Harrison's words a reflection of society as a whole

(Note: This originally appeared as a column on the editorial page of the April 8, 2015 edition of The Anderson News.)

            By now you know what Andrew Harrison supposedly said.

If you don't know what the University of Kentucky basketball player said Saturday after the Wildcats were ousted from the NCAA Tournament, you obviously haven't been paying attention.

In case you really did miss it, here is a little refresher.

Kentucky went to the Final Four with a 38-0 record and was a prohibitive favorite to finish off an undefeated regular season. Wisconsin, however, had other ideas. The Badgers made the plays when Kentucky didn't and ended the Wildcat dream of an unbeaten season, 71-64.

A few minutes after the game ended, Kentucky coach John Calipari brought four of his players, including Andrew Harrison, to the post-game press conference, where media types from around the nation get their chance to ask questions that usually produce some kind of canned response.

Someone asked Kentucky's Karl-Anthony Towns about Wisconsin's Frank Kaminsky, the national Player of the Year and a major reason the Wildcats went home two wins short of perfection. As Towns began to answer, Harrison muttered an expletive and a racial slur under his breath. The bad news for Harrison was that his microphone was live.

I won't repeat what Harrison said. If you don't know and are really curious, do a Google search. You will find plenty of references on the Internet.

Some downplay the racial slur as common language among young African-Americans. I get that and truly believe it was poor judgment on the part of a young man who had just seen his team's dream of a national championship abruptly end.

During his two years at Kentucky Harrison has always conducted himself well in the public eye.

Therefore, I am not about to condone what Harrison said. Neither am I going to condemn.

As a sports writer, I can't say I have encountered the slur very often, but I have heard the same expletive uttered many times by game participants countless times during games. Watch just about any major college or pro sporting event on TV and chances are if you read lips, you will see the same word uttered over and over. We often make light of it with terms like “colorful language.”

That, of course, does not make it right.

But such language, the type that kids would get their mouths washed out with soap for using not that long ago, has become somewhat accepted in every day life.

Why?

Last week, my wife and I were walking through Fayette Mall in Lexington when we saw a young man wearing a shirt printed with one of the offensive words that Andrew Harrison used. Why was it wrong for him say something and someone else able to purchase a shirt with the same word.

As I drove to the office Tuesday morning, I was stopped behind a vehicle “adorned” with a bumper sticker bearing another expletive.

I am sure the owner of the vehicle thought it was funny.

It wasn't.

My question again is why have we allowed such vulgar talk to become acceptable?

Recently, I sat down to watch a movie with my daughter – my choice of movies, not hers – and we made about 15 minutes before changing what was on our TV. The language was that embarrassing.

I am not old enough to know any first-hand reaction to Clark Gable's famous line in “Gone With the Wind.” Nor am I patient enough to sit through the movie to see the context in which he said it. What I do know is we have allowed our cultural standards to decline to the point where much stronger language have become common place in movies, music and every day life.

Andrew Harrison undoubtedly made a mistake and reached out to Kaminsky. He owned up to what he did and will have to live with it.

The more pertinent question is when will society own up to its mistake of diminished standards of decorum.

Weathermen don't always know what is going to happen, but there's no reason to worry

I am sitting at the desk in my home office just waiting for another round of winter.

In my little corner of central Kentucky, just under a foot of snow paid a visit on Monday. By late Tuesday afternoon, we were kind of digging out, but when I got up Wednesday morning, my driveway was covered again. By the time the snow stopped, we had another three or four inches of the white stuff.

This morning, Friday, Feb. 20, it took several cranks before my car finally sputtered a time or two, then started running. The weather app on my smart phone told me it was 19 degrees below zero.

By noon, we had warmed up 29 degrees to 10 above.

I guess it was just time for a heat wave, you know.

And I am now waiting for another storm.

According to the Lexington weatherman who I think could probably predict anything, this one is unpredictable. Whereas he's usually confident to make a call – and is usually dead-on – he kept saying things like, “We are unsure of how this one will develop.” He warned this one could have a wallop too, but how it would eventually dump the precipitation was unclear.

