Bob Keane: A Treasure.

A good friend of mine died today.

Born and raised in Mooresville, IN, I lived there until I was almost 47 years old. Growing up and living in a town like that, you get to know everyone and everyone knows you. And in those years, unfortunately, you have to stand by and watch as good friends sometimes pass on, often too early.

I moved to South Carolina six years ago. Ironically, in fact, today is our 6-year anniversary here in the Lowcountry. When Ginger and I moved here, we didn't know a soul. We literally moved from a place where we knew everyone to a place where we knew nobody. Of course, it took us a while to begin to integrate into the various aspects of our society here, and making new friends with people who didn't grow up around us was a new challenge. After six years, we've made some, but we haven't quite matched the familiarity of 40+ years in the same place.

The primary place we've made friends is in our church family here. And one of the first people to befriend me was Bob Keane. Bob is an interesting guy. You know the type: a teddy bear under a gruff exterior. There's a million of him, and somehow he's still one of a kind.

Bob is older than me, although I never bothered to ask how old. Old enough to be my senior, maybe even old enough to be my dad. I certainly respected him as a senior, but he never treated me as anything but an equal. Bob has a prosthetic leg. And he didn't bother to try to hide it. (We share an affinity for short pants -- and for a particular style of dress, which I will note shortly.) Took me awhile to get around to asking him what happened to his leg. One just doesn't jump to that early on, ya know. Like, "hey dude, what happened to your leg?" Even I wasn't that brave. But he had no trouble telling me when I asked.

As the past few years went by, it turns out Bob and I shared an affinity for many things. A fondness for St. Augustine, and a similar political worldview, just to name a couple. And, as luck would have it, we both liked clothing that prefers comfort over style. We both like to dress with an eye towards comfort over conventionality.

But before I tell you the rest of the story, I have to tell you this one.

Several years ago, I played drums in a band in Indiana. It was a Christian band, and after many years as a front man and guitarist in other bands, it was my first full time gig in a band as a drummer. Our guitar player had written the lyrics to a song titled Treasure Chest. The core of the song revolves around the death of his father, and how he had left behind a closet full of clothes that his son will now wear. As the years go by, the threads begin to bare, but the son still hopes to preserve his father's shirts. And yet as much as he treasures those shirts, they pale in comparison to the treasure we have in Heaven with Jesus.

Our band leader had fashioned those lyrics into a song, and the music had already been recorded for an album before I joined the band, but the lead vocal had not yet been completed. For some reason, the song resonated with me, having lost my father several years earlier, and the moment I heard the demo, I asked our band leader if I could take a crack at recording the vocal. Remember... to these guys, I was just the drummer. They conceded, I laid down the track, and they loved it. It made the album, and it is the only track on the project featuring me on the lead vocal. I've copied the lyrics for your review at the end below, and if you'd like to hear the track, you can do so through this link.

Me singing, about wearing another's guy's shirts.

Flash forward to just a few years ago. I had began to play music here with our worship band at church, and my wife and I were still getting our feet wet in our new hometown. One Sunday after service, Bob approached me and said, "I have something for you if you want them." I did not know Bob well at all, and up to that point, our only conversations had been an introduction and passing pleasantries.

I said, "OK, whatcha got?"

"I see you like to wear the same kind of shirts I do, and I have a couple that don't fit me anymore. I'm gonna give them to you. If you like them, you can keep them. If you don't, you can get rid of them."

Seeing as how it was clear he was giving me the shirts whether I really wanted them or not, "OK," I said, and the next week, he showed up with two shirts and handed them to me. "I figure you can use these," Bob said, "and if you can't, then just throw them away."

I did not throw them away. Tommy Bahamas... not cheap shirts. I like Tommy Bahamas.

And with that, Bob and I struck up a friendship. We would brag about he and I prancing around in shorts in below-60 degree weather when everyone else was bundled up like Winter. Kindred spirits, us. As the next couple years went by, Bob and his friends invited and accepted me into their circle of friends: a group of older gentlemen in the church who are now retired and get together regularly to fellowship. Tuesday morning breakfasts with just the guys, and Friday night meals out with the families. And Bob was a primary organizer of that group. They invited me with open arms, even though at 53 years old, I am considerably younger than most of them -- just a "pup," as many have referred to me -- and I am not retired. Yet they have included me as one of their own. It is both an honor to me and a privilege.

