Ross and Edwin: forever friends

  ...

Fr

    From their time in third grade together to lives in their early 70s, Ross Oglesby and Edwin Tubbs were best friends.

       Not inseparable -- because they had their own lives and families -- but darned near.

       They were my friends, too, because Sunset Acres (in southwest Shreveport) was that kind of neighborhood in the late 1950s and through the 1960s.  

     And -- heck, yes, I'm partial to them -- they were among the best people and the best athletes to come out of Sunset Acres. Especially together.

       It so happened that their third-grade year (fall 1957) began a couple of months after the Van Thyn family moved into the neighborhood.

       Over the next few years, those of us participating in schoolground touch football games and makeshift track meets on our streets learned this: Ross and Edwin were the fastest runners in our area.

       If you competed against them, you had no chance. Only Edwin could catch Ross; only Ross could catch Edwin. 

     When they were teammates -- as they soon would be at Oak Terrace Junior High and Woodlawn High School -- they were stars ... and winners.

        And they were great kids -- even-tempered, reliable, funny, not argumentative like some (guess who?), no trouble for teachers or parents.

       They would be that way, always. And always loyal to each other. 

       My opinion: Ross Oglesby was the best athlete ever to come out of Sunset Acres, high school All-State in two sports (football, track), a college football player. He was "Ross The Hoss."

       Edwin Tubbs was a terrific high school football player, a medal winner in Vietnam, one of the thousands of American unsung heroes in that woebegone war. 

       They would become husbands and fathers and grandfathers, working hard to support their families. It didn't always work out for them, and there were health and mental issues. They weren't especially book-smart, but they were smart, gentle and kind.

       It was a beautiful friendship.

       And I was proud to call them my friends forever, although the years and time separated us. 

      Because I was two years older, they were sort of like little brothers for me, and I was so proud that they were two of the biggest stars on the teams representing our schools. They were "my guys."

      Here is how close together we lived: First, both Ross and Edwin lived almost directly across from the Sunset Acres Elementary School grounds; all they had to do was walk across the street.

      On the blocks in the square around the
school:  Ross' family lived on West Canal (east side of the school); Edwin's family lived on Sunnybrook (north side); our close friends Johnny and Terry Tucker lived on Burke (west side, their backyard fence bordered the school); we lived on Amherst (south side). Ross' house was a half-block away from us. Visited there often.

       Lots of good times with those boys. Lots of laughs, lots of stories (a couple mildly x-rated). Lots of memories.

       We don't exactly have a happy ending here, except to say Ross and Edwin lived long, happy, productive lives. But ...

       Ross Oglesby, 74, died last Thursday after dealing with cancer -- and other ailments -- for several years. 

       Edwin doesn't know his best pal is gone. 

       For years, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after Vietnam made his life, and his family's life, hell at times. More recently, dementia set in. 

        He is now in a veterans' home in Bossier City, well-cared for, still -- as his wife Kathie and their three daughters will say -- the sweet guy they adore. 

       But the PTSD has kicked in stronger than ever, and hospitalization and changes in medicine have been required lately. 

       Edwin's travails were not a subject Ross, in his final year and dealing with illnesses, could discuss. 

       Edwin and Kathie spent 44 years living in Southern Hills, which in the 1960s was Woodlawn territory. They then moved to Haughton -- which is where Ross has lived for years. (Haughton, for those who might not know, is in rural Bossier Parish, and it's the home of Dallas Cowboys QB Dak Prescott).

     Ross, in a marriage and re-marriage, had two sons and a daughter and now four grandsons and six granddaughters. Edwin and Kathie have seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

        "They loved each other like brothers," Kathie Pollard Tubbs says of our guys. "Ross became one of our family; he spent a lot of time here with our grandkids. He'd come over 3-4 times a week, and he'd go to the refrigerator and grab some cake or a soft drink."

     And, of course, there was lots of discussion of old times, of Sunset Acres and Woodlawn ... and stories.

       There was this interplay: "Ross was the aggravator," Kathie said, "and Edwin loved to be aggravated. It was a game they played, and they need an audience." 

       It was a battle of teasing appreciated by a closely knit group of Woodlawn football players who were seniors on the 1966 team, a dozen-plus who have stayed in contact through the years. They were all familiar with the Ross-Edwin dynamic.

     Size-wise, they were different. Oglesby, as a high school senior, was a muscular 6-foot-2, 200 pounds. Tubbs was compact, listed on the 1966 All-City team at 5-7 (he actually was 5-9) and 170 pounds. His strides were nothing like Ross', but he too could move. 

