35 Years, 3 Months and 15 Minutes

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and I think it was Andy Warhol who back in the 60s said something about “Everyone is famous for 15 minutes.”  Now that I am in my 60s I recently had my 15 minutes.

They say things happen in threes, so any day now I am expecting Hell to freeze over and pigs to begin flying. The third thing already happened.

A few weekends ago I was inducted into the Rider University Athletics Hall of Fame, and was also given a Lifetime Achievement Award from CoSIDA (College Sports Information Directors of America) at the national convention in Orlando.

My local newspaper in Bucks County, PA and the local paper that covers Rider in Mercer County, NJ, both had very flattering stories about it.

Two tremendous honors. If only I could say that I deserved them.

My wife Terry and I usually spend our Friday evenings watching a “cross-over” musical concert on TV, with two or more bands from different genres playing songs together. Like Zac Brown, Beethoven and the Beatles.

Tonight, we are currently watching R&B/Jazz group Earth, Wind & Fire playing with Country Music headliners like Darius Rucker, Martina McBride, Dan + Shay and Lady Antebellum. Terry loves “Hootie”, “Lady A” and just about every country band and I had a shoulder-width afro in the 70s, so I can appreciate Earth, Wind & Fire’s “funky groove.”

A few minutes ago when they introduced Earth, Wind & Fire as Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Terry turned to me and said “You’re a hall of famer. You’re my hall of famer.”

That was nice.

After 35 years and three months of working as an administrator in a Division I Athletics program, I took an early retirement in the fall of 2016.  I had planned on working another four or five more years, but I received a higher calling.

I quit the job that I loved to become a fulltime caregiver for my wife Terry, who is in the middle stages of Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease and since last fall, I am afraid, needs 24-hour-a-day assistance.

I was on the very first Hall of Fame committee at Rider and everyone since then, except for the last one. And apparently, I can’t leave these committee people alone for one meeting without them violating the bylaws and selecting someone who was not even on the ballot. And I know I wasn’t on the ballot because I am the one who prepared the ballot for the committee before I quit my job.

Part of my job was researching candidates for the Hall of Fame, making a list of their greatest accomplishments/achievements and putting them on the ballot, seven years after they graduate. That’s probably the main reason why I wasn’t on the ballot. A major lack of great accomplishments/achievements.

I mean I was pretty good in high school, but who wasn’t? In college, that was another story. One time my sophomore year I was looking at the line up on the dugout wall before the game and saw that I was batting ninth. Again.

In high school, I always batted fourth. In college, the first few times I batted ninth I was just happy to be in the lineup but after a while I was beginning to lose my confidence. So I went up to the head coach and said “Skip, what is the main reason why I’m batting ninth?” And the head coach said, “Because, Bud, there isn’t a 10^th.”

What a confidence boost that was!

Don’t get me wrong, he was always behind me. He would always give me the same advice every time I batted, so I always had the same approach at the plate. He would say “Bud, swing hard in case you hit it.”

So this year the Rider HOF committee not only selected someone who, for good reason, was not on the ballot but they also violated the bylaws by waiving the seven-year wait.

That was for Terry.

They bypassed the seven-year rule because they wanted to do it while Terry would still be able to appreciate what was going on. And she did. She had a great evening. My closest friends were there and when we (our three kids, one of Terry’s brothers and his wife) arrived and walked in to the crowded cocktail hour Terry saw a couple of familiar faces in the crowd and just smiled ear to ear. That set the tone for a great evening.

There are over 100 people in the Rider Athletics Hall of Fame and over the years I dealt with almost every one of them, so I know that I don’t deserve to be in such great company. At least not yet.  You see there are a handful of people in the Rider Hall that are in there more for what they did AFTER Rider than what they did AT Rider.

In the Rider Hall there is a baseball player who was pretty good at Rider but not great. Never a Player of the Year or even a First Team All-League selection. But he was good enough to get drafted and he eventually made it all the way to the Major Leagues.

He reached the highest level of his profession after Rider, and that is why he is in the Rider Hall of Fame.

There was a Rider basketball player who, in his bio, we generously referred to as a “sixth man” but he was more like an “eighth” or “ninth man.” He didn’t play that much, but he had a very high basketball IQ. As a grad. assistant coach he did the scouting report and drew up the game plan for one of Rider’s biggest upset victories ever over a nationally ranked team. He went on to be a highly successful college coach at a high-profile program and went on to be a college basketball analyst on national TV.

He reached the highest level of his profession after Rider, and that is why he is in the Rider Hall of Fame.

I’m thinking that if I can do what that baseball player and that basketball player did, reach the highest level of my profession after Rider, then I might deserve such an honor as the Rider Hall of Fame.

I loved my job at Rider. I love my new profession as a caregiver for the most important person in my life.

If I can become the best caregiver there is, then maybe I will earn those 15 minutes I recently enjoyed.

Even though I played varsity baseball in college, Terry was always the athlete of our family, and our sports backgrounds are now coming into play.

Every day we are in the back yard having a catch. (Non-ballplayers say ‘play’ catch. ballplayers say ‘have a’ catch because they don’t ‘play’ catch, they ‘play’ baseball.)

Somewhere I found this perfect nerf ball, that is heavy enough that you can throw it 100 feet accurately, but light enough where you can catch it with your bare hands and even though it is bigger than a baseball it is smaller than a softball.

Having a catch makes Terry laugh every time, and if one of her favorite songs comes on the radio while we are throwing the ball around she starts dancing. Her eye-hand coordination is so good that she makes great catches and it makes her so happy.

Being able to do things well, anything well, is a dim and distant memory for Terry.  I discovered that having a catch is good therapy for her. It makes her feel good, and knowing that I came up with something that makes her feel good makes me feel like maybe I can become a Hall of Fame caregiver.

Until next time, like Andy Warhol said, “They say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”

Bud