Bob could be gruff, and even a little crass... but he was very complimentary of me, telling me often how much he enjoyed it when I led worship, and how he always felt a genuineness with me, and how much he always got out of the services I led. Rarely do I seek validation or acceptance, but we'd all be lying if we said we aren't comforted by it when it is received. Bob's compliments meant more to me than most would know.

Bob was not my first friend in the Lowcountry. But he is the first friend here I've lost, and I will miss him. One of the primary reasons Ginger and I made the life-changing choice to move close to an ocean is because we watched some very dear friends pass away far too young -- including the leader of that band for which I drummed in Indiana, a dear musical friend of mine who passed away at the age of 47 just a few years after I recorded Treasure Chest. Ginger and I recognize that life is short... and we want to live out some of our dreams while we still can.

Bob didn't die young. But then, doesn't everyone die before we think they should? But Bob left me a gift -- a "treasure," if you will. He left me his shirts.

I wear them often. If you know me here in South Carolina, especially if you attend church with me, you've seen me in them, although you likely didn't know it was a shirt Bob gave me. I'll have one on this Sunday, and I will continue to wear them often, until the threads begin to bare. Then I will store them up as memories from a friend.

In closing, here's the kicker. The song, Treasure Chest, is about my friend's father. My own father passed away in 1993, long before I knew any of the guys in that band, and 30 years before I met Bob Keane. But I do not have a single possession of my father's. Aside from a few pictures, I have nothing tangible or real that connects me to him. It's just the way it played out, but I am OK with it.

But I will cherish even more the song I recorded, and the shirts Bob gave me, because they will remind me not only of my friends and my own Dad, but that the treasures Jesus has stored up for me in Heaven are greater than any other memento I could have.

Maybe that's the real reason Bob gave me his shirts.

Treasure Chest: Words by Darren Duerlinger. Music and Arrangement by Bobby Raikes.

I know I don’t look wealthy
Though I sometimes play the part
Even there I wouldn’t stand a chance
Without my dad’s old shirts
Left hanging in the closet, how could he have known
Going to work that day, I’d be the next one
To wear his clothes

It’s been several years now, and the threads are growing bare

I long to preserve the shirts I have been wearing
But I now they have grown, beyond repair
I watch them hanging in my closet
I look at his old pictures, and wish that he were there
And turn back time, yes turn back time

Chorus
And yet I have a treasure
It’s true I often neglect
Full of riches
It’s true I often forget
The mystery of Jesus
In whom all wisdom and knowledge
It’s hard to understand
How big he must be
But, yet I have a treasure

Like precious remnants left over from the storm
I guard little things left out before his leaving
A book, a clock, a camera, anything to help
Anything to help us through our grieving
We all want to keep these faded jewels
In a little box, like a treasure chest

Goodbye to Riverfront...

Written back in 2002…

It was July, 1984. I was 14 years old.

My mom, grandmother and I were on a vacation. We had visited historic Madison, IN on the Ohio river, and eventually snaked our way up some riverside road into Cincinnati. We stayed at what would become my all-time favorite hotel, a round building just across the river in Covington. We had a room on the very top floor facing the river that gave us a breathtaking view of downtown Cincinnati.

We lived in Indianapolis, but I’d been to Cincy lots of time. We had family there. But this was the first time I’d ever stayed downtown, and I spent the time standing on our hotel balcony and staring at what still is my favorite place in the entire world… Riverfront Stadium.

We decided to venture down to the river one afternoon, and we made our way up to the plaza of the stadium. While they were gazing over the edge at the water, I was snooping around the outside of the stadium itself. The Reds weren’t in town that day, but I eventually found an open door and walked in.

I’d only been to the stadium once before – four or five years earlier to see the Reds play the Astros-- but I was in love with the place nevertheless. I walked around in wonder for awhile, and eventually sat down in one of the green seats and just stared, imagining my heroes were lighting some poor team up out there on that field. Someone in a red jacket – I still don’t know who it was – was jogging around the warning track, and he was the only person I saw in the stadium for nearly 20 minutes.

I had a picture in my pocket of the girl I’d just fallen in love with, and I was sitting in the Taj Majal of the baseball world, at least to me. I was in heaven.

Finally, some guy came by and asked me what I was doing there. I told him I’d found an open door, and now I was sitting there looking at the field. He said I’d need to leave soon, and he walked off. I left a few minutes later.

I’m not kidding when I say that experience changed my life.

