October 10, 2000 — There’s just something about little girls and horses, I suppose.
Never has a Sporting Life column spurred more reader reaction than last month’s story about 8-year-old Honey Beth Campbell and her horses, Hunker and Godfather II.
There were letters to the editor, e-mails and calls.
“Even if I didn’t like little girls and horses, I do now,” wrote John Deaton of Flowery Branch.
This was not a column about snowboarding, hang gliding or climbing a wall of ice. Little was extreme about riding horses with cute little Honey Beth. But something resonated.
And then I realized — it’s the people, stupid.
Just as interesting as the acts of bull riding, lawn mower racing and cowboy action shooting, are the people who perform them. Somebody has to don the chaps, start the motor and pull the trigger, after all.
And those somebodies are generally quite compelling. Those somebodies are why I do what I do.
It’s been two years since I shared a scull with Sara Nevin of the Lake Lanier Rowing Club, two years since Sporting Life was born.
In the interim, nearly every week, I have adopted, for an hour or a day, the avocations of others. I have endeavored and endured. I have loved every minute of it.
I have photographs to remind me of my forays, and a shelf full of knickknacks collected along the way. But it’s the people that I cherish, my curiosity piqued by their passion.
I will never forget the image of Cindy Cook, kneeling in silent prayer amid the commotion of a rodeo at the Georgia Mountains Center. Minutes later, this mother of two sat on the back of a bull named Black Sabbath. More than 1,500 people watched the first bull ride of Cook’s life.
I watched her afterward. Holding her broken wrist, she gritted her teeth and said, “I am going to do this again.”
I will never forget the brave grace with which Michael Crowder scaled the wall of rock at Currahee Mountain in Toccoa, with not one rope attached to his body. His mane of black hair pulled back in a ponytail, his large eyes intense and somewhat unsettling, Crowder exudes the semi-sane personality one would expect from a lifelong climber.
“There’s something in this sport that clicks with certain people,” he said. “If it clicks in you, you might as well give up. Because you’re going to do it until you die — or until it kills you.”
I will never forget the sense of peace exuded by John Odegaard, who in June 1998 at age 72, lay clinically dead on a tennis court in Ashland, Oregon. Later that year, thanks to CPR, surgery and an iron will, Odegaard was back at Longwood Park in Gainesville, playing tennis with the Great Silver Toppers, the group he helped found in 1986.
I will never forget Alice Adams’ determination. Nearly 25 years ago, she was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. In August, the 54-year-old represented Lanier Aquatics and her country at the World Masters Swimming Championships in Munich, Germany. The tumor is still there, likely always will be.
“Well, I’m beyond that,” Adams said. “I’ve survived that. And now I’m living.”
I will never forget the way Marvin Mukthar Williams caressed his basketball. When Williams was a freshman at Jefferson High, he owned a 42-inch vertical leap and spent about as much time looking down at the rim as up. Ironically, it was during one of his many acrobatic dunk attempts that Williams’ high-flying life changed forever.
Somebody undercut him and he broke his back. He’s been paralyzed from the waist down ever since. When I met him just over a year ago, the then 26-year-old was a member of the Atlanta Rolling Hawks wheelchair basketball team.
“I’ve been looking for something like this for a long time,” he said. “It feels like I’m back in high school again.”
I will never forget LaVerne Headrick’s laugh. During a nighttime bass tournament on Lake Lanier in 1999, Headrick, a diabetic, explained his fondness for fishing: “Well, I’m too old to play softball. Ain’t nothin’ else I can compete in. I’m a young mind trapped in an old body.”
Headrick was 59 at the time. Soon after our outing I learned that he was laid up in a hospital bed. Soon after that, I heard he was back on Lanier winning bass tournaments.
I will never forget the way Corinne Martin pirouetted across the rapids of the Chattooga River in her whitewater canoe. She called this eddy hopping, but she made it seem much more graceful than that.
“Has your wife ever been a dancer?” I asked her husband Dennis.
“Only on the water,” he replied with a smile.
There are several others, of course. The go-kartin’ school bus driver Sabrina Wofford. The kickboxing lawyer Mike Biglow. The air-pistol shooting teenage sweetheart Jodie Briggs. The mountain-climbing firefighters Bryan Cash, Tyler Dorsey, Todd Folger and Milton Keller.
The turkey hunting preacher Tim Strickland. The kayak crazy Gary Gaines. The well-dressed cowboy Cherokee Charlie Craft. The exclamatory pigeon racer Tim Gago. The gubernatorial polo player Jack Cashin. The lawn mower racing grandmother Freda Elliot.
There are more characters still — many more — but, alas, my editor allots me only a certain amount of space.
And I am deeply indebted to them all. It is easy to make interesting people interesting.
I have found their zest infectious. I hope you have, too.
So on to Year 3 we go. It’s the people, stupid.
Who’s next? Will it be you?