[Rhodes22-list] A Few Good Men

[Wally Buck]

Sorry to hear off your loss, he sure sounded like a great guy. Remember the 
good times!

Wally


>From: brad haslett <flybrad at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: The Rhodes 22 mail list <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
>To: rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org
>Subject: [Rhodes22-list] A Few Good Men
>Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 17:25:19 -0700 (PDT)
>
>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 »
>
>Copyright 2003, GoMemphis. All Rights Reserved.
>
>
>
>
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