I’d been a Reds fan since I was little. When I first remember watching baseball, it was the mid 70’s, and if you watched baseball back then, you more often than not were watching the Reds pound somebody. My dad and my older brother were Reds fans. I guess I didn’t have a chance.

My dad, who wasn’t around much, would buy four or five packs of ball cards. We’d open them together and look through them, so we kinda knew who was in there. Then, he would turn them upside down and shuffle them like a regular pack of cards, and then deal them, one at a time, to me and my brother. It was like digging through a bucket of dirt to find the gold nugget when he got through. Which Red players did we each get!? Man, I used to love that! I couldn’t have cared less about the other cards. I wanted the Reds! To this day, I really only collect Reds baseball cards.

I was a Johnny Bench fan for awhile, but as I grew older and began to play the game myself, I became a Dave Concepcion fan. And boy, did we play baseball. My brother and I would play from the time we woke up, to the time it got too dark to play. If other guys from the neighborhood showed up, so be it. If not, then just he and I would play. I was number 13, and my brother was number 14.

The only thing that mattered more to us than actually playing was how the Reds did themselves that day. When Marty would say, “And this one belongs to the Reds,” all was right with the world.

I was as destroyed as anyone to see that team taken apart, one at a time. First Perez, then Rose, Morgan, Geronimo. The last to leave was Griffey and Foster. Bench retired. Oh, but Davey kept on. That kept me alive during the 80’s.

I was in my uncle’s Cincinnati living room later that summer when Rose returned. I was the teenager jumping up and down on my uncle’s couch when Pete got a hit in his first at bat and did a head first slide into third base. I was watching the tube when Tony Perez returned and became the oldest man to ever hit a grand slam home run.

I taped the game on September 11, 1985, because I was at a school function. I told everyone to keep their mouths shut so I could watch the game for myself. I didn’t have to watch long. A clean base hit to left-center field in the bottom of the first.

I was destroyed again in August of 1989.

I got to actually go to only a few games growing up, but my heart and ears were in that magical place every night.

In the 90’s, when I married, and eventually had kids, I made it a point to trek my family to several games a year. The Bible says to raise your children in the way they should go, and when they get older, they will not depart from it. I’m raising my kids to love God and be Reds fans! They don’t stand a chance.

The Reds hold this wonderful event every year called RedsFest. And you can get autographs from and have your picture taken with your favorite Red. My son’s favorite player is Aaron Boone, and he now has a couple of pictures of him and Aaron together. He doesn’t know it yet, but he will grow to treasure those. If I’d had a picture of me and Dave Concepcion together when I was a kid, it would be my most prized possession today.

They have this great game there called Reds Jeopardy. Four Reds players pick one person out of the crowd, and then they all compete in a Jeopardy contest of Reds trivia. Me and Brett Tomko won three years ago. And each session I’ve watched, I would’ve won hands down if I would just have gotten picked to play.

Why am I telling all of this? Because last Monday night I went to the last game ever held at Riverfront/Cinergy Field. Oh, it was just a softball game, but for one final time, they were all there. Rose, Griffey, Morgan, Perez, Bench, Foster, Concepcion and Geronimo… in that order. Along with other great Reds names like Billingham, Sabo, Davis, O’Neill, Oester, Dibble and Browning.

I got to see “Mr. Perfect” Tom Browning pitch again, and “Nasty Boy” Rob Dibble throw one over some guy’s head, and “Eric the Red” hit one out to center field. But the real show was that for one last time, I got to watch Davey make a backhanded stop. I got to see Foster hit a homerun. I saw Bench behind the plate, and Morgan flap his arm. And yes, I got to see Charlie Hustle do a headfirst slide into third base.

It was an historic event. This was not just a bunch of old-timers from somebody’s favorite team. This was a lineup that boasted FIVE legitimate Hall of Famers, with a couple of above .300 hitters and a league MVP thrown in the mix. There are enough gold gloves on this team to start a mint. There’s four home run champs, three batting titles, three Rookies of the Year, five RBI winners, six MVP’s, six division championships, four National League champs, and two World Championships! This was a team who was nearly unbeatable, at 69-18, in 1975 and ’76 when they played together.

No, this was not just another team. They were quite possibly the best team of all time. And we will very likely never see them all together ever again. For one last moment, they weren’t old guys who can barely move anymore. They were the heavy hitting, slick fielding, ever exciting, greatest baseball team that ever played. And every person in the stands was a kid again.

In the movie City Slickers, a girl asks the rest of the guys what the big deal was about baseball. I really don’t remember their answer. But I can tell you what it is for me.

