Real Family Men

(In Honor of Eddie Hill and Dave Fletcher)

It was close to forty years ago now. My father, two good friends and yours truly were all possessed by God only knows what to arise and leave Bristol at 4 a.m. one morning.

Eddie Hill, Richard Hagy, my father, and I then drove all the way to South Carolina to play golf. We spent the entire day there, playing 54 holes. We drove back that night and arrived home in Bristol just before midnight.

I can’t recall a single shot any of us hit that day. I do recall a lot of laughter and fun and friendship. There’s no doubt that day showed me as much about what is really important in life as about any day I remember having lived on this planet.

And a lot of it had to do with my friend, Eddie Hill.

Regretfully, Eddie just passed a couple of weeks ago, at age 76.

Eddie and I played a lot of golf together back in the ‘80s. Though both ex-athletes, we never played “serious” golf when we teed it up together. Yes, we played our best, but we played for fun. That’s the way Eddie did most anything. He was going to do his best, but he was going to find some fun in it, too. (Gosh, now that I think about it, the other three souls that Eddie played golf with that long ago South Carolina trip day - my father, myself, and my equally good lifetime friend, Richard Hagy - all had the same view of life; so no wonder we had so much fun together!)

Eddie had been drafted by the Cincinnati Reds right out of Bristol Tennessee High School in the mid ‘60s. He could flat hum a baseball.