Identity Crisis

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and I feel like I am losing my identity, or at least changing it.

Since 1981 I have been the Sports Information Director (SID as we are commonly referred to) at Rider University, an institution with a Division I Athletics Department in New Jersey.

Not as large as a Penn State or Nebraska (although we do compete with them and other institutions of their size in some of our sports), we have 20 varsity teams, 10 for men and 10 for women, so we have a sizeable staff.  In the athletics department only the wrestling coach has been here longer than I have. And he’s been here long enough to rank first in Division I in career wins among active coaches.

All of my friends know me as the Rider SID, probably because almost half of my wardrobe has a Rider logo on it.

When you work at a small university as long as I have you get to know a lot of people. Even if you never formally meet them you see them on campus enough to where you say hi to them and make small talk. And if any of them go to any of our athletic contests they see me there.

When we have alumni events I always try to attend so when the former athletes come back they see a face they remember. Some of them have even used that expression to me, that I am the face of Rider, at least to them.

The last year or so, when I would go home every day at lunch time to take care of my wife, I started doing some math and figured that I have made that drive from home to work over 10,000 times.

Well, I am afraid that is all coming to an end.

This week I gave my two weeks’ notice.

Being the caregiver for my wife Terry, who is now in the middle stages of Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease, has become my new full-time job. I can no longer do it on a part-time basis. I can no longer do my job at Rider on a part-time basis.  One of them had to give, and it sure wasn’t going to be my wife.

Leading up to my resignation/retirement I was scared. Scared that I could not afford it. And for good reason. I can’t.  But what I really can’t afford is not being with Terry. These days she needs help with just about everything. Someone has to be with her.

Our son gave up a great career and job in DC to come home and live with us, to help in the caregiving. And I could not have made it through September without him.   But he is working again, and even though he is still living with us and helping us a great deal with everything, there are times when he and I are both at work, and Terry is alone.

And Terry no longer handles being alone very well. I don’t either.

Despite the long hours, despite all of the personal things I have missed over the years because of my job, Rider has been good to me. Very good to me. It allowed me to put my three kids through private schools and college. It allowed me to buy a house almost 30 years ago. It allowed me to put food on my table and beer in my fridge. And it allowed me to write. That is the part of my job that I will miss the most, writing the game stories after the contests and putting them on our web page.

Although sometimes that got me in trouble. There have been a few times when I would get a call at night telling me to take down the story I wrote.

About 10 years ago football player Michael Vik went to jail for his role in a dog-fighting ring along with several cruelty to animals charges.  About that time we played the UMBC Retrievers in men’s basketball and we defeated them by almost 40 points. So my lead to the story was “The last time a Retriever was beaten this bad it was owned by Michael Vik.”

That lasted on the web page for about an hour.

But on the other hand there have been some stories that I was really proud of. We played a basketball game during a raging blizzard one time and we won by making 18 of 20 foul shots. So the lead to my story was;

Oh, the weather outside was frightful,

but the foul shooting was so delightful,

and since Rider led with no time to go,

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

In two weeks I will no longer be writing these stories. I will no longer be keeping track of the team rosters, schedules, statistics. I will no longer be taking the team pictures and head shots of the athletes and posting them on the web. I will no longer be hiring workers to announce the games, work the scoreboard, keep the scorebook and stats. I will no longer be asking the TV stations and newspaper reporters to cover our events.

I will no longer be doing the things I have done for the last 38 years, 35 of them at Rider.

And I am going to miss that very much. I am going to miss my old identity.

But now I have a new identity. I am the caregiver. I am the guy who gave up everything to take care of his wife.

People say I am noble. No I’m not. I’m in love. I’m in love with my wife, and the only thing that matters now is her quality of life.

When I am not with her, her quality of life is not very good. My kids help a lot and she loves seeing them and being with them. But they have their own lives to live. This is now my life.

This is my new identity. I have been an SID for 38 years. I only wish I could be a caregiver for 38 years.

But for however long I can be a caregiver, it will be my full time job. My old job was 60 to 70 hours a week. My new one will be even more hours, it just won’t seem that way.

Leaving my job at Rider is one of the toughest decisions I have ever made, but in time I know it will be the best decision I ever made. It is going to be tough. It is going to be hard. But as Jimmy Dugan once said, “it is supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great!”

Until next time, hope you keep your identity without a crisis

Bud