Baseball is about being a kid and not having to worry about the stock market or Iraq. The Cincinnati Reds shaped my life. Watching Davey make a throw on the run like nobody’s business gave my life meaning during a time when my parents were divorcing and when I was a teenager discovering the path I was going to take.

Watching the Reds was about spending time with my brother, and making him proud every time I made a great play in a high school game. It was about collecting cards and putting my favorite player on my wall. Listening to Marty and Joe as I fell asleep at night, and pouring over the newspaper the next morning to see if they won. Winning the World Championship in 1990 helped kick off my marriage and my wife, the poor girl, is now a Reds fan whether she wanted to be or not.

Plus, she thinks Aaron Boone is pretty cute.

Now, being a Reds fan is going to games with my family. It’s staying in that round hotel and sleeping out on the balcony just so I can fall asleep looking at the stadium. It’s standing on the bank just across the river from the stadium and throwing rocks into the water with my boys just because we like the view. It’s getting a hot dog with my sons, something my dad and I never got to do. It’s watching my 7 year old son grab a bat and swing it nonstop during the entire Reds telecast on Fox Sports Net. It’s hearing him explain how Larkin could’ve avoided making that error if he’d just made the play this way and high-fiving him when Aaron hits one out. And being Reds fans is coaching my little number 17 over there at third base, even if we are the Carlisle and Son Funeral Home Cubs.

Yes, my family and I share special times together now because of the Big Red Machine all those years ago. I’m gonna miss the old place, but I didn’t care about the carpet, or how round it is, or whether its called Riverfront or Cinergy. Call it what you want. It’s where the Reds play baseball.

I know now that there are more important things in life than baseball, but when your wife and kids are standing there with you cheering on another Reds homer, I really can’t think of anything better.

There were over 41,000 people there last Monday night. But for one last time, I was all alone in the stadium, staring at the field, watching my heroes, and being a kid again.

Abortion

Abortion.

THE hot topic. Really has been for the last couple decades. About to be again, with a vengeance, as the Supreme Court is about to overturn it's legality, as it should have done years ago.

As is usually the case with big hot-button issues like this, the majority of the general public doesn't know the actual facts and truths, and instead are much more eager to form their opinions both on what they're told by others and what they see in the media. Social media has muddied those waters exponentially.

There's a ton of "myth-busting" websites out there, both for and against abortion. Each one basically cancels out the other. But they cover all types of topics including racism, Christianity, American citizen support, safety, infertility, etc. But most of it is just blather. None of it really gets to the crux of this issue, but is rather just trying to sway us to their cause. I'd like to get down to the heart of the matter.

First, the myths:

1) Abortions are necessary because of rape -- Abortions in the case of rape account for anywhere from just under 3% to less than 1% of all total abortions, depending on which data you look up. Regardless, it's such a low number, it's hardly worth including in the legality discussion.

2) Making abortion illegal puts women's health at risk. -- In and of itself, that's mostly an outright lie by the abortion industry. There is nothing inherently dangerous about not being able to legally obtain an abortion. Is it true that sometimes -- VERY rarely -- pregnancies need to be terminated to save the Mom's health? Yes. But we'll get to just how rare that is later.

3) Roe vs. Wade was about women's health. -- It was no such thing. Roe sued so she could have the right to kill off her kid because she wanted to. That's it. In fact, Texas law at the time -- it was Texas legislation she sued against -- had a provision against abortion except in cases where the Mother's health was in danger. Read this little tidbit from a synopsis of the Roe case put together by Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute. It reads, "A pregnant single woman (Roe) brought a class action challenging the constitutionality of the Texas criminal abortion laws, which proscribe procuring or attempting an abortion except on medical advice for the purpose of saving the mother's life." (Emphasis mine.) The abortion debate has always revolved around the CHOICE of abortion, rather than the medical NEED for one. The reality is that medical professionals have always had, and still do today, the option of terminating a pregnancy if the Mom's life is in danger.