Snow? Ice? Sleet? Freezing rain? Rain only? A mix?

Just to see what someone else was saying, I switched to one of the Louisville channels to check out the weather forecast from the guy I watched when I lived in that market up until last April. His forecast was pretty much the same.

Snow? Ice? Sleet? Freezing rain? Rain only? A mix?

He wasn't completely sure, but said he could fine tune the forecast as the time got closer.

When I last checked their predictions a few minutes before starting this blog, they had both gotten much more specific, just a few hours ahead of the storm and it looks like I need to dig in for another major round of wet, heavy snow.

Some would try to explain the volatile nature of 2015's late winter storms on global warming, which makes no sense to me. The new term is climate change. I'm not enough of a scientist to know.

I do have enough experience to know that in my lifetime, central Kentucky has had a major winter storm about every five or six years. It rarely fails.

This one has shut everything down for a week and with the new storm coming, who knows how long it will be before we are completely back to normal.

The last time it was that way was in 2009 when we suffered a debilitating ice storm that was, in my opinion, much tougher to deal with than the one that hit on Feb. 16, 2015.

I don't have the exact dates but I remember another major ice storm in 2003 or 2004.

There was a big snow storm in 1998 that shut things down for several days.

In 1994, I made it through the toughest winter storm I ever remember enduring. It was so bad that the interstates were closed for a day or two. I had a farm at the time and it was so bad my tractor got stuck and I could not get fresh hay to my cattle. Temperatures were about 20 below and the wind was blowing. In sports terminology, that was a major league storm, all-star variety.

From 1985-94, I don't remember any major storms but do recall the temperatures dropping dramatically not long before Christmas in 1989. We had another major event on Feb. 1, 1985, when my father passed away. The road crews did a marvelous job clearing the road to the cemetery at that old country church we attended.

In 1978, winter delivered a punch no one will forget. It got so bad that the Ohio River froze. I was a student at Roanoke Bible College in North Carolina, but remember my parents sending a bundle of pictures and news clippings to show me what I had missed.

People older than me tell me about “the big one” at intervals just about the same as I have experienced.

You will never convince me the winter blasts like the ones I have endured this week are abnormal. They are an inconvenience, certainly, and because of our highly-mobile society, they might seem to be worse than in the past.

But they are part of the wonder of God's creation. They are simultaneously beautiful – in my book, nothing is prettier than a field of fresh snow – and a reminder that God is in control of the seasons.

Psalm 135:7 says, " He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth; he sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses." (NIV)

Those weathermen I watch amaze me. Their ability to pinpoint what the weather will do, usually well in advance, is uncanny. They are right far more than not.

But this storm we are expecting tonight has had them baffled for a few days. They don't always know, just as I don't always know about what the future holds.

It reminds me of that great old gospel song by Ira Stanphill:

I don't know about tomorrow;
I just live from day to day.
I don't borrow from it's sunshine
For it's skies may turn to grey.
I don't worry o'er the future,
For I know what Jesus said.
And today I'll walk beside Him,
For He knows what is ahead.

Many things about tomorrow
I don't seem to understand
But I know who holds tomorrow
And I know who holds my hand.

Every step is getting brighter
As the golden stairs I climb;
Every burden's getting lighter,
Every cloud is silver-lined.
There the sun is always shining,
There no tear will dim the eye;
At the ending of the rainbow
Where the mountains touch the sky.

I don't know about tomorrow;
It may bring me poverty.
But the one who feeds the sparrow,
Is the one who stands by me.
And the path that is my portion
May be through the flame or flood;
But His presence goes before me
And I'm covered with His blood.

Many things about tomorrow
I don't seem to understand
But I know who holds tomorrow
And I know who holds my hand.

A"junk room" loaded with real treasures

I have often wondered what kind of legacy I will leave.

How will people remember me? Or maybe, most importantly, what kind of things do I treasure?