---

      Many of the '66 football seniors also were together in junior high at Oak Terrace, where as eighth-graders in track-and-field in 1963 they won that school's first city championship of any kind. Tubbs and Oglesby were key runners on the relay teams. They were ninth-grade champs the next year, with Tubbs winning both sprints (100 and 220 yards, plus two relays) and Oglesby on all three relay units.  

      In junior high, Tubbs was the star running back; Oglesby was an end. 

     At Woodlawn, running back was a position deep in talent, so Tubbs -- speedy and aggressive -- became a perfect fit at linebacker in defensive coach Jerry Adams' gambling/blitzing scheme. He was part of a junior-filled unit that struggled early, then became tough enough to balance a QB Terry Bradshaw/WR Tommy Spinks-led offense.

     That team, after mid-season struggles, walloped Byrd 39-0, Woodlawn's first-ever victory over the arch-rivals in six tries. It didn't lose again -- with one close escape at Neville (a 9-7 victory on a final half-minute field goal) -- until the Class 3A state-championship game. Sulphur won 12-9 in a hard rain at State Fair Stadium.

     So the defense was especially seasoned for the 1966 season, and the linemen -- offense and defense -- were the biggest physically Woodlawn had had in its seven years. The result was the best Knights' team ever -- a 10-0 regular season and a defense which had six shutouts and gave up only four TDs.

    Plus, a punishing running game on offense, led by Oglesby, who -- after tries at end and tackle, found the position he loved.

     Powerfully, he could run through tacklers or, with his long strides and speed, beat them to the outside. Three other backs also could play. 

     Twice both Oglesby and Tubbs were the "players of the week" selected by The Shreveport Times.

     Ross, with 1,308 yards rushing (5.2 per carry) -- 528 more than anyone else in Shreveport-Bossier -- became Woodlawn's first first-team All-State running back (Tommy Linder had been a second-team choice in 1962). 

     Edwin, shooting gaps and chasing down opposing QBs and RBs, was the Shreveport-Bossier "Defensive Player of the Year," chosen by the Shreveport Touchdown Club. He was second-team All-State -- the highest honor ever then for a Woodlawn defensive player. 

     The only preseason question marks for the '66 team were quarterback and one cornerback.

      The QB spot was filled by a promising, poised sophomore -- Joe Ferguson. The cornerback spot was filled by a transfer from North Caddo, Ronnie Alexander.

    Ferguson was steady, but not the passer he would become. In the next two seasons, he was the best high school football player -- passer -- many of us have ever seen. Turned out he was the real deal; he went on to 19 years in the NFL.

      A dozen of the players on the 1966 team would play college football, some at major schools. Alexander, All-City at cornerback, became a small-college All-American linebacker at Louisiana Tech and then was one of North Louisiana's best-ever defensive coaches (college and high school).

      But the 1966 Knights were the best Woodlawn team not to win the state championship. After a playoff-opening victory, disaster came in a lengthy trip to Bogalusa (345 miles, 6 1/2 hours one way). The trip back was longer.

     Bogalusa would haunt us forever. Ross and Edwin -- all of us -- often talked about it, ruefully.

     The score was 18-14, the Lumberjacks scoring the game-winning TD with about 5 minutes remaining after a long drive against a proud Woodlawn defense that wasn't the same as it had been.

     One major reason: two injured leaders. Tubbs had injured a calf early that week in practice. He played, but he limped at about half-speed, unable to do what he had done all season. And Alexander, a ferocious hitter and cover corner, left the game in the first quarter with an injured leg.

    Another factor: Bogalusa's junior quarterback. Terry Davis cut up the Knights' defense with 258 passing yards and another 59 rushing as he turned corners that Tubbs and Alexander might have filled. Davis also was for real; a couple of years later he started at QB for Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant at Alabama. 

    (Ironic, because Edwin Tubbs for life was an Alabama fan.)

     Oglesby, though, had a productive game with 112 yards rushing on 22 carries. But Woodlawn that night could not quite control the ball -- or game -- as it had all year.

---

    Ross, in the spring of their senior year, was one of the state's outstanding hurdlers -- the Class 3A state champion in the 120 highs (14.1) and second in the 180 lows (18.9), close to the best times ever in Louisiana, and All-State in both events. He was bigger than most hurdlers, but speed and athletic ability is what it is.

