How can you take a 57-day period and say it defines, who someone was at their core. It seems unfair on the surface. An impossible comparison, one ripe with inaccuracy. But for a friend, a mentor, a coach in so many aspects of life, the man affectionately known as “Hutch”, that 57-day stretch showed us directly the strength, character, guts and determination he lived with and instilled in the people he cared about, every day of his enigmatic, colorful and joyous life. Selfishly, I write this more for me. Expressing the emotion properly I’m afraid I won’t be able to do appropriately, so forgive the wordy obituary meant as a tribute.
I’ve known Bob Hutchings since I was
14 years old, a freshman at a high school where I knew no one. I had befriended
his son, Ryan, soon to be a groomsman at my wedding. We were on the basketball team
together. He, of local basketball legacy, me, a shaggy haired chubby kid from
Bridgeton, who’d never stepped foot on a parquet floor prior to November try outs.
In finding my way that year, I regularly found myself in conversation with him.
“Work your ass off and be who you are”, maybe the most valuable words I heard
from anyone, not just about basketball, but about life. It’s certainly cliché to
some of you. It’s cheesy Disney script to some, but to me it helped find
comfort in something so uncomfortable. When I was young, I wanted nothing more
than to fit in. I wanted to be accepted, to belong, & yes on some level, be
with the cool kids. Ryan helped me fit in on that team more than anyone else, &
those brief conversations with his father, whether it be a pep talk in a
hallway or barking like a dog at me from the top row as I walked to the
dressing room, he always seemed to know just what you needed to make you feel okay.
At my very foundation, I cannot explain how much that meant to me, both then
and now.
As years went on, our relationship
shifted. Ryan and I grew up together and he got to see it all, both the good
and not so good. But any time we’d get together we were going to laugh, and if
you paid close enough attention, you were going to learn something too. He always
had something he was trying to teach you. A lot of it on the surface came off
as lunacy, a circus act meant to entertain both us watching and the perpetual 2-year-old
that lie beneath the grey hair, camp t-shirt and swishy pants himself. He was
teacher but an artist. A pirate’s soul in a coach’s body. But there was truth
in his words, as there were in his actions. Others close to him I’m sure could
refute this, but I cannot remember a single time where he said he was going to
do something for me and didn’t come through (Other than paying for dinner at Hoops
Historians last year…). The people I’ve met, the places I’ve seen, because I knew
him, are things I will hold dear with me the rest of my days. An unnamed fraternity
that I am a part of, with friends I’ll have forever, I have because of him.
Our friendship felt very one-sided.
I have no idea what value he got from me or why he did what he did for me,
outside of my friendship with Ryan. He gave much and took little. He didn’t need
it; your friendship was enough. So as we bid adieu to our friend Bob, a.k.a Guru,
Mr.Bob, Doodlebob, Hondo (you know the rest), I will do so with one more cliché.
His years were not enough for us, but as the saying goes “It’s not the years in
your life that count, it’s the life in your years”, and man if that doesn't sum
him up I’m afraid I don’t have the words that will do. At least in some part, I
will try to make my life even half as fulfilled as his seemed to be. Rest in power
my old friend, & don’t worry, I’ll clean up the popcorn.
No comments:
Post a Comment