I will admit that I own quite a bit of memorabilia. I have a commemorative bottle extolling the Kentucky Colonels' 1975 American Basketball Association championship. That RC Cola is still in the bottle just as it was 40 years ago.

Another cool piece of sports history in my possession is a special Wheaties box that came out after my beloved Cincinnati Reds won the World Series in 1990. Two members of that team, Chris Sabo and Ron Oester, have autographed the box.

Sheet music of the Oak Ridge Boys'
hit, "King Jesus" from 1973. I found
it while cleaning out a "junk room" at
my mother's house.

I'm quite a sports fan – I do make my living as a sports editor, you know – and I cherish my the autograph I collected from the great Walter Payton after interviewing him at the Chicago Bears' practice facility in 1985. I also like to pull out my copy of “The Mick,” Mickey Mantle's autobiography, where the New York Yankees' Hall of Famer personalized the copy.

As a country music fan, I am quite proud that I have an autograph from Randy Owen, of Alabama, and Joe Bonsall of the Oak Ridge Boys. And as a history buff, I have a few artifacts from my father's time in the Pacific during and immediately after World War II.

While I am proud of my memorabilia, I must admit most of it was acquired by chance. I certainly don't pay large sums of money for artifacts. To me, that makes them even more special.

Recently, I was confronted with a different way of looking at the items we keep. It might have been one of the most profound lessons I have ever learned.

My wife and I were cleaning out a room at my mother's house. Mom is now 86-years-old and does not get around very well and the stroke she suffered nearly three years ago has taken its toll. The room had become somewhat of a storage room and was becoming a safety hazard.

The stash needed to be thinned out desperately. Some things, like old coffee cups, or broken toys, were easily thrown out.

The program for the100 years of
Corinth Christian Church celebration.
I found this momento of that special
day while cleaning a room at m
mother's house.

But eventually we got to some storage containers that were undoubtedly important to my mom. When we opened them we found her real treasures.

There were Bibles, some over 50 years old. There were some King James translations, a New American Standard Bible and several well worn copies of the New International Version.

We found a program from the 100^th Anniversary celebration of Corinth Christian Church. It was held in August of 1970. She had grown up in that old country church and made sure her family made it a part of our lives.

We found some old hymnals along with what I estimated to be several hundred copies of sheet music. You see, my mom played the piano at Corinth for over 57 years. Music is important to her, and songs with messages that talk about the Lord she loves are the most valuable.

Looking through the titles, I found the music to some gospel hits from the Oak Ridge Boys, the Rambos, Speers, and Bill Gaither, among others. And as I opened the copy of Gov. Jimmie Davis' “What a Day That Will Be,” the sounds of my mother and her sister sitting around the piano singing that great gospel classic were as vivid as they were when I was a young child.

I heard my mom and aunt sing this song
many times.

I looked at my wife and could only think of the times I looked into that room and saw just a junk room. Everything had changed.

“This is what is important to her,” I said. “Her life has always been her church. Only now, I think I understand just how much it meant.”

I was expecting to be glad to get rid of what I thought was junk, not get a profound lesson about what is truly important.

But now I'm glad we took the afternoon to clean that room.

"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:21)

In the midst of real greatness

I was in the midst of greatness last month. There is no question about that.

Sports writing pays my bills and over the years I have been in venues ranging from quirky old high school gyms to locker rooms in the National Football League and Major League Baseball.

I have talked with the latest hot shot high school player all the way up to Hall of Famers.

I've even gotten some chances to interview entertainers, politicians and business people. I've talked with those content to make a name locally and those who are known around the world.

But real greatness hit me back on Oct. 5.

“No, you are our guest. We wouldn't have it any other way,” Paul Ryan said as I offered to pay for my meal.

To me, Mr. Ryan is THE Paul Ryan. The guy who ran for Vice-President in 2012? I like him. But he's just a member of Congress.

Col. Paul Ryan and my mother.

