There have been a number of revered coaches in sports/athletics, both for formal and informal educational contexts, and the same in any industry. Of the best of the best, John Wooden would certainly be a leading candidate. He was great at the helm of basketball at UCLA because he fused the concept and application of education to life and physical skill in the area of choice. When asked how he could be so successful in a highly competitive field, he had a number of perceptions (truth maxims) and guidelines (truth applications) he would follow. In analyzing his ideas and procedures he taught a marriage of thought and action to purpose. One of his double maxims was: It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make the big things happen. Wooden was teaching what makes a person succeed in anything worth doing, perhaps also to imply the route to failure by either the disregard of the maxim, or misuse in wrong purpose. We might have added the implication: Little things can lead to success, or they can lead to failure. If true, then little things become big things for good or ill. The secret is to have enough good sense to engage the right little things, espouse and apply them. His boys beat a regular path to his door for decades after they left college, often to let him know what his teaching for life, as well as coaching for athletics, meant to them. His players loved him. He died, a fulfilled man, on the doorstep of 100 years. He might have robbed individual persons of his greatness in some other calling. Under God we can be more than our callings.
I am writing this after returning to my home office from a memorial service (March 21, 2012) for a Christian man, 80 years of age, who died from a heart attack several days ago. It was release, as he was partly limited by illness that held him to a wheelchair, from which he would often escape. Fifty five years ago I joined Eldon and Jan together in marriage. They were as attractive a couple as one might imagine. Bride and groom were backed by devoted Christian parents. I knew them well. The parents had made their way through the usual personal life brambles including a difficult world economic depression, a horrible World War, and were devoted to God and their families for the benefit of their children and the future of life as God, in Christ, would give life. The context of these related families, backward and forward in time, became beautiful, touched by seasons of grief. Business flourished, children were born – and grandchildren. The parents died, one from Alzheimers. Jan, that beautiful bride died after nearly forty years with Eldon, and I remember her announcement to her aging father: Daddy, they have told me, and I know, that I am dying. Ed, her father and my dear friend, was already in grief over the slide of his wife into Alzheimers. In grief and devotion he sat in the church at the funeral, and clasped my hand, carried by the deep belief that this is part of life too. Eldon later remarried, another Jan, who had suffered in the loss of her husband, in the same magnificent faith and love context that had visited the first couple described above. My heart goes to her in this second farewell – until the great gettin’ up morning. The presence of the many family members, blood and step relatives, friends, community noted the contribution. The experiences were little in the world, but great in the context of family and community that included God. I sit here writing while dancing in my head and heart are the persons about whom I have just written, including more than space permits for inclusion. The scenario is one of success as God counts success.
There is more, driving me to thoughts of little things. The pastor today, a friend of mine and leading the memorial for my wife years ago, follows an interesting pattern in preparing memorial services. He asks for the personal Bible of the deceased, to find any marks in them or bits of poetry, or whatever item seemed to hold meaning for this person’s spiritual life. He then makes the service memorable by use of what he finds. I rather believe he may not have known I was going to be present, but he followed through with his presentation that included the outline of a speech Eldon gave on integrity. He lived by this integrity, and recommended it to others. The pastor noted that he gave credit to his pastor for the life changing sermon on which he based his own speech. I was that minister doing a little thing that Eldon said changed his life. I didn’t know about it until today. It now hangs on the wall of my memory. The point is that what is, by mortal standards a little thing, can be life-changing. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020