4) My body, my choice. -- As a society, we really don't subscribe to this notion under any other medical circumstance outside of abortion. Yes, people, generally speaking, have a say-so in their own healthcare. But mostly, it's about what a doctor CAN'T do, as opposed to what they CAN. A doctor can advise a patient that he or she needs a particular surgery, but any coherent patient has the right of personal refusal if they choose. Conversely, one cannot force a doctor to perform a surgery under the banner of "my body, my choice." You can walk into a doctor's office with your leg snapped in half, but you cannot force that doctor to perform a surgery just because it's "your choice." Medical and surgical procedures, are, by and large, performed only on an as-necessary basis, through the coordination of the patient and the doctor. "My body, my choice," rarely plays a factor in those decisions if something is deemed medically necessary. Moreover, doctor's make decisions without patient consent every day in trauma care facilities where life or death is on the line. We pay doctor's to do that. If a decision needs to be made to save a patient's life and they're not conscious to make it, the decision gets made regardless.

Of course, the obvious elephant-in-the-room objection to this is simple. An abortion isn't about a women's body. It's about a baby's body. There's really no way around that. 

5) No uterus, no opinion / Men have no say in an abortion. -- That's just offensive to men like me. There is not a woman on the planet, despite what CNN might contend, who has any chance of getting pregnant without the assistance of a male, either directly or indirectly. Simply not possible. For men who are responsible, caring partners and fathers-to-be, they have just as much right in the say-so of the baby's life as the mother. To insist otherwise is just evil.

6) Planned Parenthood is not about abortion, but rather provides vital women's healthcare. -- This is mostly a lie. Planned Parenthood does indeed offer women's health services beyond abortions. However, they do not offer a single health benefit that any woman can't get with her family doctor and the local hospital clinics. My wife birthed two babies and there wasn't a single benefit PP could have offered her that wasn't available to her through our regular health system. Moreover, now that Obamacare has made healthcare mandatory for everybody even if they can't afford it, there is literally no need for PP outside of their abortion services that aren't readily offered by standard medical facilities.

More importantly, it should be noted that PP was founded for the sole purpose of providing abortions, are BY FAR the largest abortion provider in the US, and every PP facility that is opened is REQUIRED to offer abortions. And, according to data, over 90% of the services rendered to pregnant women who go to PP are abortions. Planned Parenthood is about abortions. Period.

7) Life begins at birth -- Any sane person knows this isn't true. ALL rational medical data proves life begins at conception. There is no scientific data anywhere that shows otherwise. It doesn't exist. Abortion ends the life of an innocent child. Period.

Now, the truths:

1) We've already talked about rape percentages. There are those who contend those percentages are low because many women are afraid to come forward and go public after a rape. There is most likely some truth to that, and some of the data you'll find tries to take that information into account. However, the number is so low to begin with, that no significant authority I've read reasonably contends that the number would go up at all significantly. A couple percentage points, maybe? Still leaving the number so low it shouldn't factor in to the overall legality of abortion. Less than 1% to even 5% or 7% is not a number that validates recreational abortion. Programs could be put into place that cost a lot less money and don't sacrifice millions of unborn babies to assist pregnant women who have truly been raped. It's sad we don't already have those programs in place. And despite what Liberals would like you to believe, Conservatives in general are not opposed to having a conversation about abortion options in the case of rape or incest.

2) Women's health -- Again, a quick look at the stats show that necessary pregnancy terminations to save the mother's life are infinitesimally small. Like, off-the-charts low. Truthfully, actual health of the baby itself holds a bigger percentage for reasons for an abortion than does the health of the mother. Overall, preserving the health of the mother accounts for 5-7% of all abortions.

3) The debate, as it stands, and at its most vile push, is completely about recreational abortion. Again, depending on the data you choose, but looking over data from the CDC, the World Health Organization, and independent sites like USAFacts.org and Abort73.com, recreational abortions account for anywhere from 75-85% of abortions, WORLDWIDE, and it's even higher in black communities than white communities. All the other talking points are just that -- talking points. A vain way to validate a woman's choice to kill off her baby just because she wants to. Liberals, in general, do not like being told what to do, and rather, LOVE dictating what everybody else does. (Interestingly, most PRO-abortion sites I've visited, like Prochoice.org, Prochoiceamerica.org, and the Planned Parenthood site don't list statistics on REASONS for abortions. Wonder why that is?)

4) Adoption is too freaking expensive and difficult -- Ridiculously so. Why our country allows a woman to take an afternoon and kill off a child, but charges tens of thousands of dollars and forces good, solid families to wait months, and even years, to adopt a child is beyond me. Asking adoptive parents to put a little skin in the game and be vetted thoroughly is wise, but the process is needlessly too exhaustive, difficult and expensive. If it were not so, FAR more good people would be willing to step up and adopt.

