University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: That Giving Feeling
December 22, 2004 | Men's Basketball
Dec. 22, 2004
By Adam Lucas
As loyal Tar Heels are well aware, Carolina basketball has always been more about giving than receiving. It's thanking the passer. It's a standing ovation for seniors when they leave their last home game. It's Dean Smith standing on top of a ladder in the Superdome pointing to each and every member of the team before taking the final snippet of championship net.
So during this holiday season, we didn't want to know what certain Tar Heels had enjoyed getting. We wanted to know what they'd enjoyed giving. The question was slightly unexpected, so some players, like Charlie Everett, were taken aback. "The best gift I've ever given someone?" he asked. We'll come back to you, Charlie.
For almost everyone we asked, the gift was given to a family member. "My mother had always wanted a picture of her three kids together," David Noel said. "A couple years back my sisters and I went out and had a portrait of us taken. We got it blown up and gave it to her. When she opened it, she broke down crying. It was very touching."
Noel, incidentally, thinks he's topped even that gift with what he's got under the tree for his girlfriend this year. But we're sworn to secrecy until after Dec. 25.
Oh, back to Charlie: "That's tough." We'll get back to you.
Wes Miller's favorite gift-giving experience was for a birthday, not Christmas. "For my little brother's birthday this year I gave him my Carolina practice jersey from the 2003-04 season," he said. "I wore number 11 last year and he's number 11 in football, so it was a big deal to him to have a North Carolina jersey with number 11 and `Miller' on the back."
Many times, people cited gifts that didn't come with a receipt and couldn't be returned.
"That's easy," senior C.J. Hooker said. "I surprised my mom and dad by coming home (keep in mind that home for C.J. is Palmer, Alaska) for Christmas my sophomore year. It was about a 7 and a half hour trip and they had no idea I was coming. They were really shocked."
He won't get to pull the same surprise this year, as the Hooker family is gathering in Greenville rather than Palmer this holiday season.
Freshman Quentin Thomas, however, will be making a long trip today. He's on his way back to Oakland to see his mother for the first time since the Tar Heels were in Maui. He's been separated from his mother for the longest period of his life during his first semester at Carolina.
"This week I asked my mom what she wanted for Christmas," he said. "She said she just wanted to get to see me. It's going to be good to get away from basketball just a little bit and see some family."
Thomas also said he's eagerly anticipating some of his mother's home cooking. Any idea what she's got on the menu, Quentin?
"Anything I want," he said with a giant smile.
Charlie, any ideas for us yet?
"Man, where did this question come from?"
Administrative assistant Jerod Haase's favorite gift ever dates back to his playing days, when he was a key member of some of Roy Williams's best teams at Kansas.
"I was always paranoid about forgetting my shoes," Haase said. "So at the beginning of every season, my sister would draw a pair of shoes on a notecard and that was like my good charm. I kept all of them throughout the years. When I was done playing, I put them all together in a collage and gave them to her."
Haase and his wife, Mindy, will spend the holidays with his sister--but he doesn't expect to get any drawings of shoes this year.
Most fans know broadcaster Mick Mixon as the owner of the dry wit that contributes to making every game on the Tar Heel Sports Network one of the best college radio productions anywhere in the NCAA (if you don't believe it, try listening to other broadcast teams sometime--we're spoiled in Chapel Hill by Woody and Mick).
He immediately knew his favorite gift.
"When I was about 16, my father showed me this poem called `Wisdom' he had courted my mother with," Mixon said. "My dad almost never gave me any glimpse of his personal life, and it may be the only time he shared what I felt was a somewhat intimate detail about him courting my mother. The poem made an impression on me and it stuck with me.
"When I was about 26 or 27 I didn't know what to get him, so I decided to have the poem done in calligraphy. I went to a lady in Columbia, and she did this really beautiful poster with the poem. I went to a frame shop and had it framed. My dad was a big man, about 230 pounds and about 6-foot-3 ½. When he opened it on Christmas morning and saw I'd had `Wisdom' done for him...I'm getting chills even talking about it...He said, `Oh my.' And the way he said, `Oh my,' I could tell it took the wind right out of him. I said, `Can you read it, Dad?' Without even looking at it, he started the poem. He got about halfway through and broke down crying. That's the only time I ever saw my dad cry."
The poem is reprinted below.
Thanks for giving all of us, from Mick to David to Wes to Jerod to C.J. to everyone else involved with Carolina athletics, the opportunity to do what we love. Without the fans who love the Heels so much, we wouldn't have the best jobs in the world.
Enjoy your giving this week. And don't forget to thank the passer.
Wisdom
When I was young, so very young,
Say seventeen or so,
I said, "I'll sail the seven seas,
And every port I'll know!
I'll search for fame, I'll search for gold
And hoard and pile it high!"
When I was young, so very young,
At seventeen, said I.
Now I am old, so very old,
And this is what I say.
"Fame will dim and gold will fade,
And glory pass away.
And love, alone, of all I sought,
A hearthfire leaping bright,
A roof that holds the robin's song,
Comforts me tonight."
So all ye lads who sail the seas,
Put into port today!
And hear the words that wisdom speaks,
These are the words I say.
"Build ye a roof beneath the trees,
A new moon swinging high,
And kiss your love and latch the door,
And let the world go by.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. His book on Roy Williams's first season at Carolina, Going Home Again, is now available in bookstores. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly or learn more about the book, click here.