      He signed to play football at Louisiana Tech, and stayed two years, but played sparingly, not used to a new coaching staff there which was louder, more aggressive than the highly regarded Woodlawn staff that had nurtured him. He transferred to play two good seasons at Southern (Ark.) State in Magnolia.

     He would go into coaching -- a couple of

times -- and worked several other jobs, including truck driving, so he got to see much of the country. 

      He also gained much weight, almost double the 200 from high school, to an unhealthy point that affected his breathing. Urged to lose weight, he did -- but still was around 250. A hernia bothered him for years; when finally he submitted to an operation, cancer was found in his intestines. 

     Two rounds of chemo followed, until he had had enough. He had hospice care the last couple of months. 

       His great friend never knew. 

       Edwin wasn't college material, so he joined the U.S. Army right out of Woodlawn, and was patrolling in Vietnam a few months later. He survived it, but paid a price.

     He came home to marry Kathie on June 2, 1969, and they lived out his Army days at Fort Polk, La. Back in Shreveport, he began his own construction company and, for years, worked projects in town and throughout the Southeast as they raised their family. 

     "He was our hero," says Kathie. "He had all these medals for his military service, but he never showed them off. He was so humble. He wouldn't talk about it." But the PTSD at times made life more difficult.

      Ross helped him deal, too. How close were they? Each was the best man in the other's wedding. 

      "They stuck together all those years," Kathie says. 

       It all began in our beloved Sunset Acres days.    

A love story, long-delayed but so sweet

     Two kids from the old neighborhood (Sunset Acres in Shreveport) found each other after 40-plus years and lived happily ever after (we hope).
     Two lives, two long and often difficult paths, with multiple  challenges -- especially for one since childhood -- and with joy and tragedy often mixed.

