The Gift of Jimmy V

Vol. 1                                                                          Issue 9

                                    THE GIFT

“My father gave me the best gift of all.  He believed in me.”

                                                James Thomas Valvano

Captain Ricco Hunter stands about six foot four.  An American Warrior, resplendent in the dress blues of the United States Marine Corps, he garnered everyone’s attention as he walked into the banquet hall.  High school girls smiled their adoring admiration, parents nodded their appreciation and rough looking football players grudgingly conceded the presence of a man in their midst. 

Carver High School had just completed a successful football season winning the State Championship for the second time in the last five years.  It was a solid team. These fine looking young men were coached by Keith Wilkes.  Coach Wilkes is a bear of a man standing six foot five and weighing north of 350 lbs.  He is an imposing figure and a great football coach.  He possesses a heart as large as his girth.  Captain Ricco Hunter is one of Coach Wilkes’ boys.

Ricco Hunter was raised in a tough part of town.  He resided in a housing project with his mother and aunt.  Coach Wilkes became his surrogate father.  He was the perfect speaker to address the newly crowned state champions.  The message he gave that evening resonates with me still today. Captain Hunter recounted for the audience his childhood and his struggles.  He told of how athletics, especially football, was the way he could escape.  He worked hard on the field and gained notice of college recruiters.  More importantly he did well in the classroom.   As an African American athlete with grades equivalent to his athletic skill, he drew the attention of the United States Naval Academy.  With a little help from prep school, Ricco Hunter became a Midshipman at Annapolis.

His story of his time in prep school in Rhode Island is exceptionally poignant.  Given one free phone call each week, Ricco used it to call his mother.  After completing the call he made a second phone call.  This time the call was charged collect to Coach Keith Wilkes.  “Every time I called Coach Wilkes, I told him that I just was not cut out to be a Midshipman.  That the class work was hard, the distance from home made me lonely and I was not sure I was as good on the football field as I once thought I was.  I said; ‘Coach, I am gonna come home’”    Coach Wilkes would not cater to this nonsense.  “Ricco if you come home I am going to load you back up in my car and drive you back to school.  You are the best football player I have ever coached and more than that you are one of the finest young men that the Naval Academy has ever selected to serve our country.  I am not going to let you give this up. It is too important. I believe in you.  I know you can make it!”

As Captain Hunter completed the story, the audience became quiet as he called Coach Wilkes to the podium.   Reaching into his tunic, he pulled out a white envelope.  Embracing his coach, Captain Hunter presented the envelope and said:  “Coach, I know all those phone calls cost you a lot of money.  It is my turn to pay you back.”   The crowd erupted in a standing ovation.  Keith Wilkes, a mountain of a man, began to weep.   As he took the microphone, he simply said:  “To have such an effect on a young man placed in my charge, I among all men have been richly blessed by my Lord.”  Then Coach Wilkes pointed to a man in attendance and told his own story.

Keith Wilkes was an overweight and under-motivated high school junior when he walked disgustedly into the office of assistant principal Victor Johnson.  “Mr. Johnson, they cut me from the football team”, he complained. “They say I am too fat and too lazy to play.”  Mr. Johnson would give Keith Wilkes no pity. Like Keith, Victor Johnson, had come up hard as well. He was a product of inner city poverty and suffered under the discriminations of the Jim Crow South.  He  joined the Army out of high school and while there remembered the words of his football coach who encouraged him to go use his own athletic skills as a way to attend college.  After leaving the Army he enrolled at Winston Salem State Teachers College.  He played every down for four years on both sides of the ball.  He helped desegregate the lunch counters at the Woolworth downtown.  For decades he had been a teacher, coach and administrator in the local school system.  He knew the only ticket out of poverty for African American boys like Keith Wilkes was a college education.  Though he may be fat and lazy, Mr. Johnson knew the potential residing within the angry young man standing at his desk.  He challenged the young man saying:  “Keith you know you are fat and lazy but so am I.  I can’t do anything about the coach’s decision for you this year. However I can make sure he does not make the same decision next season.  What do you say that you and me start working out together?”

Keith Wilkes was not cut from the football team his senior year.  He became an all state lineman and a recipient of a scholarship.  His life was changed and because of this so was the life of Ricco Hunter.  Hardly a dry eye was left in the crowd.  A standing ovation ended the evening.  As I left for home I remembered something a coach once told me.

Jim Valvano, the late basketball coach of North Carolina State University, would describe the stories told that evening as evidence of The Gift.   The Gift is something that does not cost anyone anything to give.  Once given, The Gift can never be returned.  Instead, the only way The Gift can ever be repaid is by giving The Gift to someone else.

Coach Valvano always said that his father gave him the greatest gift any one person can give to another -- the gift of believing in yourself because the other person believes in you.  Jim Valvano claimed that whatever success he had, and for that matter whatever success anyone enjoys, can at some point be traced to a person who simply said, "I believe in you. I believe you can do this."

By the way James Thomas Valvano would have been 65 years old today.  Rest in peace.