In 1979, I was a bus driver within the Campus Bus Service at Kent State, a professional bus service almost entirely run by the students. The student management very democratically offered extra hours of upcoming weekend gigs and the like over the bus radios, and the first one to pick up and call in got the gig. One day at the very beginning of the school year the announcement came over the system of a Friday night job driving a high school football team to their games. Sounded like fun and easy money, and I jumped on it. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
I learned shortly thereafter I'd be driving Akron Central-Hower to their games. I go and pick up the team across the street from the University of Akron to take them to their first game all the way over at Brunswick. Pretty heady assignment for a rookie bus driver. Lots of responsibility. I also learn they've got a rookie head coach. I'm thinking we'll get along just fine, we're virtually made for each other, at least circumstantially. Couple of young guys feeling out their new jobs.
The team loads on the Kent State bus in uniform. No snazzy tour bus this. No under carriage for equipment. And no equipment managers loading bags of uniforms and post-game meals under the bus. No frills. Kids in uniform. Then their young coach boards, stands up, looks the length of their one bus carrying the entire team, and everything goes quiet. He looks at me, wonders what he's gotten himself into, shakes my hand, and says "Tim. Let's go."
We drive to Brunswick, somehow I don't get lost, and the gladiators from Central-Hower stoically march off the bus with their rookie coach and his few assistants. It's all business. He tells me to stay with the bus, keep it running. I'm excited because I'm getting paid for all this. My whole life, I'd later learn, would be a study in getting paid for watching high school games. Drive, pre-game, 1st half, half-time, 2nd half, drive home. Get paid. Really? I'm going to get paid for this? Ten weeks. And Central doesn't have its own field. They need me. How lucky is this? And, I get paid to watch a football game, I say to myself, as I position the bus right outside the gate where I can see the whole field AND the scoreboard. Could life be any cushier?
Game begins and it's going great -- for Brunswick. Central can't do anything right. Brunswick up and down the field. Halftime scoreboard, 28-0. Of course, I reason, what's the problem? That Tim guy, he'll take them in the locker room and make adjustments. They'll get better. He's young. They're young. They'll learn. He'll learn. And I'll get paid. Time is on their side. Time is on all our sides.
That last point, about time and there being no hurry and all, was somehow lost on the rookie coach. He doesn't take his team into the locker room. Alana Gaither, here's where you say "I can totally see this happening." That rookie head case -- I mean coach -- marched his kids right out of the stadium, right onto the bus. My bus. That I'm on. That he told me to keep running. For which I'm going to get paid all this easy money. To this day, I'm wondering what the heck the Brunswick fans were thinking? "Is he quitting?" "Are they leaving at halftime?" "What in the he_ _ is he doing?" "Where in the he _ _ does he think he's going?"
I'm not sure Tim knew. But I knew one thing for sure. I knew that little white guy was going to get both of us killed. He lit into his team with such fire and menace that either they were going to kill the two white guys on the bus, or they were going to kill Brunswick, or they were going to die trying. This business was final. It was all or nothing. And I knew that this young, inexperienced coach knew why he told me to stay with the bus, keep it running, keep it open. He knew he might need to say things that no one outside of his team needed to hear. Alana Gaither, you feel me?
Brunswick won that game, 28-0. Central couldn't muster any offense to speak of. Still made too many mistakes. But Brunswick found out what Tim Flossie was all about. What Babe Flossie's kid was all about. What the Central Eagles were all about. And as you read this, you realize that apparently no one got killed on that bus.
But something did die on that bus. Week after week, bus ride after bus ride, battle after battle. disbelief died on that bus. Inner city kids that not enough people had believed in learned their coach believed in them. That he loved them enough to always tell them the truth, in some of the most colorful language. He fought with them and for them, determined to instill in them a belief of who they could become, and of what they were capable. That they had a place in this world. That they could be winners. I had a front row seat in the Seminar Of Tough Love.
By the end of that year, Central began to win games. Within a few years they were very good, city champs. And then the Buchtel job came open.
A decade passes, and each Monday evening Coach Tim Flossie brings his star running back, Ricky Powers, onto my nightly radio show on AM 640/WHLO, followed by Akron Zips Coach Gerry Faust, and then a call-in from Libery University Coach Sam Rutigliano (until he'd abruptly say "Gotta go, Monday Night Football's kicking off and hang up). The Buchtel Griffins are defending state champs. They will soon repeat. They were the team to beat. My guess is they had their own team busses by then, and that they needed more than one. I don't know who drove those busses, but I'm guessing they never got to listen to a halftime speech. You have to be in a locker room for that to happen.
Tim and I became friends of necessity that first year as rookies. I found myself caught up in his mission. After that first game, I would have done it for free. Over the years we shared countless memories, none that brought us more laughs than my first halftime show. And so it was with great sadness that I received the news from my wife this week that Tim Flossie had passed. Like the kids he coached, we needed Tim Flossie. We need all the Tim Flossies. We need all the guys and gals who tell you the truth, whether you just missed a block or an extra point, or brought the bus five minutes late, or could become Ricky Powers or John Woolridge with just a little more tough love.
Thank you, Tim Flossie, for living the lessons you taught, that you were taught. I will miss you my friend. God's peace to your family.
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