 |
| Les Robinson (right) and assistant Al Daniel. |
BY TIM PEELER
Coman Publishing, © 2017
Les Robinson shed a few tears one recent evening while attending a Christmas parade near Charleston.
He was with his family—three of his children, their spouses and seven of his eight grandchildren all live within a good bounce pass of each other in the South Carolina Lowcountry—for the traditional holiday celebration.
With one key exception.
Robinson’s wife of 54 years, Barbara, died peacefully on Aug. 21, creating a different world for the former Wolfpack men’s basketball player (1961-65) and head coach (1990-96) and former NC State athletics director (1996-2000). Being surrounded by family helps, but nothing really replaces her presence.
To his friends, the coach’s last name was “and Barbara” not Robinson, because the two were always together.
His daughter and son-in-law, Kelly and Bissell Graves, have lived with Robinson at his home on the South Carolina coast for the last two years, and the rest of the family is close enough to help the coach when he might be missing the soulmate he first met in sixth grade and first courted during eighth-grade homeroom.
“She was a very special lady,” Robinson says. “The outpouring of support we received from everyone was incredible. I’m still getting letters, cards, texts and phone calls. The love people had for her was remarkable.”
Robinson’s love began as gentle teasing in homeroom, followed by a tour of the school Robinson gave for Barbara’s grandmother. (He was recruiting the parents even in the 1950s.)
“She was a great coach’s wife,” Robinson says. “That’s not an easy thing. We had to uproot the family several times. I was always traveling with the team or recruiting. It takes a special person to put up with that, but she was great at it.”
Fellow coaches wives, opposing coaches, administrators, even referees were among the 800 people attended her three-and-a-half hour visitation at the Citadel’s Summerall Chapel. It included friends from the coach’s earliest and most recent days at NC State. In the weeks that followed, Robinson took phone calls from former competitors Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Harrick and dozens of others in the days after her death.
“One day, coaches who won eight national championships called to offer their condolences,” Robinson says, putting the outreach into his own unique perspective. “It meant a lot to me.”
But it’s Robinson’s other family—the one that has met for breakfast every other Thursday for years at a Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, restaurant—that has kept him laughing, cajoling and talking basketball since August.
And it’s quite a crew, collected during his career as head coach and an athletics administrator at the Citadel, East Tennessee State and NC State.
It includes former Georgia Tech and College of Charleston basketball coach Bobby Cremins, Robinson’s longtime friend and punching bag; former football coaches Tom O’Brien (NC State), Ralph Friedgen (Maryland), Bobby Johnson (Furman, Clemson), Fisher DeBerry (Air Force); former University of Kansas president and American League president Gene Budig, just to name a well-known few.
They all live in the Charleston area, gathered by an insurance agent Robinson first befriended as an assistant coach at the Citadel. Other neighbors, such as former NC State women’s basketball player and men’s and women’s television analyst Debbie Antonelli, former Cy Young Award winner Denny McClain and long-time college basketball official Ted Valentine have dropped by on occasion.
“It’s a phenomenal time,” says Antonelli, who was originally invited by O’Brien. “We all live in the area, but the scope of athletics knowledge is amazing. I just sit back and listen.”
Which is wholly entertaining, of course.
“They like to mess with each other, so you have to be pretty tough, Antonelli says. “I’m one of the few women they have invited to join them. They told me the let me come so they could be in compliance with Title IX.”
Writers and rubber-necking patrons stop by just about every time the group’s dozen or so members gather, to eaves-drop on the fun or perhaps ask for an autograph.
Just a week after winning the 2017 NCAA championship, Williams—who bought his home on Isle of Palms on Robinson’s recommendation while still at Kansas—joined them for breakfast.
“It means a lot to me, being with them all,” Robinson says.
Many of them were at the front of the line for Barbara’s visitation to console Robinson.
Now 75, Robinson still trades in school-boy humor, laughing at himself when he can, needling others when he needs to—which is almost constantly. He still loves the look on Cremins’ face every time someone says the two most dreaded words in Cremins’ non-expansive vocabulary: West Virginia.
“Jesus, Lez, is everyone from there?” Cremins says about Robinson’s home state, his eyes rolling backwards in their sockets.
Robinson still loves mentioning all the connections he made before leaving the Mountain State, where he grew up playing basketball with Jerry West, and all the people from various professions he’s gotten to know in the years since.
He still does a few USBA basketball clinics, gives some well-attended speeches around the state and monitors game officials for the three conferences that have teams in the Charleston area. It’s enough to keep him active and out of the house.
“It’s good therapy for him,” says regular breakfast attendee and longtime friend Andy Solomon, an associate athletics director for development at the Citadel. “There’s been a big outpouring of love and appreciation.”
For Robinson, there’s no replacement for what he’s lost, but the friendships he has from nearly six decades in coaching and athletics administration has made it a little more bearable.
Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.
No comments:
Post a Comment