BATON ROUGE – Some days as a writer, you sit in front of your keyboard and stare.
Because when a subject touches your soul so deep, thoughts and memories whirl in your head like a tornado of tears. Emotions are a dripping faucet.
So, here it goes.
If you are lucky in life, when you are silently hurting, maybe with no direction like a 12-year-old who lost his father at age 45 from a heart attack, someone like Joe Dean Jr. and his dad Joe Sr. identify your hidden pain.
They recognized me as a lost puppy dog, adopting me as an unofficial member of their family. They loved me, made me feel wanted. They motivated me. They gave me self-worth. They taught me there is no substitution for hard work.
Everything Joe Sr. was about – known to the world as LSU’s athletic director, as the original SEC basketball TV analyst and a Converse executive who signed the biggest names in sports to shoe contracts – spilled into his first-born namesake.
The infectious enthusiasm. The nothing-is-going-to-stop-me attitude. The can-do, failure-is-not-an-option-approach.
Some sons named for their father run from it, especially one with such a dominant personality. Joe Jr. leaned into it. He embraced being a Jr.
Joe Sr. died at age 83 in November 2013. I lost a piece of me that day.
Sunday afternoon, at the age of 71, Joe Jr. passed after an extended illness. The hole in my heart is almost impossible to fill.
I am the perfect example of the two Joes’ greatest assets. They knew how to motivate average people and have them achieve success in whatever they did in life beyond their wildest dreams.
My advantage was I had access to them that was available to almost nobody else.
The Deans lived two streets behind my 1606 College Drive address. I’d walk through my backyard, hop a fence, walk through somebody’s backyard, stroll down a short street and I was in their driveway.
Ther expansive ranch house was like a resort compared to my cramped two-bedroom house.
The bedroom for Joe Jr. and his younger brother Mark featured a spot on a wall where the boys would mark their growth spurts. Joe Jr. never got to 6 feet. It was one of the greatest days in Mark’s life when he became a 6-footer.
Their den was where Doris Dean, the ideal wife of Joe Sr., mom of Joe Jr. and the true patriarch of the house, served her homemade hamburgers. It usually came after we dripped our way into the house having concluded a game Joe Jr. created called pool baseball.
It was always Joe Jr. and me vs. his dad and Mark. When the games got excessively competitive (which usually happened) Mardi, the lone Dean daughter in a house full of testosterone, would walk out on the patio and watch the four drowning idiots screaming at each other.
One day after Joe Jr. and I put together a 21-run inning, Joe Sr. grabbed me and held me under water until he could tag me for the last out to kill the rally.
When we weren’t playing pool baseball, Joe Jr. would devise track meets in his backyard. Or physical one-on-one basketball games in the driveway in which fouls were never called. A punch in the stomach from Joe Jr. while you took a shot was simply a lesson in toughness.
If you hung with the Deans, you learned how to compete, to persevere.
That family in the house on Ormandy Drive just yards away from Webb Park golf course saved my life.
The magic of the Deans eventually spread throughout the South to thousands of kids. Their pulpit was and still is the summer basketball camp that Joe Sr. and his friend Brad Brian started 60 years ago in summer of 1966.
It was originally named Lakeside Oaks at an old fishing camp in Baton Rouge. Then, it transitioned to Dixie Basketball Camp when it moved in 1974 to Southwest Mississippi Jr. College in Summit.
Eventually, Joe Jr. became director of the camp when Joe Sr. (nicknamed “The General”) decided to retire.
Like Joe Sr., Joe Jr. juggled many careers after playing basketball and graduating first from Baton Rouge High (also my alma mater) and Mississippi State.
He earned a 1978 national championship ring as a Kentucky assistant head coach. Later that year on a recruiting trip, he and his wife Ellen survived a plane crash that killed the pilot.
A quick aside about Ellen. She, like Doris Dean, is an absolute rock, especially during the last few years of her husband’s illness. The same can be said for their children, son Scott (who now directs the family basketball camp still in Mississippi) and daughter Leslie.
It is no surprise that eventually Joe Jr. followed his dad’s career footsteps
First, he became head coach at Birmingham-Southern (a 137-45 record over six seasons) and then at Central Florida (37-73 in four seasons) before returning to Birmingham.
It’s where he was Birmingham Southern’s athletic director for 17 years while also serving as an SEC TV basketball analyst for 19 years.
Yes, he sounded just like Joe Sr. with the passion and his liberal use of his dad’s favorite catch phrases such as “Stufferino” and “String Music” (which happens to be the latest re-name of the family summer basketball camp).
Joe Jr. disappeared from the public eye almost 10 years ago. Joe Sr. was his idol. The day Joe Sr. died was a devastating blow. I believe Joe Jr. never recovered from it. They were best friends who talked every day.
Fifteen years ago, Joe Jr. called me and asked to finish a book he started writing on the history of the Dixie Basketball Camp. Since I was there at the beginning when it was Lakeside Oaks, it was a labor of love.
I’d already begun working on a book about Joe Sr. that we didn’t finish. I combined part of it with the Dixie book and wrote chapters on the camp’s neophyte years.
“How did you remember all of that in such detail?” Joe Jr. asked me after reading my Lakeside Oaks memories.
It was easy to recall the greatest days of your childhood, sweating on hot July summer days playing outside on sizzling courts guarded by an ornery German Shepherd appropriately named Hitler.
There were no college recruiters present. It was about learning basketball fundamentals, about competition, about teamwork.
It was laughing every day with the animated speeches of Joe Sr. dominating the room.
It was swimming in the lake after the morning session, then playing cards in the bunkhouse in the afternoon with no air conditioning.
And it was dreaming for the future as you closed your eyes for a solid night’s sleep before Joe Sr. would whistle Reveille at 7 a.m. and loudly give us the breakfast menu cooked by somebody he called Momma Leone.
“Fellas,” he’d say, “Momma Leone has done it again. We’ve got eggs cooked to a golden turn. We’ve got bacon so crisp you can hear it snap two miles away. We’ve got milk straight from the cow’s teats. We’ve got fresh orange juice I squeezed myself. Better hurry fellas. Mussolini would give a million dollars to be here today.”
When I read the entire published book on the camp, I realized how many lives the Deans impacted. The amount of quality coaches who have worked in the camp is astounding.
The purpose and intent have never changed. Generations of campers learn and enjoy the same things (except in an air-conditioned gym and dorm rooms) I first experienced when I was 10 years old.
The impact of the camp has been on display on social media since news broke about the death of Joe Jr. The testimonies and condolences have come from all walks and demographics of life.
Many of those people will be at his Celebration of Life service next Monday morning in Birmingham. Like when Joe Sr. died, there will be a mix of sorrow, laughs and gratitude.
At the funeral of Joe Sr., Joe Jr. and I were the last ones to walk away from the burial site. It was a service attended by some of the most notable names in college basketball, including several Final Four coaches and legends of the game.
“Do you know what your dad would have said about today?” I asked Joe Jr.
“What?” Joe Jr. said.
“He would have said `Joe, ALL the GREAT ones showed up today,” I said, drawing a knowing chuckle from Joe Jr.
Next Monday, after the crowd dissipates, I’ll make sure to talk to my friend one last time.
These words, unlike the ones in this column, will come easy.
“Joe. . .all the GRATEFUL ones showed up today.”
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com