high infant mortality rate.
He sneaks across the border from Ethiopia, then folds his 48-inch
legs into a minibus to take medical supplies—mostly aspirin and antibiotics—to the
town of Nkhoma, where Presbyterian
missionary Barbara Nagy of Morganton, North Carolina, is a resident
physician specializing in prenatal care, at the
local hospital. She’s part of a long line of missionaries from that
denomination who have been in Malawi since David Livingstone first arrived
there in 1859.
(Sneak? How does a
giant who has towered head-and-shoulders over everyone he knows except Bill Walton his entire life sneak
anywhere? Well, a bazooka and a crisp salute helps.)
Since 2005, Burleson has made one or two annual trips to
Malawi with 10 other volunteers from Fletcher Presbyterian Church in Newland,
North Carolina, on behalf of the Tommy Burleson Christian Evangelistic
Ministries, his newly minted 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
Nagy has been at the hospital, which was built by missionaries
in 1915, for the last decade, after working for years in western North Carolina
and as a missionary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She first elicited
Burleson’s help in 2004, and he’s been one of her biggest supporters ever
since. The hospital gets about 80 percent of its support from 51 churches in
the Presbytery of Western North Carolina, but Burleson’s foundation and others
such as Franklin Graham’s Boone-based Samaritan’s Purse help provide other
support.
“It was a little rugged the first time we went,” Burleson
admits. “We had outhouses and mostly outside facilities. I got an intestinal
virus the first time I went.”
There was also an outbreak of viral meningitis on that first trip, something that could be treated with the Amoxicillin Burleson and his resource team had packed in their Actionpacker cargo boxes.
“We were saving lives within 15 minutes after we got there,”
Burleson says.
In the decade since, the resource team has added 100 meters
to the hospital’s men’s ward, 75 meters to the women’s ward, an updated
pediatric unit, a new surgical theater and other hand-built first-world
improvements. The Malawi government also has awarded Burleson the rights to
operate 10 health clinics in the country, of which five are now complete.
“We’ve gone from serving a population of about 30,000 to
covering more than 250,000,” Burleson says.
Burleson and his foundation have also helped educate some of
the kids of the village. Currently, he’s funding scholarships for four
electricians who signed contracts to work at the hospital for five years after
they receive their degrees.
Tommy has raised money with low-cost basketball camps and
clinics for decades. He’s had bowling tournaments that included many of his
friends from the world of basketball. But his primary fundraiser is selling the
trees he’s grown on his farm in the mountains.
At 62, Burleson says he’s within a year or so of retirement
from his county planner job in Avery County. He’d like to spend even more time
raising money for his foundation and doing even more good work in Malawi.
So if you need a fresh-cut fir this year, go see Tommy or
one of his sons in Cary. Most all of their trees are seven feet or taller.
You can easily tell.