5) Criminalizing recreational abortion will result in much greater number of problem children. -- It's true. But then, whose fault is that? It's not mine. I chose to have children, raise and support them, and help them to become useful citizens of society. Millions of parents do that everyday. Should millions of children be sacrificed because we have a nation full of men and women who choose -- CHOOSE -- to be immature, irresponsible, horrible parents, and dregs of society? Is that really the answer? Is it too much to believe the most powerful, wealthy nation on the planet can't come up with a better system?

6) Conservatives like me are not against saving a mother's life by all means necessary. While the strictest definition of abortion is the termination of any pregnancy, the definition of abortion we're debating is "recreational abortion." Simply put, there has never been a doctor prosecuted for terminating a pregnancy in any case where it was determined without doubt the mother's life was in danger. As noted before, that scenario was never illegal prior to Roe vs. Wade. And despite the lies that "doctor's can now be put in prison for life for saving a woman's life," it literally has never happened.

As noted above, doctors, on a daily basis, make necessary decisions to save people's lives, and in rare occasions, that decision involves terminating a pregnancy. To date, no doctor has ever been prosecuted for making that decision when it has been deemed authentic.

I have no problem admitting publicly -- and have done so many times -- that I emphatically made clear to my wife's OB doctor during her second pregnancy that I had no qualms with sacrificing our unborn baby if it meant saving my wife's life. Many of those reading this know our second son was born 11 weeks premature. However, my wife's water broke at 26 weeks, landing her in the 24 hour care of a hospital bed. After a week or so, the complications of the pregnancy began piling up and my wife's overall health was declining. The drugs they were using to help our son were in turn hurting my wife. I would have none of it, and told my doctor he needed to make a decision that most benefitted my wife, and that I had no reservations if those decisions put our unborn baby in peril. I'm not ashamed of it, and would make the same decisions again in a heartbeat.

The boogeyman argument that doctors are gonna start going to jail for terminating pregnancies to save a woman's life just aren't true. The stories you see floating around social media about 11 year old girls who get raped and women who have a disaster happen at 21 weeks when the law cutoff is 20 weeks are so rare, they're not valid arguments for recreational abortion. If you are in favor of sacrificing millions of innocent babies so one 11 year old girl (who's likely going to get the help she needs anyway) can get an abortion, then I'd say your priorities might be a little out of whack.

Should we help the 11 year old rape victim? Absolutely! And I have no problem with the idea that that help should come from the state, but there's no reason that can't be done without sacrificing millions of other innocent babies. If our government, and Planned Parenthood, wanted to do something right, they'd have real programs in place to help innocent young rape victims, and women who find themselves in medical catastrophes. And instead of funneling public money into killing innocent babies, they'd funnel that money to programs that seriously reduce the cost of adoption for the millions of families who would like to adopt and can't afford to!

If an 11 year old girl is raped, there should be a program she can go into, wherein she is taken care of medically, counseled, loved, and paired with a loving couple who will take the baby and raise it right. Why can't that happen? Abortion need not be legal for that to occur. There are billions of dollars spent on abortion every year, plenty of money to put good care programs in place for women who truly find themselves in trouble, and funds which will drastically reduce the cost of adoption.

The crux of the issue is simple -- all the hoopla you see on the news, all the protesters you see carrying around cartoon pictures of vaginas are all arguing for one thing: the choice to kill off a baby simply because they want to. There's not a single, rational person arguing AGAINST helping rape victims and women in medical peril, so there's no reason to be protesting anything in those regards. We're arguing against killing off a child just because someone was irresponsible and is now deciding they don't want to be a parent. Period. That's all it's about.

It's wrong. It's evil. And it should be outlawed.

The Blue Silicone Bracelet.

My son was in 7th Grade.

My oldest son was exclusively a baseball player. But because there were only three boys in his entire 7th Grade class in his small school, his buddies had talked him into joining the middle school basketball team with them and several of the 8th Grade boys. While naturally athletic, he wasn't a very good basketball player, and didn't much like it anyway.

Prior to one of their games, as I sat and watched from the stands, their pregame warmups had devolved into frivolity, and the boys were all at one end of the court attempting crazy trick shots; shots from the half court, over-the-back hook shots, backwards heaves from far away, etc. Generally just goofing off and playing around as middle school boys are wont to do.

Except for one.

One young man -- an 8th Grader, and one of the best players on the team -- was at the other end of the court taking his warmup time very seriously; working on his dribble, shooting free throws, practicing mid-range jumpers, and generally preparing for the game. Eventually, he'd had enough of his teammates messing around at the other end of the court and as a leader on the team, he finally strolled over to let them have it.