The Paul Ryan I know personally is Col. Ryan to me. He had traveled from his home in western Kentucky to join a group of veterans and their families for the annual gathering of retirees from the United States Property and Fiscal Office of the Kentucky National Guard.

It's a part of the state headquarters in Frankfort and is where my father spent most of his 35-year career serving our country. Col. Ryan was younger than my father but was his commanding officer for much of his career.

When I took my mom to the reunion, I knew only a handful of the people there. However, I recognized Col. Ryan immediately. His hair was much grayer than the last time I had seen him but otherwise, he hadn't changed a bit.

He was wearing a Kentucky Wildcat sweatshirt, which caused me to remember how he talked with me about my heroes, Louie Dampier, Dan Issel and other Wildcats, when I would visit my dad's office.

“Your father was a good man,” Col. Ryan said of my dad, CW4 Allen Herndon, who died in 1985. Col. Ryan was one of his pall bearers.

“We had a lot of good people here.”

Indeed. I never really knew what my father did. He never said much about his job. I just knew he was proud of what he did – he was a full-time member of the Guard – and that he would miss church one Sunday a month to take part in what we referred to as “drill.”

And I remembered he was gone a lot when riots broke out in Louisville in the late 1960s and again on the University of Kentucky campus following the Kent State shootings in 1970. “There were times when it was just your father and me here at state headquarters,” Col. Ryan remembered.

It wasn't the kind of military job that would have prompted a John Wayne movie, but the older I get, the more I realize how important it was too.
Several years ago, I read “The Sons of Bardstown” by Jim Wilson. It tells how Bardstown, Ky., in the next county over from where I live and grew up, was affected by the Vietnam War. The Amazon preview says, “This is a moving, superbly reported profile of one small Kentucky town and the disproportionately high number of young men it sacrificed to the American cause in Vietnam, including five as the result of a single, brief, militarily meaningless battle.”

My father made that 'militarily meaningless battle' mean something to a young person grappling with how he viewed a world shaped by that war. I was only 10 years old when members of a Bardstown-based National Guard unit were overrun by the Viet Cong and five lost their lives. Yet I still remember my dad talking about that night.

“Oh, yes, we knew some of those guys,” Col. Ryan told me. “We were sending things to that unit all the time.”

Col. Ryan explained how the system worked and how people my father knew gave the ultimate sacrifice.

But there was one thing neither Col. Ryan or anyone else in that meeting of greatness had to explain that day: Their service was, and is, important.

And they are proud of that service.

They should be.

Thanks, dad. Thanks, Col. Ryan.

And thanks to all who have personified what real greatness is.

Proud of my wife and Christian teachers like her

(Note: A column I wrote for the Oct. 8, 2014 edition of The Anderson News.)

I probably don’t tell her enough, but I am beyond-words proud of the lady that looked me in the eye on that July afternoon and said, “I do.”

She’s a teacher.

She’s a public school teacher at that. And she is part of the most under-appreciated, misunderstood and wrongly maligned profession in the world today.

Obviously, there are some people working in classrooms who probably should be doing something else. That’s true with any profession. But don’t lump the vast majority in the basket with the bad apples.

My wife, Stephanie Herndon, has been teaching in the Shelby County school system for 17 years and I never cease to be amazed at the regularity a trip to a store or restaurant is interrupted by someone calling her name, then running over to hug her. I no longer have to ask who it was as the answer most likely will be, “That is one of my former students.”

I’m proud of her and have grown weary about the bad rap so many teachers get.

I learned first-hand just what kind of influence a teacher could have. My aunt, Myrtle Perry, taught 42 years and for much of her career, she led Alton School as its principal in addition to teaching a class. In her day, she’d find out which kids didn’t go to church and invite them to attend Corinth Christian with her. Then, she’d load up her car on Sunday morning.

But may Heaven help you if you crossed her during the week. Suffice it to say, she knew how to put a whuppin’ on someone who back-talked or didn’t follow the rules.

The good ol’ days, you know.

