March 18, 2011

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FENNVILLE,
MICHIGAN — On Monday, I drove across Michigan to see a Class C regional
semi-final basketball game, pitting tiny Schoolcraft High School against
even tinier Fennville. 

Both
schools were undefeated – but that’s not why I was going. 
I was going to see the impact of a young man who would not be there.

Before
I drove back, I also learned how quickly even a record-breaking basketball
game can become utterly insignificant – and then, just a few days
later, how the next game can matter so much.    

Fennville
is about 200 miles from Detroit, but it might as well be 200 light years. 
When you approach Fennville, you pass a sign declaring, “Hometown
of Richard ‘Richie’ Jordan,’ Member of the 2001 National High
School Sports Hall of Fame.”

You
haven’t heard of Richie Jordan, who graduated almost fifty years ago
and stands only 5-7.  But everyone around here has, and down at
the Blue Goose Café, they still talk about all the records he set in
football, basketball and baseball.  But the last few years, they’ve
been talking about Wes Leonard.

When
Gary Leonard joined his brother’s company in Holland, near Lake Michigan,
the family could have moved to any number of nearby towns, but chose
little Fennville, which has just 1500-some people, a third of them high
school students.  Here, the whole town comes out for football and
basketball games – and musicals and graduations, too.

“I
left Fennville for another place,” English teacher Melissa Hoover
recalled in the teachers’ lounge, “and I kept saying, ‘In Fennville
they do this,’ and ‘In Fennville they do that.’  Finally,
one of the teachers said, ‘Well, maybe you should go back to Fennville.’ 
She was right.  So I did.”

The
Leonards loved Fennville, and Fennville loved them back.

Their
oldest son, Wes, often asked his teachers about their weekends, partly
to avoid work but also because he was simply curious about people —
all people.

Leonard
would invite the special-ed kids to join him for lunch, and soon the
other jocks were doing it, too.  When English teacher Susan McEntyre
read her students’ journals last semester, “Just about all the kids
wrote that Wes was their best friend.  They always wrote about
that.”

No
matter what you were like in high school, you’d want Wes Leonard to
be your friend.  And he would be.  

As
an athlete, Leonard was the best thing to come out of Fennville since
Richie Jordan himself – something people around here don’t say lightly. 
Leonard was the team’s star quarterback – he threw seven touchdowns
in one game this past fall — but it was on the basketball court where
the junior center really connected with the fans.  Sitting so close,
they could feel his energy and drive and passion – and see his trademark
grin.

But
even with Leonard leading the team, no one dared to imagine they’d
enter their last regular season game with a perfect 19-0 mark.

When
the Bridgman Bees jumped out to an eleven-point half-time lead, Leonard
took over, pushing the game to overtime.  Then, with about 30 seconds
left, he drove the lane for a pretty lay-up – and the win.  Fennville’s
fans rushed the court, and hoisted their hero onto their shoulders. 

It
was the kind of ending that sends announcers into paroxysms of hyperbole:
Incredible!  Unbelievable!  Unthinkable!

Then,
just seconds later, the truly unthinkable actually happened: Wes Leonard’s
enlarged heart gave out, and he collapsed, right on the court. 

His
father ran down to him, yelling, “Breathe, Wes, breathe!  Don’t
die on me!”  The paramedics loaded Leonard into an ambulance,
where they worked to get his heart pumping again.  Gary and Jocelyn
could only look through the back window, helpless.

Before
midnight, the town pastor emerged from the hospital to tell the crowd
Wes Leonard had died.

When
a small town hero fulfills his fans’ every dream, they put up signs
about him on the city limits.  What happens to that town when its
hero falls right in front of them?

The
next day the grade school kids clutched teddy bears, and cried in the
corner.  Wes’s classmates hugged and sobbed in the hallways. 
The older townspeople gathered at the Blue Goose, talking about him
softly, with tears in their eyes.

“If
I was twice as good as everyone else, I’d be arrogant,” said Mike
Peel, 57, a real estate agent in nearby Douglas.  “But he never
was.  Never even argued bad calls.  He was the kind of kid
who could hug his mom in front of a thousand people and not feel embarrassed
about it.”

Letters
and posters came from as far away as the Philippines and Cambodia. 
The NBA’s Golden State Warriors asked what they could do to help,
Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo cut practice short to drive
to Fennville to talk the family and the team, and Bo Kimble, whose Loyola
Marymount teammate Hank Gathers died on the court from the same condition
in 1990, drove all night from Philadelphia to be with them for four
days, arriving as a famous stranger and leaving as a close friend. 
The Blackhawks’ arch-rivals in Saugatuck hosted the luncheon after
the funeral.

The
coach had to ask his players if they wanted to play their first-round
play-off game that Monday.  They thought about it.  They discussed
it.  Then they decided, Yes.  This is what we do.

They
moved the games to Hope College, where the Blackhawks drew over 3,000
fans each night.  When the other teams playing that day took the
court, they were all wearing the same black t-shirts Fennville wore,
with Leonard’s name and number on the back, and “NEVER FORGOTTEN”
on the front.

They
struggled in their first game, caught fire in their second, then came
back in the district finals Friday night from nine points down to win
by three.  “If you weren’t there,” Mike Peel said, “you
wouldn’t believe it.”

This
Monday, when Fennville faced Schoolcraft, the Blackhawks finally ran
out of gas and luck in the second half and lost, 86-62.  But if
you didn’t see the scoreboard, you’d have no idea Fennville was
getting trounced.  The players kept working just as hard, and the
crowd kept cheering just as loud, to the very last second. 

Harder
days are ahead.  They know that. 

They
also know people like Wes Leonard come along in a place like Fennville
every fifty years or so, and they might not see another like him the
rest of their lives.  But the very qualities Wes Leonard brought
out in them – pride, unity, and joy – are the very traits they’ll
rely on to get them through.

The
people of Fennville will never be the same. 

But
they will be okay.

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