"Hey! Why don't you guys stop screwing around and start working on things you'll actually use in the game!"

With that, the party was over, and everybody got back to work.

I can't remotely remember the outcome of that game, nor most of the many that followed. I know overall, the team, hailing from a really small school, wasn't all that good, but they had a couple pretty good players, and this one young man stood out from the rest.

That young man's name was Ben Elo. Roughly one year later, Ben died after getting out of his shower at home from what is still a relatively unknown cause. He was 14 years old.

Needless to say, it was a tragedy beyond measure. I did not know him or his family well. Aside from him being a friend and classmate of my son's, and a polite young man, I knew little else of him except how impressed I had been by him and his work ethic that day at basketball practice, and equally impressed at his fearless chastising of his teammates. I mentioned as much to his mother some years later as we developed a professional relationship.

While it was no secret Ben was a good athlete, I would go on to learn he was a very talented soccer player beyond his years, and had been playing on an older-aged, elite traveling soccer team for several years. His future as a high-level soccer player was very bright. He dreamed of playing soccer at Notre Dame, and had said as much to their head coach, Bobby Clark, when he attended their soccer camp just two weeks before his death.

Also needless to say, his funeral was a heart wrenching affair, attended of course by nearly all his classmates, and a good number of people from our town. At his funeral, his parents handed every attendee a blue, silicone bracelet embossed with the Bible verse they thought most exemplified Ben's character, Micah 6:8.

"Act Justly, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly."

It was a simple blue silicone bracelet. You know the type. Embossed, not printed, so it was simply blue.

I'm not a big jewelry guy. The only ring I wear is my wedding ring. I wear a necklace with a cross on it as well. At various times in my past, I've worn a gold chain bracelet. I don't wear a watch.

What jewelry I do wear has to be jewelry I don't ever have to remove. I never take off my wedding ring or my necklace. Ever. The only reason I'm not still wearing a gold bracelet is because whatever last one I had finally broke off my wrist and disappeared. Because of their simplicity and durability, I have worn various silicone bracelets over the years. Right now I have a silicone bracelet from the Cincinnati Reds and another red one I got from this year's Christmas parade that reads, "Jesus With Us."

At Ben's funeral -- I don't remember the exact date, but it was late July, 2008 -- when they handed me Ben's blue silicone bracelet, I immediately put it on, and it has never come off my wrist since.

Never.

Several years ago, a few years before I moved to South Carolina, I served a year as our local Kiwanis Club's chapter president. Monthly, we would honor a local youth for their civic and faith-based commitments to our community. As chapter president, I would have my picture taken with the young recipient, and that picture would often end up in the local paper with a caption notating the award. It was most always a black and white picture buried somewhere inside the paper.

After one such publication, I received a kind phone call from Ben's mother. She had seen the photo in the paper and was calling to thank me for still wearing Ben's bracelet. She mentioned how, after several years, it just felt to them that people had begun to forget about Ben and had moved on from his passing and she was thankful to me that I was, in my small way, still keeping Ben's memory alive by wearing his bracelet.

I shared my gratitude and mentioned that I never remove the bracelet, and after some small talk, we ended the call. I immediately grabbed my copy of the paper to look at the picture. As mentioned, it was a black and white photo, and my wrist bearing the bracelet was not in any way predominately featured in the shot. In the photo, the bracelet was barely visible, and, in my opinion, completely and utterly indistinguishable. To this day, I have no idea how she knew it was Ben's bracelet I was wearing. She just knew.

For 14 years, I'd worn Ben's bracelet, every day, every night, literally 24 hours a day. It was a little faded, and the emboss a little worn, but it was there, a daily reminder from a forever 14 year old boy to "Act Justly, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly."

Until last Sunday.

As I dressed for church, and pulled on long-pants jeans I almost never wear in our balmy weather, I heard something drop, and I looked down to see Ben's bracelet laying on the floor beside my bed. It had snapped clean, and was gently laying there, almost as if waiting to be picked up.

It has been some time since I've felt such sadness. I felt as though I'd lost a friend. We've been through so much together, a part of me I've come to just accept. Few people over the years have actually mentioned anything to me or asked about it, but I have to guess other's have noticed a blue bracelet on my arm for as long as they can remember. In many ways, it has come to represent and honor the loss of many friends. Losses that reinforced the notion of our own mortality, and the temporary station we hold in this world.

