David

My intention for today’s blog was to recapitulate the Southern Mississippi game of this past Saturday. However, there are two reasons that I will not be doing that…at least at this time.

I was sitting in my favorite chair (you know, the one with the invisible sign on it that says “Dad’s Favorite Chair…Beware….trespassers will be shot!! Perhaps you have one as well) watching the Raycom Halftime Report, when I heard my youngest daughter galloping down the stairs. Clop clop….clop clop…..clop clop…..Then, I heard a crash and a blood-curdling scream. Scrambling out of my chair, I run out of the family room and down the hall to find my daughter screaming, “I think I broke my foot….I fell and heard it crack!!!) I scooped her up, got her into my Ford Expedition, and took off for the emergency room. So much for the second half of the Auburn game.

Fortunately for her, the foot was NOT broken, but only sprained, albeit pretty severely. But this is reason #1 that I will not give a recap and opine on the game.

Getting the weekend off to a really great start with our youngest daughter laid up in bed with a sprained ankle, the weekend ended even worse.

My wife is the Children’s Ministry Director for our church. She does an outstanding job with this, and has a Sunday evening program during the school year for kindergarten through 5th graders. Last night, there were 50 of the little ones participating. I ran the sound and video board for their program. After it was over, I went to the store while my wife went home. When I arrived home, she said “I have to tell you something.”

She told me that one of my best friends in life, David Stiles, had died of a massive heart attack. I was shocked, stunned, couldn’t have been hit by a brick any harder than this news hit me.

David and I lived across the hall from each other at Young Harris College. His future wife and my future wife both went to North Georgia College. Together, he and I trekked over the mountains MANY times to visit the girls. He was in our wedding. I was with him when two men from his church came up to us to tell him that his father had died of a massive heart attack. I drove him home that night because he didn’t think he could drive.

David was always concerned about his own health, so he became a marathon runner, ate lots of raw veggies, never at red meat, and took medicine to control his cholesterol, which always seemed to want to be high.

David was an educator from the day I met him. He wanted to teach school and be a principal one day. And he did. He taught school in Gwinnet County in Georgia, became a principal there, and was hired away to move to Birmingham, where he became the principal of Mountainbrook High School. David moved on up into the Superintendent’s office, and most recently was named the Superintendent of the brand new school system close to Mobile….Saraland.

David and I had a meeting on March 6 of this past year. He had called me to ask if we could meet somewhere because he needed to talk to me. I had a reason to go to Birmingham, so we met that day. He talked to me about Saraland. He said he didn’t know if it was going to happen or not, and didn’t know whether to take it if it were offered. He wanted my opinion. I encouraged him to go for it.

We had communicated quite a bit since March. And I can’t believe he is gone.

But he isn’t gone. He was a very strong Christian man, and didn’t mind people knowing he was a person of faith. His legacy is scattered all across the states of Georgia and Alabama in the students he taught, mentored and guided. And though I will miss him dearly…..in fact, I’m in kind of a funk about this whole thing…..he will not be forgotten.

Today, though….it just feels like I lost my brother. And in a lot of ways, I did. He was only 49 years old......1 year older than his father when he died.

WJLaneSr