"Uncle Blair taught me how to dribble. How to pass. And how NOT to travel—if I was carrying a Spaulding.
It all started because Ben wanted to play, and because we were best friends and neighbors, Uncle Blair was more than casual in his hopes for us to love the game. (He hitchhiked from Idaho to Utah in 1953 with a $50 scholarship to try out for BYU’s basketball team, after all.) All the summer evenings on our SportCourt and the winter evenings crowded in his orange truck, heading to the Junior high to practice, seem innumerable to count. I wasn’t good at it—the game—but Ben was. And Ben was because Uncle Blair was.
In all the days that compose a life, there are special hours and minutes that rise above the rest, aren’t there? On such days, everything becomes clear, quickly, and the simplicity of a lived life settles in with a swooshing grace.
Ben knew the dream he was architecting when he threw a stone into a pond of help, asking for a contact who could put him in touch with somebody with BYU basketball. The hope? Allow Blair some minutes—would it be 5, 17, 32?—watching the BYU Men’s Basketball team hustle to the hoop. Ben didn’t get one call, he received several.
So, we wrapped up U. Blair in his cougar blue and filled a cup with ice chips and drove to the Marriot Center in Provo to give this bball-loving man a few minutes on the floor with these athletes.
As I type this, my throat seizes. I can’t forget it. I won’t forget it, either: towering men smiling at Blair in his chair, while their coach thanked him for being the type of fan that made their playing *possible*—today. Watching Ben watch Blair, and watching Blair smile stadium wide, are minutes I won’t forget.
Where would you take your parents if they could have just one more stolen hour of their lives, doing and being and watching something as part of them as their eyes or their skin? Ben knew.
I love this man. And I’m thankful to have been taught invisible volumes of how to live an honest, caring, work-hard life with one hand while dribbling a good game with the other."