The realization that we all have only a certain amount of time here on Earth formed the foundation of my and my wife's desire to move close to the beach and live life to the fullest while we still can. Ben's bracelet made that move with me and enjoyed the salty air as much as I do.

I did the math. That blue bracelet has been on my arm nearly 25% of my life. I know it sounds corny, but it is upsetting to me that it's no longer there.

Fortunately, it's not gone. I still have it. I'm thankful it didn't fall off in the ocean or blow off my arm as I drove down the highway. I haven't decided just how, but it will soon be on display somewhere in my office. I might get it framed, I haven't decided yet.

I should add here, before I close, that my son wore Ben's bracelet in the same way I did, 24/7, until his original broke off his wrist just a few months ago. Some time ago, he had reached out to Ben's mother, who still had a stash, and she sent him several to keep on standby and maybe to hand out to others. He immediately donned a replacement and still wears it everyday.

The rainbow at the end of this story is that when I reached out to tell him mine had finally fallen off, he informed me he still has a few left over, and I'm going to pick up a new bracelet from him when I visit in a couple weeks. The irony -- and perhaps the karma -- is that it won't be a new bracelet at all. It will be a 14-year old bracelet, just one no one's ever worn before.

14 years old -- the same age as Ben.

What's the life lesson here? I don't know. Perhaps you can figure it out. Or maybe, we just all need to take our own lesson out of it. As for me, I'll just keep trying to Act Justly, Love Mercy, and Walk Humbly.

I hope that's enough to honor Ben.

POSTSCRIPT (if you're up to keep reading, and you should...)

Before I posted this publicly, I wanted Ben's family and my son to read it, as much for accuracy as for their general thoughts. I really wanted to be sure I was honoring Ben appropriately, and my memories hadn't faulted me. They both responded with some edits which I made to the piece before posting it. Additionally, they shared some thoughts with me and I wanted to include them, but thought it best to just add them verbatim instead of trying to weave them into what I'd already written. Here are their comments below...

MELANIE ELO (Ben's mom): "Generally speaking, I always want people to know that Ben loved Jesus and that he talked to people about that. The one thing I recall from the memorial was sharing that ‘if Ben were here today, he would want you all to know Jesus as your Lord and Savior. We will see Ben again and he would want to see you in Heaven too.’ ...Any chance to talk about Faith in his life is always good."

M. ELO: "We chose the (Micah 6:8) verse because it represented his character so much and it became part of the mission statement of his memorial fund. He wrote a paper on his favorite (Bible) verse, which was John 15:5; 'I am the vine, you are the branches. He who remains in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit. For without Me you can do nothing.'"

M. ELO: "When you grieve deeply, you want to know people remember... I looked at everyone's wrist and every picture to see if they still had (Ben's) bracelet on. I just seemed to be a mark of remembrance to us. While (we know) people didn't stop wearing it because they had forgotten about Ben, it felt that way to us -- that's why we appreciate you wearing it so much."

M. ELO: "I still order (bracelets) and send them to people. People can always reach out and I'll (send) them out." (If you'd like a bracelet, you can let me know and I'll get the info to Melanie!)

CORY UHLS: "...the one I have now was one of the original ones like you said. A little side note just so you know, I know my new one is one of the originals because it’s slightly messed up. The words are spaced a little wrong, just like the one I got at Ben’s funeral. I assume (this is) because they were made so quickly after Ben passed. The ones they made after the funeral are spaced correctly and are a little different. But I immensely love that it’s slightly imperfect. It helps me know that while I strive to act justly, love mercy, walk humbly, I know I won’t be perfect, and that I’m not expected to be either. That’s honestly been the best part of having the bracelet. And like you said, every event in my life has added to the meaning of the bracelet. When I got married, I left it on so the words of the bracelet gained more meaning. When I have kids, it’ll take more meaning then too. Striving to live up to the words on the bracelet in those areas but also having a reminder that I won’t be perfect either, and that’s ok. It still means the same even with its faults. I don’t leave it on because it’s always been there. (I leave it on) because it’s always meant something. More than it was originally intended I imagine."

Lastly, I'd like you know Ben's family still maintains a memorial fund for Ben and offers a scholarship with the fund's proceeds every year. It is handled by the Community Foundation of Morgan County. If you'd like to donate to the fund, or apply for the scholarship, please visit this website: Community Foundation of Morgan County.