     It is a sweet story now, Leslie Bradford and Ronnie Anderson living together in Elon, N.C., for several years and hopefully many more to come.
     Leslie was the cute young girl down the street (Amherst Street), living on the corner the next block over with her parents and older brother Pat, a friend of ours.
     Ronnie was the endearing dark-haired little boy who a couple of blocks away on Sunnybrook, right across the street from Sunset Acres Elementary School.
     Surely, most everyone in Sunset Acres knew Ronnie, the big-hearted, sharp, pleasant, smiling kid wearing those heavy leg braces and dragging them along as he made his way on crutches. Polio, in the 1950s, was a scourge, and Ronnie was one most affected.
     He seemingly was always around, on the playground, at the school, often trailing older brother Lyn. He didn't let much stop him.
     He was unforgettable to some of us in Sunset Acres.
     And so, six decades later, here is his picture on Facebook -- a gray-haired, somewhat thick presence, and in a wheelchair, same great smile ... and the girl in the photo with him? Yes, the cute young girl from down the street -- Miss Leslie. Still a beauty ... and also with a great smile.
      They had known each other since second grade, but only as casual friends. They never dated.
      In the Woodlawn High years, "he was in his own [musical] band, and I was in the pep squad," Leslie says. "We did not really run in the same circles."
      Ronnie: "I probably thought she was out of my league. I never did ask her out ..."
       They'd gone their separate ways after high school graduation (Woodlawn Class of 1969) -- long roads for both -- but their 40th class reunion (yes, 10 years ago) was the starting point for this romance.
     We'd been tipped off to the story by my sister, their classmate all through school (elementary, junior high, high school) and Leslie's friend for all that time.
     We knew some of the details of her life. But whatever happened to Ronnie Anderson? Interesting to see on his Facebook page that he was -- and is -- quite the musician. 
     How did they end up together? Good story. Maybe it was fate.
---
     For Leslie, a marriage not long after high school graduation and quickly three children in three years. 
     Over the years, two other marriages (for a total of 25 years married), three divorces, five grandchildren; a variety of jobs; a first move from Shreveport to North Carolina (a husband's job transfer took them there); a move back to the Shreveport area to be near her aging and ailing parents (her kids stayed in Carolina); and then a move back to N.C. (for good) with her mother in her final years.
     Her final job: caregiver of an elderly woman for three years.
     "Loved working with the elderly," she says. "Learned a lot about Alzheimer's patients."  
     For Ronnie, surgery after surgery after surgery -- polio-related, then car wreck-related. So many trips in and out of Shreveport's Shriners Hospital, too many to count. Thus, many long breaks from school. 
     Finally, a guitar, an obsession ... and a life he never expected.
      A high school band, or two. A few college stops, a college stage band, a dropout for a musical career on the road, touring bands. The wild 1970s scene: drugs, drinks ... and issues. Back to school, a marriage (also unexpected, but one that lasted 32 years), three children, a career away from music, a divorce, a life adrift. But always still music at its root.
     "Ronnie has lived a more exciting life than me," says Leslie. "... He's had a colorful life."
     So, the Woodlawn Class of '69 reunion in October 2009, and here they were, each single, newly divorced. They had not seen each other in at least 15 years.
     Leslie had a date, but he was just hanging around at the bar. Ronnie Anderson, from Sunset Acres, was in the room.
     "I kept going back to talk with Ronnie that night," Leslie recalled. "And then we had a mutual friend [actually the woman Ronnie was dating at the time and had been Leslie's children's babysitter when they were very young] who told me that his birthday is February 27."
     The next February 27th (2010), Leslie called Ronnie to wish him a happy birthday.
     They enjoyed the talk, and "from that point on we talked almost every day," she said. (In fact, they had to change phone plans to accommodate the time accumulated.)
     "He made me fall in love with him over the phone. It's hard to have a long-distance relationship."
     "When we talked, it was always great," says Ronnie, and soon he made the trip from Shreveport to Elon, N.C., for a visit. "And when we got together, it got to be more and more of a thing."
     There was sentimentality involved, too. "I thought about all the friends I had made [from school days], and it was a good feeling," he says. "So to talk to Leslie and get to know her more seemed right."
     Over a year's time, the relationship grew to the point that Ronnie made the move to North Carolina and they became a couple.
     But a couple of years later, Ronnie's father became ill (cancer). At Leslie's urging, he returned to Shreveport to help care for his parents.
     "He was heartbroken," she says of her insistence that he leave Elon. "He thought I did not love him. But I felt he was more needed there at that time."
     In 2014, his parents died in an eight-month period. So did his ex-wife, long a sufferer with Crohn's disease and then pancreatic cancer.
     With that, he returned to North Carolina -- and Leslie. It had been a long road, but they think he is home.
---
     Ronnie, born in 1951, the second of four children (older brother, two younger sisters) was diagnosed with polio at 5 months old. His legs were underdeveloped, bent and crooked. As he grew, the braces and crutches became part of his walking process.
     His first operation was at age 4, at Shreveport's highly regarded Shriners Hospital for Children. Another operation, on his right leg, some three years later. A fusion of his left leg -- his knee and ankle, to hold the leg straight -- at age 15.
     Each time meant long stays at Shriners, time missing from Sunset Acres and school for months.
     "I would disappear for periods at a time, and when I would come back," he recalls, laughing, "kids would ask, 'Where have you been?' "
     The first time or two, in the mid-1950s, "when you are 4 or 5, that's pretty tortuous. I was horribly homesick." 
     Additionally, after surgery, "You could only see your Mom and Dad for an hour on Sundays, and no siblings were allowed. There was worry that the polio virus could spread to other kids."
     The left-leg fusion, at age 15, alleviated the use of a brace and "it was a real breakthrough." After that, he "could move around a little bit" without aid, to the point that participated in intramural tennis and even football (as the center).
     But even before that, his parents "were very good, very encouraging. They gave me no special exceptions. They told me I could do anything I wanted, to try anything I could." 
     By the time he was about 13, though, the Shriners' Hospital stays were not only a literal pain, but also a figurative one.
     He was, admittedly, "a handful." 
     "I was doing things like putting toothpaste on [other patients'] faces while they were asleep," he says. "All sorts of mischievous stunts. The doctors and nurses told my parents, 'You better straighten out your son, or he will have to leave.' "
     But by then, something -- a guitar -- had changed his life. His path was about to come into focus.
     "I'm there in the hospital, and I am so bored," he recalls. "I told my parents, 'If I have to build another model airplane, I am going to tear my hair out.' "
     It was a co-worker of his father's at Texas Eastern, an information technology person, who made the suggestion: Get him a guitar.
     The co-worker, Toney Morelock, could identify. He had polio in his upper body.     
     "It was an act of God," Ronnie says of the choice. "I was really hooked. Played it all the time, practiced it. I remember my parents saying, 'Put that thing down and come have your dinner. ... Put that thing down and do your homework.' "
      And he had a hero.
     "I really admired him," he says of Morelock. "He was the coolest guy in the world. He was one of the first people I knew who drove a Mustang. He was a bachelor, and he always brought a nice date to our house. I [eventually] pledged the same fraternity [Kappa Alpha] he was in. 
     "He was the coolest guy I knew, the Steve McQueen of my life."
     Ronnie's guitar prowess came quickly. "I found I could learn songs off the radio," he says, "and I could teach them to others. I could play them, and I could sing [decently]."
     Another young man in Sunset Acres showed him how to play honky-tonk standards and old blues numbers, his repertoire growing. And when he was about 13, the Andersons moved to Southern Hills and soon Ronnie was part of a band. "Jay and the Cavaliers" -- the Jay for leader Jerry Hartnoll -- practiced in living rooms and in garages.
     That evolved into "The Livin' End," a group that in the high school years played for school dances and formals in the city, and at area schools in Mansfield, Haughton, and fraternities at Louisiana Tech in Ruston.
     And, yes, they were paying gigs.

