Update on A. Stone
It's a terrible thing, to be permitted to enjoy your little personal mysteries for just a moment or two.
After wrestling with the post before last for so long, made difficult by the quirks of Blogger, after publishing it, on what I considered to be an off chance (and before I saw a comment by an Anonymous about that post), I did a Google and found that there was indeed a biography, though a very short one, of the football forerunner to Jim Brown and Ernie Davis at Syracuse, Avatus Stone, with whom I attended elementary school.
He didn't just vanish from Syracuse University one night never to be seen again, the impression given by that movie. Instead he went on to play football professionally in Canada for several years, during which one year he was voted the best player in the East. Following that he played a little for the Baltimore Colts in the NFL, and then he retired.
Also he had children, a daughter and a son, but I am still not happy that I saw that bio, because I read that, though he was born in the same powerfully fateful year as I was, in 1931, A. Stone has already been absent from this life for the last nine years, of cancer, in Fairfax, north of here but still in this same state of Virginia.
I could not possibly have enjoyed even a small fraction of certain rewards that he undoubtedly garnered as a football star, and that would explain some things. But still. . . .
It all reminds me of how stupendously blessed (and clever?)I am, to be still walking around and casting shadows in the sunlight, with all my faculties still reasonably intact though they are weakening slowly, and still with no weight or other problems of that kind, and still hot on the trail, in my own way that is unfathomable even to me, of that elusive Holy Grail whose existence we all first became vaguely aware of back in those carefree and heady days at Smothers Elementary, so long ago.
After wrestling with the post before last for so long, made difficult by the quirks of Blogger, after publishing it, on what I considered to be an off chance (and before I saw a comment by an Anonymous about that post), I did a Google and found that there was indeed a biography, though a very short one, of the football forerunner to Jim Brown and Ernie Davis at Syracuse, Avatus Stone, with whom I attended elementary school.
He didn't just vanish from Syracuse University one night never to be seen again, the impression given by that movie. Instead he went on to play football professionally in Canada for several years, during which one year he was voted the best player in the East. Following that he played a little for the Baltimore Colts in the NFL, and then he retired.
Also he had children, a daughter and a son, but I am still not happy that I saw that bio, because I read that, though he was born in the same powerfully fateful year as I was, in 1931, A. Stone has already been absent from this life for the last nine years, of cancer, in Fairfax, north of here but still in this same state of Virginia.
I could not possibly have enjoyed even a small fraction of certain rewards that he undoubtedly garnered as a football star, and that would explain some things. But still. . . .
It all reminds me of how stupendously blessed (and clever?)I am, to be still walking around and casting shadows in the sunlight, with all my faculties still reasonably intact though they are weakening slowly, and still with no weight or other problems of that kind, and still hot on the trail, in my own way that is unfathomable even to me, of that elusive Holy Grail whose existence we all first became vaguely aware of back in those carefree and heady days at Smothers Elementary, so long ago.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 12:51 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home