Today, my wife and the countless others who simply want to change lives can’t do those things my aunt did. The politically correct crowd would have a cow if teachers did that today, but they can still make a difference.

I know. A large portion of my job deals with high school coaches. The successful ones aren’t nearly as concerned with the winning percentage as they are with the grade point average. The all-staters might get the accolades, but the ones who make themselves successful in life often conjure up the fondest memories.

In the same way, the teacher that looks at a child as an asset for test scoring purposes probably won’t last. I can guarantee you that in the long run that teacher won’t be as successful.

That’s not to say we don’t have problems in our schools. We do.

And I thought of that last Tuesday. I thought of my wife. I thought of relatives and friends who work in public school classrooms.

My Twitter feed was going haywire with the news of a shooting at Fern Creek High School in Jefferson County. I happened to be home for a few minutes anyway, so I tuned in to one of the Louisville television stations and simply started shaking my head.

Thankfully, only one person was hurt and the alleged shooter, who somehow got a gun inside the school, was captured in less than three hours.

Years ago, the problems in schools were things like chewing gum in class, cutting line and the like. Sure there were unruly kids, but those kids often got to meet what we called, “The Board of Education.”

I’m not referring to a group of people elected to a position, either.

Yet, when my Aunt Myrtle passed away, so many successful people, some of them along in years themselves, stood at the casket and told me something like, “She made me what I am today.”

Crisis management? That was me having to explain a bad grade to my parents.

Times have changed. My wife, and the many Christian teachers like her, would not be able to go through the school inviting kids to church like my aunt did. But they can still make a difference.

And teachers today not only have to know their subject matter and classroom discipline, but are usually trained in real crisis management.

In reading about the Fern Creek incident in last Wednesday’s Courier-Journal, I found a quote from the school principal, Nathan Meyer, very interesting. The Louisville newspaper said Meyer praised his teachers for following the school’s safety procedures “exactly as we have drilled and students and teacher behaved admirably under the circumstances.”

It would be foolish to think that public schools are perfect. But maybe, just maybe, it’s time to thank those men and women who buy supplies out of their own pockets and who don’t see their rewards in the form of a paycheck.

I know from experience that a “thank you” or a hug would mean a lot more.

Football really did mean something after Sept. 11

 Like nearly everyone who was in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, I remember where I was when 

I learned of the attack on the World Trade Center.

I was in the insurance business – writing was still a paid hobby at the time – and was attending a meeting in Lexington, Kentucky that Tuesday morning. I'm not sure how much time had elapsed after the buildings had been hit before we had a break and saw things unfold on the lobby television. Both towers had been hit by that time, but while we were on break, the reports started coming in that another plane hit the Pentagon.

While everyone there knew the world had changed that morning, I don't think any of us really comprehended how much things were changing that morning.

A few minutes after we returned to the meeting, someone burst into the room saying, “One of the towers just collapsed.”

Needless to say, there was very little insurance business discussed the rest of the day. Most of us stayed in the lobby to watch things unfold.

I thought of my family. I thought of how America had been so blessed to have not had a war on its soil for 150-plus years, yet we'd just been attacked.

Like most other Americans, I was simultaneously scared and angry.

By the end of the week, I had learned just how important some of the simple pleasures we know as Americans really are.

Anderson County was scheduled to play Western Hills in a high school football game the Friday following the attacks. If you remember, President George Bush asked to address the nation that night, so most high schools postponed their Friday games to Saturday night. The colleges and pros canceled for the weekend.

I believe the high schools had it right, though.

That Saturday night, Anderson and Western Hills, two winless football teams, took the field at Anderson's Warford Stadium. That the Bearcats took a 50-6 win was not the real story. It turned out to the the only game Anderson County would win that year, although Lexington Catholic later forfeited another.

The packed house was the story back on Sept. 15, 2001.

The fans participated in a moving patriotic service before the game. They cheered on their teams, both of which played with emotion. And, if anything, that game, and many others like it that day, was our way of fighting back.