The Livin' End, late 1960s (that's Ron, back center)

     In May 1969, graduation time, The Livin' End played for an end-of-school graduation party for crosstown rival Byrd High students. Afterward, a cruise in a friend's new Chevrolet Nova ended with a collision with a telephone pole.
      For Ronnie, the memory was dimmed by a concussion, but he knew looking at his left foot turned all the way around, more surgery was imminent.
     That spoiled his plans to attend LSU-Baton Rouge. Instead, as he recovered, he enrolled as a freshman at LSU-Shreveport, then transferred to Northeast Louisiana at a sophomore, intending to major in government -- lobbying was a possibility -- and after earning a degree going to law school.
     His thinking was "I can't play the guitar forever ... but I found I really could."
     At Northeast, he wasn't a music major, but a stage band heard of his guitar talent and he was invited to audition, took his guitar and amp over and afterward was told, "These guys think you are what they want."
    All it required, as a non-music major, was for him to take six hours of music-related subjects a semester. Done, for three semesters -- "a real musical education," he said.
     In the middle of his junior year, he received an offer: Join a band going to Florida (and other places) to tour. His choice: He took the offer.
     "I left my vocational rehab scholarship, and I thought my Dad was going to kill me," he recalls. But he convinced Dad, who he said told him, "You better do it while you are young."
     "And I wanted to see if I could do it, make a living at it," Ronnie says. He wound up touring the country -- and beyond -- "with more bands than I could count."
     His favorite time: Touring, and playing guitar, with Claude King, the music legend best-known for his 1962 hit Wolverton Mountain, but whose early career and much of his life was Shreveport-based. (King died in Shreveport in March 2013 at age 90.)
      "We played in Canada forever," Ronnie recalls. "The people up there loved American bands, and we lived like kings."
      The connection for him was friendships with King's three sons, all musicians.
       Ronnie stayed on the road for most of five years -- "you built a reputation on the club circuit" -- but there was a side effect.
     The band culture, the constant travel, the pressures of performing nightly, the rowdiness ...
     "Naturally, Ronnie was exposed to the 'sex, drugs and rock 'n roll' of the 1970s," Leslie says. "He also felt that he was always responsible for the choices he made and had seen others destroy their lives with drugs.
    "Ten years ago, he stopped drinking. He says, 'I just outgrew it, I guess.' "
     In the mid-1970s, he headed for home, playing and singing solo around Shreveport (the River Company in Shreve Square), where he met a young woman from Bossier working there. 
     "I am a guy who said he was never going to get married," he admits, but it happened with Rebecca in 1976; he adopted her daughter.
     In 1979, he recorded an album, Easy Street, and spent time traveling and promoting it. "No manager, no bookkeeper," he says, and it "wore me out."
     Backing off his music career, he took a job at Arkla in Shreveport and, in a merger with Entex in Houston (as part of Reliant Energy), he and the family headed to Houston. His position: automated graphics. 
      But he had a studio at home; he kept playing and practicing his guitar and singing, and played weekend gigs. He began teaching guitar -- 20 to 25 students -- and took up playing the electric guitar, too. He also went to St. Thomas University and earned a degree in government and public relations.
       Into the late 2000s, his wife's health faltered, and so did the marriage. They wound up back in Shreveport-Bossier.
      Then came October 2009, the Woodlawn class reunion ... and the grown-up girl from the Amherst/Burke corner of Sunset Acres.   
---
     When he was at the Shriners Hospital, Ronnie thought "playing in a wheelchair was the most fun in the world." Now, with his legs worn out, it is an everyday presence -- although he can "furniture walk" -- and that's OK.
     "I can move around in it well," Ronnie says. "I still have great upper-body strength, so I can go where I need; we can go wherever we want to go." (Just as his parents had told him all those years ago.)  
     When he was 30 he began walking with a cane because his right leg was deteriorating. At 36, he fell and broke his hip, had hip replacement, and with a compound fracture in the left leg, he began using crutches ... again.
      Now, a problem is post-polio syndrome.
      "Your body wears out in weird ways," he says. "[With crutches] your walking on your hands practically. So I have lots of upper-body strength, but there are aches and pains in every joint, and there is nerve damage. Sharp pains, bone spurs, residual pains.
     "I am really fighting that in my hands, and that's hard because I want to keep playing [the guitar and his music]. I still try to play every day."
     So the music continues, and life is good in Elon, home of Elon University and some 40 miles from Chapel Hill, about halfway between Raleigh and Greensboro. Burlington is the closest town over.
     Leslie -- whose children now are 48 (Todd), 47 (Lisa) and 46 (Amy) -- and Ronnie live next door to one of the  daughters. 
      They share Leslie's grandchildren (ages 26 to 14) and there might be an Anderson grandchild yet in the near future (his adopted daughter Shelly is 47; daughter Brooke is 35; and Ron II is 33).  
       And they share their lives.
       "Not going to get married," says Leslie. "I've done that, and I'm not doing it again." Plus, there are financial reasons for not marrying.
      "But we wear bands that look like wedding rings," she adds, "and we are devoted to each other. Most of our friends up here think we're married because we do almost everything together.
      "I enjoy every day," Leslie says. "I love being retired."
     And she loves her companion. It's a mutual feeling, long-delayed. 

