You Never Know Who You Might Run Into

This past Tuesday night we headed to Buies Creek to watch Campbell and South Carolina State play Volleyball which Campbell won. While the introductions were going on I noticed a man enter from a side door and walk up to the first row of seats where one of Campbell's players dad Dwight Tart was sitting. Dwight is a former coach at Triton and this man walks up to Dwight and shakes hands and as I sit on the fourth row I'm staring at this man because he looks awful familiar. This man sits with Dwight an I am thinking about who this guys is more than I am focused on the team introductions. Halfway through the first game I notice this lady comes through the same door that the gentleman had. As soon as I saw her I said to my wife Pat that's Jane Burke. Jane is the former principal of Hertford County High school and Superintendant of both Hertford County and Roanoke Rapids City schools. She goes and sits right down beside that gentleman who I am trying to figure out who he is. I look at Pat and say I know that's Jane Burke but I'm trying to figure why she would be at a Campbell Volleyball game. The more I thought then it struck me. She was sitting beside her Husband Bob who was the basketball coach at Chowan during their Junior College Heyday. Bob who now is totally gray not that pitch black hair of twenty years ago. From three rows behind them I say out loud Jane Burke and she turned around an saw both Pat an myself. Bob turns to see who is talking with his wife and lord it is old home week for the rest of the volleyball game. Don't you just hate to go to a ball game and people near you never watch the game because they are talking about something else the whole game. I know Dwight was annoyed as he is trying to watch his daughter play and by now I have hugged Jane and now sitting beside Bob who is beside Dwight and Bob has a million stories to tell Dwight about me being his radio play by play man at Chowan. Jane and Pat have moved down on the front row and they are having their own old home week while Bob and I talk about the past. All I know about the game is Campbell won. I didn't see any of it. Bob Burke is the winningest basketball coach in Chowan History. He left Chowan to be an assistant coach at Hawaii. They then moved to Portland to scout for the Portland Trail Blazers and while a scout there one of his former players Nate McMillan of Chowan College and N C State becomes the head coach and hires Bob as an assistant. After Portland it is retirement to Wilson where Jane's mother and sister live. Coming home from the game all Pat and I talked the whole way about how odd it was that we would run into people at Campbell that we have never run into living 20 miles a part. You bet we made plans to go to dinner and and resume friendships long lost. By the way Both Jane and Bob both graduated from Campbell. They went to Campbell as they have a granddaughter who is a junior in high school that plays volleyball and they came to scout whether to try to convince her to come to Campbell. Bob told Dwight the story last night of the first time he met the late great John Wooten. Wooten way back in the fifties and sixties had a basketball camp at Campbell in Carter gym and Bob as a player was helping with the camp. Bob was told when to be there and he would be helping Johnny Wooten. Bob is from Queens New York and back in the sixies for a New Yorker the NIT was a bigger basketball tournament than the NCAA. Bob has no idea who Wooten is so on the first day of the camp here is this Campbell basketball player walking in the gym and he walks up to this man mopping the floor and say do you know where Johnnie Wooten is. The man looks at Burke and says thats me. I can't tell you in mixed company what Bob said but he says to Dwight that the man who won 10 national Championships was in Buies Creek mopping the floor. If I have one disappointment in my life is the fact that over the years and this includes high school that there are so many people important to you and yet we lose contact with them and we only have the memories. Like the Bible says you have 99 sheep and lose one. When the sheep returns you rejoice. Today the Doughtie household is rejoicing with the return of old friends.