Saturday while Louisiana Tech’s baseball team was battling through the loser’s bracket of the Conference USA Tournament, it was unusually tough to find parking around the ballpark.
At the nearby Thomas Assembly Center, Tech was hosting its two spring commencement ceremonies. While there was plenty of nailbiting during two games at J.C. Love Field at Pat Patterson Park, the bigger crowds attending the 9:30 and 2:30 graduations got a Bright outlook – from one of the more remarkable folks in the 318 area code, Shreveporter Frank Bright.
Of course, there was abundant joy with minimal stress (will the hair pins hold?) at commencement. The 1,076 graduates marked major milestones while collecting their well-earned diplomas. It was a long journey for each of them, and that made Bright a great pick to speak. He is an expert about long journeys.
He’s a few weeks removed from running in his 21st Boston Marathon. Ten days before commencement, he hiked from the rim of the Grand Canyon to the floor, and back up again, in one day.
There was no clock running at the canyon, but there certainly is at the world’s greatest distance race. Bright finished in 4 hours, 44 minutes.
“Not a bad time for anybody running a marathon,” Tech president Dr. Jim Henderson told the crowds Saturday, “let alone if you’re 81 years old.”
Cue the gasps and muted stunned chuckles. The slender, still dark-haired speaker is a senior citizen in anybody’s book.
Bright’s Boston time April 15 was fourth in the race’s 80-and-over age group, and ranked him eighth in the world this year. IN THE WORLD.
He was one of nine local runners taking on Heartbreak Hill, a steep half-mile-long climb in Mile 20 of the mostly downhill 26.2-mile course. There were 54 contestants from Louisiana. The next oldest from around here was 46; a 71-year-old from Lafayette was closest in age to Bright.
His time Saturday – the length of a commencement speech is always a concern for those in caps and gowns — was brisk and efficient, a little under 12 minutes, including pauses for applause and for effect.
Henderson’s late father, Clem Henderson, was the basketball coach at Fair Park High School when Bright was a skinny manager and statistician for the football, basketball and baseball teams, seemingly destined to major in journalism and work at The Tech Talk newspaper in college. Henderson and other Indians’ coaches liked to water ski, and invited their loyal student helper along. Bright impressed with his durability, something they noticed when he ran with their teams in conditioning drills.
Invited as a senior, he was willing to try the mile run on the track team. Two months later, he was a state champion and Bulldogs’ coach Jim Mize gave him a full track and cross country scholarship.
When Bright attended re-dedication of Tech’s renovated Jim Mize Track Complex a few weeks ago, the younger Henderson invited him to send out the graduates with what the president called Saturday “a message of endurance, of resilience, of success.”
The “endurance” aspect is obvious. “Resilience” refers to Bright’s career change, four years after he graduated in 1965 in chemical engineering from Tech, and had an upper-level job in that field in the West Virginia hometown of his new wife Suzzanne. But he didn’t see engineering as his life’s work, and changed course, enrolling at LSU Law School.
After graduating in 1974, he came home to Shreveport, settled into a small partnership and practiced law until retiring at 64 in 2007. By then, he long since had resumed running distances, getting back into it in 1976, becoming part of a still-active noon runners’ group at the Downtown YMCA.
“Success” references his law career, the Brights’ family life, and his continuing joyful pursuit of distance running. It continues, despite a heart attack in Boston while he was running in 2021. He and Suzzanne commemorated his entrance into Boston’s 80-and-over club last year as both sons and their wives joined them in Beantown for the race.
“Not many people are eager to turn 80,” he told the graduates, “but I was, because I’d get to be the youngest in the 80-age group.”
Sunny side up, always. Even when devotedly cheering for his Oakland A’s. The Brights take in spring training every year.
His insight to Tech’s newest alumni was simple.
First, “follow your bliss.” Find what makes you happy and pursue it – changing career paths, for example. “Stay physically fit” was Bright’s second tip followed by something less conventional, “keep a journal” to track life’s twists and turns, how you handle them and evolve, along with marking daily mileposts – which allowed Bright to know that as of Friday, he’d logged 62,206 miles running since 1976.
Finally, understand “life isn’t fair” and be willing to adjust, and handle adversity, because it’s part of the deal.
Anyone who’s conquered Heartbreak Hill 21 times knows how true that is.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com