A matter of heart ... and an extended life

     Tom Harrington celebrated his 70th birthday with his family and friends on January 23, and he will tell you that was his first birthdate.
     His second birthdate -- August 31, 2018 -- is the story here.
     That day, in Nashville, Tennessee, he received his new heart, and his new life.
     Yes, a heart transplant for our old friend.
     It has been five-plus months of recovery and adjustment, of trials and scares, of joy and gratitude ... and of a second chance.

At Woodlawn in the mid-1960s

... and Tom Harrington in 2018

     The kid and young man we knew as Tommy back in the old neighborhood (Sunset Acres, Shreveport, La.) and at the schools some of us went through (Sunset Acres Elementary, Oak Terrace Junior High, Woodlawn High) is ready to hit the road again.
     He is preparing for his first road trip -- from his home in Gallatin, Tenn., 29 miles northeast of Nashville -- to Shreveport and then to Rockwall, Texas, on the east end of Dallas.
     He will be reunited with family and, well, he will put his heart into it.
     That's the way we have always known him, putting his heart into whatever he did -- football player (a good one -- from junior high to an NFL bit), discus thrower, student, son, brother, husband, father, grandfather, race-car driver for a quarter century, waste management executive. 
     (And, yikes, even a short time as a newspaper sports writer. How do you like that?)
     But the heart that carried him for so long gave out. He needed a new one.
     A blessing -- even at age 69, beyond the pale of normal transplants, he was physically sound enough to qualify. And so far ... so good.
     He can say, "It's easy, you just lie there until they wake you up." You can guess it really is not that easy. It has been quite an ordeal.
---
    It began with the flu.
    In 2007, flu-bugged Tommy "never could shake it, from January to June." And that flu virus, he said, attacked his pericadium.
     (An Internet description: "The pericardial sac is a double walled layer of tissue which surrounds the heart and the large blood vessels which supply it. It acts essentially like a protective envelope for the heart.")
     "It affects about 200,000 people a year," Tommy said, "and I was one of those lucky 200,000. I was too smart to take a flu shot."
     The result: "About two-thirds of my heart muscle was dead," he recalled, "and the doctor said, 'We'll see how long you can last before it [the heart] stops pumping." 
     The estimate: nine years, at the most.
     Tommy beat that by two years. But he could feel the weakness last year and his doctor -- cardiologist -- had a new estimate: "Three or four months left to go."
     Tommy's question: "What are my options." 
     Answer: heart transplant.
     Tommy: "Let's do it."
     Then, several items of good fortune:
     • Saint Thomas West Hospital in Nashville had just restarted its heart transplant program.
     • To qualify for a transplant -- and the cutoff age usually is 65 -- he was put through extensive testing ("there was no organ they did not check," he said), and he was told that his physically biological age was 58.
     • Put on a 24/7 intravenous feeding drip, faced with only two or three months remaining, he went into the hospital and was told that he "would come out with a new heart or in a box,  [casket]." After only five days, the donor heart became available.
     And so, "6:32 a.m., August 31," the operation began. 
     "I remember some dude shaving my chest," he recalled, "and I woke up six hours later [with a new heart]. Next day I was up walking."
     He does not know who the heart donor was, and says, "I will be working through an agency that connects the donor and the recipient if both parties agree to do this."
      He also points out that only 2,200 heart transplants are done annually in the U.S., although some 35,000 are needed. Not enough donor hearts are available.
     For Tommy, the great challenge, the chance of rejection and the long recovery are still in progress.
---
     He was a football player growing up -- a running back and placekicker in junior high, high school and in college football (at Louisiana College, then Delta State).
     At Oak Terrace, he was the (then) rare junior high placekicker -- likely the first the school had in what was its  fifth year (fall 1963).
     At Woodlawn -- winningest top-class (AAA) program in Louisiana in the 1960s -- he was a halfback and the placekicker on the school's first undefeated regular-season team, ranked No. 2 in the state. He was part of a backfield that was as good (and deep) as any the Knights have ever had.

