To the Editor:
It wasn’t the first dollar I ever earned but it was close to it. For 35 years I hoarded it away in a scrapbook with never a thought of it being spent, at least until this week.
It was the early 1970s. Watergate was shaking our government and the death toll from the Vietnam War was shocking us every night on TV. On the local front, our high school had closed and the older students were bussed out of town.
There wasn’t a lot to cheer about. We were just a bunch of kids stuck somewhere between playing kickball and battling puberty. As fate would have it, we found ourselves poised to play the big championship basketball game against our arch rivals.
On my way into the gym that afternoon, a father of one of my teammates called me over to the bleachers. “Ready for the big game?”
“I guess so” I shrugged my shoulders.
His eyes looked disapproving. He paused for a moment in thought and in a non-caring fashion said. “Well, just don’t feel too bad when you guys lose, because you don’t have a chance.” “What?” I could feel my dander start to rise as his doubting words rattled my soul. “Oh yeah, you wanna bet?” I’ll show you Clayton Feltis, I thought to myself.
We agreed on the sum of a dollar and after a quick handshake I disappeared into the locker-room with “fire in my belly”. Hence one of my first lessons in psychology.
As you can probably guess, we won that game and I still have that dollar. Well, I should say “had.” You see, I gave it away last night at this year’s Bristol’s athletic banquet. Both the girls and boys teams from that championship season came together to honor three men who made it possible: Dan Bigley, Rick Simonds and Keith Gould.
A collection was taken to buy a new scoreboard for the Bristol gym in honor of Coach Gould.
It was not easy to give up that dollar bill that had a place of honor in my childhood. But I knew it was meant to be. The voices of the past came alive once again as I remember lessons I had learned. Dan Bigley: “no matter what your size, you can always stand tall.”
Coach Simonds: “work hard but most of all have fun doing it,” and Coach Gould: “through confidence and determination you can meet life’s challenges”. They may have never spoken those exact words, but they taught me through their lives.
It wasn’t just lessons from the past that touched my heart last night. It was the warmth of old teammates who taught me “you can feel like a kid again.” It was in the respectful cheers of the present day student athletes of Bristol school who patiently and graciously watched as a bunch of old fogies strived to relive their youth
It was in my mother who reminded me that during a dismal time in our history we gave our town something to cheer about. Finally in the memory of Clayton Feltis, who I dearly miss, that dollar bill takes it place along side others to not only honor the past but provide for the future of Bristol’s young athletes.
Russ Lane, Pemaquid