We might not have carried a gun or fly a plane, but in a small way, we were saying, “You can bruise us, but you can't keep us down.”

That night provided one of the most memorable post-game interviews I have ever conducted. Anderson's coach at the time, Jimmy Joe Jackson, one of the all-time nice guys, was mighty happy about the win. A very good social studies teacher for his main job, he was even more proud of what those few hours had meant.

We'd seen the towers collapse. We'd seen the carnage at the Pentagon.

We'd started learning about the passengers thwarting a fourth attack, perhaps on the Capitol or the White House.

We were bruised and hurt.

But that Saturday night, the flag was flying high. Little by little, the United States was fighting back.

And Jackson could have spoken for millions of Americans when he said, “Osama Bin Laden is not going to stop us from playing football.”

Or stop us from doing anything else.

Lasting Legacy

(Over my career in sports journalism, I have met so many wonderful people who give of their time, but most importantly, live the faith they claim. One such person was Tracy Briscoe. I knew Tracy well, but I would not characterize us as close friends. We often talked on the sidelines as we were working football games in differing capacities. Tracy passed away far too young at 48. This is my column, which appeared in the Sept. 3 edition of The Anderson News.)

 Someone was missing from the sideline when Anderson County opened the home football season Friday night.

As I thought about that fact as the game wore on, little did I realize the eerie coincidence that the night the Bearcats opened what they hope will be another great season would be the final night of Tracy Briscoe's life.

Even though Tracy, a local physical therapist who offered his services at Anderson games, had missed a few over the last few years, my knowing that he had been seriously ill over the last few weeks made that fact so difficult to fathom.

As I exchanged pleasantries with acquaintances from other media outlets working the contest, I could not help but think about the many times Tracy Briscoe and I carried on conversations lasting an entire game.

Through football, Tracy Briscoe became a friend, yet I can't say we were close. I can't even remember having a cup of coffee together somewhere along the way. But we talked.

And talked a lot over the last few years.

You see, working the sidelines as a member of the media can actually be a lonely place. There is action going on in front of you but precious few to chat with between then plays.

Tracy Briscoe and I changed the world several times under the Friday Night Lights.

I came to really respect this young man over time as it was obvious he had a deep knowledge of the game. While I probably did not see him play over two or three times – he finished his Anderson career before I started writing – fans recognized his ability when he was named one of the Best of the Bearcats team The Anderson News sponsored in 2007.

Suffice it to say his vote totals were very strong in his favor.

Over time, I came to realize why that was the case and why I respected him so. There is no doubt Tracy was an outstanding end and linebacker, but he was even a better person, one that was truly loved and respected by many in his hometown.

I am sure there are many photos of Tracy playing football or basketball during his years at Anderson County High School. Those memories will always be strong.

But I am also sure of this: Tracy will be remembered more for who he was. As acute myeloid leukemia drained life from this vibrant young man, I saw Facebook posts from those closest to him saying things like “Trace is ready.”

Only 48 years old, lots of life supposed to be in front of him, but friends simply saying, “Trace is ready.”

It is fitting that the last time I remember talking with Tracy Briscoe was not on the sideline of an Anderson County football game, but at his home church, Sand Spring Baptist.

His uncle, Larry Briscoe, had invited me to attend the church's Christmas Homecoming celebration last December. Jeff Stice, a renowned gospel pianist, would be part of the program as would several local singers.

Tracy Briscoe was one of those performers. His faith was radiant as he presented his message in song that night.

Sunday, one of Tracy's best friends, Anderson County Assistant Superintendent of Schools Derek Shouse, posted on his Facebook account, “When we first talked with him two weeks ago about his prognosis, he very emphatically told us he was ready. He knew his relationship with the Savior and had no reason to fear. He said, 'There is NO fear, when you KNOW Christ.' That's the message I am compelled to share from my friend, teammate, and indeed brother in Christ.”

And for that, more than any touchdown he ever scored, Tracy Briscoe's legacy will live on.