     Ross "The Hoss" Oglesby was the fast, strong All-State fullback who signed with Louisiana Tech; Doug Bland, the team's only two-way starter (halfback, cornerback) played at LSU; explosive runner Tom "The Bomb" Hagin (hurt -- knee -- much of the season) signed with Arkansas; Harrington, good blocker and running/receiving threat, was the least heralded.
     The quarterback was a thin, talented, promising sophomore -- Joe Ferguson. The next two years he was a high school superstar and most of this blog's readers know about his brilliant football career.
     There was a place for Harrington in college football, too, at smaller Louisiana College, a Baptist school in Pineville. For Tommy, it was a church connection.
     His pastor, Rev. Charles Harvey of Sunset Acres Baptist Church -- Brother Harvey, as we all knew him because it was the largest church in our neighborhood -- who recommended Tommy to the LC coaches. 
     An even more important connection: Rev. Paul Green, a  move-in from Lufkin, Texas, in the mid-1960s as the new minister of education at Sunset Acres Baptist and Brother Harvey's associate preacher, had a daughter. Connie Green  in time would become Mrs. Thomas Harrington. They have been married 48 years as of January 30.

Delta State running back, 1970

    At LC, Tommy (at 6 feet, 200 pounds) played regularly as a freshman and sophomore ... and then the program folded. The last game, in 1968, was against Delta State; the next day, the Delta State coach called Harrington and invited him to transfer to the school in Cleveland, Miss.
     That's where he played his final two college seasons, again as a starter. But he was not done with football.
      He moved to Monroe and, in 1971-72, finished his education at then-Northeast Louisiana University, with a B.A. degree in business. And -- pay attention -- for a time he was a sportswriter with the Monroe Morning World. 
     He wised up, and decided there was not a lot of money in sportswriting. And football still beckoned.
      Bulked up to 225 pounds and switched to tight end, he found a spot with the semipro San Antonio Toros. He didn't click with the coaches, but they suggested he had the ability to give the NFL a try.

From a Shreveport Times sports column
by a young writer, Aug. 12, 1972

      So, as Tommy recalled, he and Connie drove to New Orleans, he walked into the Saints' offices and the director of player personnel knew of him, asked if he had workout gear with him and, on the practice field, he got a tryout and soon was part of an off-season six-day receivers camp. 
     That led to an official NFL contract for the 1972 season. But he hurt his back (slipped disc) in preseason, surgery was required, and he was placed on injured reserve, out for the season. So that fall he was a Saint (off the field), with pay.
      So long football. Hello, real life.
      A connection with Saints' vice-president Dick Gordon -- former astronaut, command module pilot of Apollo 12 which went to the moon (Gordon's two spacemates walked there) -- led to Gordon's recommendation to Tommy that he visit a personnel agency in Houston (where Gordon had lived). 
      That led to jobs in the solid waste and recycling industries, 26 years with BFI and a decade more with Waste Management, and moves to Sugarland, Texas (near Houston), Atlanta, Memphis, San Juan, P.R., Cincinnati, Nashville, Pittsburgh and finally the Nashville area again (first Franklin, then Gallatin). He wound up as a regional vice-president, overseeing a seven-state area.
     A nomadic journey, three houses owned at one time, banks owed money ... but a living, and a family.
---
     And all along, there was auto racing -- a hobby, and a parttime vocation. For 25 years, he raced cars, seriously.
     It began with his father, Wilson H. "Dub" Harrington, an automobile salesman who, says Tommy, "messed around with cars at the [Louisiana state] Fairgrounds [track]."
     But Mom (Hattie) was the even bigger race-car fan, for decades.
     "My mother loved racing," Tommy remembers. "She would let me skip school to listen to the Indy 500 on the radio before the TV broadcasts started."
     When NASCAR superstar Dale Earnhardt Sr. was killed on the final lap of the Daytona 500 in February 2001, Miss Hattie (who died in 2014) was quoted about her hero in a Shreveport Times story. 
     She also was featured a couple of months later in a Times story about Tommy's racing career, which included three years on NASCAR's "second" series -- then the Busch Series -- and mostly the American Speed Association (ASA) series. In all, he said he raced on 69 tracks all across the U.S. and Canada.
     That Times story included a 1984 photo of Tommy with Dale Senior, an occasional racing competitor. So

