[Rhodes22-list] A Few Good Men

Wed May 21 18:25:19 EDT 2003

Sorry for the sappy, corny, and sad tone of the
attached story.  I worked with Don Bingham in the
training department and flew with him several times on
the line. Don flew support for me when I checked out
as a DC10 captain.  Don spent his last year as an
instructor, he couldn't return to the line though he
never gave up hope and never let on what his real
condition was.  This story was printed in the Memphis
newspaper today.  Don Bingham was one "prince" of a
guy and a very well respected pilot.  Brad.

St. Benedict has an angel in the outfield
By Geoff Calkins
calkins at gomemphis.com
May 21, 2003

On the night Christy Bingham was named coach of the
year, she sat in a hospital with her husband, Don, all
dressed up to get an award, utterly unprepared to get
the news from the doctors. 

The couple had begun to suspect Don wasn’t quite right
a few weeks earlier, when they were at the Spring
Fling in Chattanooga with Christy’s St. Benedict
softball team. 

Don kept getting piercing headaches, but he didn’t
dwell on them much. It wasn’t his style. So on that
June day, back in Memphis, both Don and Christy looked
forward to celebrating her coach of the year award at
the Best of the Preps ceremony. 

Then Christy got a call from the hospital. Don had
been doing some errands when he began to feel
disoriented. He steered himself to the St. Francis
emergency room but, even then, he didn’t expect to
miss the celebration. 

"He told me to bring his nice clothes," Christy says,
"so we could go right to the ceremony." 

Christy brought his nice clothes. 

They did not go right to the ceremony. 

Even as the presenters were calling out names and
welcoming thrilled winners to the stage, the Binghams
were listening to the doctors paint a very grim
picture. 

Don had brain cancer, glioblastoma, the most malignant
and fastest-growing form of brain cancer. The
prognosis was poor. The odds of survival in the low
single digits. 

"We sat there, all dressed up in the hospital room,"
Christy says. "It wasn’t the night we expected." 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a love story. It begins the usual way, with a
boy and a girl. They are both 13. They are at a
high-school basketball game in Arkansas. The boy is
holding out a bag of popcorn. 

"Want some?" he says. 

He does not know the girl. He is too shy to try
anything more eloquent. 

She reaches out, takes some popcorn. 

"That’s my brother," she says, nodding to one of the
players. 

"That’s my brother," he says, nodding to another one. 

Of such moments, great romances are born. Or this one,
at least. 

Christy and Don Bingham became pals. Then they started
dating. Then, one day in Florida, Don noticed they had
wound up on Christine Street. 

Christine Street. As in, Christy. 

Is that fate or what? 

"I’ve been looking for a place to ask you this the
last three or four days," Don said. "Will you marry
me?" 

She would. They did. He became a FedEx pilot. She
became one of the best two-sport coaches in Memphis. 

Christy started coaching cross country and softball at
St. Benedict seven years ago. She had to be talked
into it. She had a successful design business at the
time and, besides, St. Benedict was terrible at both
sports. 

So the first day, Christy asked the softball players
what team they’d most like to beat. 

"Harding Academy," came the answer. 

"Then that’s who we’ll beat," she said. 

"No, you don’t understand," the girls said. "They beat
us like, 20-0." 

The first year, St. Benedict beat Harding Academy. 

"We beat them for the region championship," Christy
says. "That started opening the players’ eyes as to
what was possible." 

This is how Christy has always looked at things, by
the way, ever since she was the most athletic girl at
a high school that had no girls sports teams. 

She was real good at tennis, though. As a freshman,
she asked the tennis coach if she could join the boys
team. 

"Sure," he said. "If you can beat my No. 1 player." 

Christy came to tennis practice every day. She got
better and better. By the end of the season, she had
beaten everyone on the team. 

Except the No. 1 player. 

The tennis coach — he was also the offensive line
coach for the football team — asked to meet with her,
anyway. 

"I’ve never seen anyone want something as much as you
wanted this," he said. "I’m going to the school board
and ask them to make an exception." 

For the next three years, Christy played boys tennis. 

And that’s the ethic she imparts to her teams. She
turns her players into believers. 

She has coached the cross-country team and softball
team at St. Benedict for seven seasons. She hasn’t yet
won a state title, but she’s 14-for-14 at making it to
state championships. 

She took over the Germantown cross-country team one
year, when the Germantown coach was called up by the
military. 

Germantown made it to the state championships, too. 

"She’s great," says Whitney Pogson, a junior
outfielder at St. Benedict. "She knows everything
about softball and life." 

That’s not quite true, of course. But what Christy
didn’t know, Don did. 

Like the best way to make chocolate chip pancakes.
That was one of his specialties. 

The Binghams had a warm, open household, with friends
and players free to stay for meals or the night, even.

In the mornings, Don would cook pancakes. Chocolate
chip or banana. 

"I spent more nights there then I did at my own house
sometimes," said Jessica Leary, a junior outfielder.
"They welcome you." 

So Don’s diagnosis stunned everyone, and had the
potential to cast a shadow over the entire team
except, well, Don wouldn’t let it. 

He had the surgery. He had the experimental
treatments. He joked and smiled the whole time, and
kept on making pancakes. 

He encouraged everyone, too. That was his other role.
Early this year, Leary was in a slump. She couldn’t
seem to break out of it. Don showed up at a game
wearing a wide smile and a shirt with a large No. 8,
Leary’s number. 

"Eight is great!" he cheered. 

Leary’s slump ended. 

There were hard times, sure. But the Bing|hams handled
them gracefully. Before one game, the team was taking
batting practice when Don arrived. Walking down the
line, he stumbled and caught himself against the
chain-link fence. 

"Awww, Don is having one of his dizzy spells," Christy
said. She walked to her husband, slung her arm around
him, and helped him to the bench. 

The kids watched it all. They learned more than
softball in the process. 

"What he taught me," Pogson says, "is that there’s
nothing too big to handle." 

On Monday, April 21, Don Bingham, 46, died at
Methodist Hospital. Just two weeks earlier, he’d been
hitting grounders to the Bingham’s 11-year-old son,
Chas. Instead of a funeral, Don ordered up a party. 

That’s right, a party. He left explicit instructions
about this. He wanted a party with country music, but
nothing mournful. 

"There were hundreds of people," Christy says. "You
couldn’t even park. The whole subdivision was filled."

The next day, the St. Benedict team gathered for
practice. Afterward, Christy read the team a note Don
had left for the players. 

"If you’re reading this note, obviously I’m not here,
guys," it said. "But I expect you to win state this
year and I will be in the outfield, outside the fence,
cheering you on." 

Nobody spoke. Who could? 

"Right then," Leary says, "we knew this would be the
year we’d do it." 

The players stitched No. 7’s on their sleeves. When
Don played baseball, that was his number. 

A sign mysteriously appeared on the outfield wall at
St. Benedict. 

It said, "Angel in the Outfield." 

The perfect ending, of course, would be if St.
Benedict could ride this wave of emotion to its first
state title. It might yet happen. St. Benedict started
play Tuesday night by losing to Brentwood Academy,
2-0, but the tournament is double elimination. 

Besides, a perfect ending isn’t mandatory. That would
miss the whole point of the story. 

Don didn’t beat cancer, in the end. 

But he never stopped encouraging people. 

"The kids don’t have to win it for Don," Christy says.
"He just wanted them to know he thought they could." 

Contact columnist Geoff Calkins at 529-2364; E-mail:
calkins at gomemphis.com

MORE CALKINS COLUMNS » 

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