The 91 car took Tommy for a ride in one big-track race.

were A.J. Foyt, Darrell Waltrip, Jimmy Johnson and other top racing stars.
     It began seriously in Sugarland -- "I drove right past the track on my way to work," he said. And with moderate success came some accidents, fortunately no serious injuries ... and money spent.
     "Racing cars is expensive," Tommy offers. "It is a good way to spend your retirement."        
     The failing heart ended that second career. But he will tell you it was a fun endeavor.
---
     The aftermath of the heart transplant: complications, multiple hospitalizations, tests and more tests, strict monitoring ... and encouragement.
     On the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service web site, under the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute page on heart transplants: "... Recent survival rates are about 85 percent at one year after surgery, with survival rates decreasing by three or four percent each additional year after surgery because of serious complications."
     The regimen includes 31 pills and four shots a day -- "my wife does a great job keeping the meds straight," Tommy says -- and a biopsy every week "to check new heart tissue and make sure there is no rejection." 
     Because his "immune system is compromised," he explained, "I am wearing a surgical mask right now [as we spoke]."
     And the hospital trips, three in recent months.
     "My doctor said my old heart was one of the biggest diseased hearts he'd ever seen," Tommy said. "It took up so much room. The heart I got was from someone in his 40s, and the trouble was getting it to fit the area. So my chest cavity filled with fluid."
     He went into the hospital weighing 299 pounds. (When I suggested that was big enough to play in the NFL, he laughed and said, "Yeah, but I could not catch a pass.")
     The fluid was drained, and he went from 299 to 238 in four days.
     "None of my joints could bend," he said. "I could not walk; I was stiff as a board."
     On another trip, "the deadburn catheter would not come out; it got stuck in there," he said. "The cardiologist said, 'That could have killed you.' "
     So, "we are still working on the heart and the body synching with each other. There are still times when I have trouble getting my breath."
     Still, he is "up and around, and driving."
     He and Connie are taking the highway to Shreveport-Bossier to see older sister Harriett [Stinson] and older brother Wilson H. -- known to all as "Butch" -- both Woodlawn Class of '65 graduates.
     Although he dealt with cerebal palsy his whole life, Butch was always a mainstream student in school.
     He married, he drove his own customized van for years and years, he liked the casinos in Bossier City (where he lives) and they liked him. 
      He long ago showed us that heart runs deep in the Harrington family.

     "Butch decided he wanted to go to public school, so he did," Harriett said. "Just so happened we wound up in the same class. He's always been such a go-getter. ... He's always been my hero. I'd give anything to have his courage."

     True, too, for her younger brother.
     "This all happened so fast," Harriett says of Tommy's transplant, "and the progress he made afterward just blew us all away. An absolute miracle, but that's what prayer gives you."
     Tommy's friends who knew about the transplant gave him a boost.
     "I was blessed to get a lot of e-mails and messages from old friends I went to school with ... [for example] I told Connie, 'I went to school with this person at Sunset Acres Elementary,' " he said. "It really makes you feel good when you are in a hospital bed."
     After Shreveport, Tommy and Connie will visit with daughter Katie, grandson Teagen (age 12) and granddaughter Addie (2) in Rockwall. There are also daughter Jane, an attorney in Sacramento, and twins Ana (in San Francisco, with granddaughter Hypatia, 2, and Tommy II (in Nashville).
     "We love our grandchildren and take every opportunity available to spend with them," Tommy says. "Hoping for more."
    Indeed. The old football player and race-car driver, Tommy Harrington is still speeding along in life.