June 14, 2017
June 14, 2017
I find myself remembering how Pat would give a speech, or enter a room, or just smile, and I attempt to emulate her. She was the best, in everything she did.
Love you Pat
Love you Pat
On Tuesday, June 28 2016, Pat passed away peacefully, following a courageous battle with early onset dementia, “Alzheimer’s Type." This disease attacked a lifetime of precious memories, memories that she has now won back as she rests in her eternal home. Memories that will live on in each and every relationship she developed throughout her life.
This is one simple statement that Patricia Sue Head Summitt embodied, lived by and passed on to so many throughout her 64 years of life. She ‘won’ every day of her life because of the relationships she developed, nurtured and cherished. Relationships with her family and friends. Relationships with players, coaches, and fans. And most importantly, a strong relationship with her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Tributes
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July 13, 2016
July 13, 2016
She was what I always measured myself by. Was I gracious? Was I kind? Did I demand the best? Now I still measure myself by her courageous example. Can't wait to talk to her in heaven.
July 12, 2016
July 12, 2016
When I was at UT in the early 70's I played pickup basketball anytime I could find a game and a good rim. I heard there was a regular pickup game in the old, dark Alumni Gym so I went to check it out. It was pretty weird - there were guys but there were also a bunch of girls(!!!) playing. And playing hard. They pushed, shoved and threw more elbows than the guys. They boxed-out on rebounds, set blindside picks, and called their own fouls. And the meanest/baddest of the bunch was a girl named Pat. She bruised my hip bones and my ego many times!
That was the first time I competed against any girl that really had "game" and over the coming years I watched the evolution of Pat's round ball talent, her coaching discipline and the personal integrity she brought to the game. She challenged my thinking about pure competition, about women in sports and about the value of sports in a healthy society.
That was the first time I competed against any girl that really had "game" and over the coming years I watched the evolution of Pat's round ball talent, her coaching discipline and the personal integrity she brought to the game. She challenged my thinking about pure competition, about women in sports and about the value of sports in a healthy society.
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Recent Tributes
June 14, 2017
June 14, 2017
I find myself remembering how Pat would give a speech, or enter a room, or just smile, and I attempt to emulate her. She was the best, in everything she did.
Love you Pat
Love you Pat
July 13, 2016
July 13, 2016
She was what I always measured myself by. Was I gracious? Was I kind? Did I demand the best? Now I still measure myself by her courageous example. Can't wait to talk to her in heaven.
July 12, 2016
July 12, 2016
When I was at UT in the early 70's I played pickup basketball anytime I could find a game and a good rim. I heard there was a regular pickup game in the old, dark Alumni Gym so I went to check it out. It was pretty weird - there were guys but there were also a bunch of girls(!!!) playing. And playing hard. They pushed, shoved and threw more elbows than the guys. They boxed-out on rebounds, set blindside picks, and called their own fouls. And the meanest/baddest of the bunch was a girl named Pat. She bruised my hip bones and my ego many times!
That was the first time I competed against any girl that really had "game" and over the coming years I watched the evolution of Pat's round ball talent, her coaching discipline and the personal integrity she brought to the game. She challenged my thinking about pure competition, about women in sports and about the value of sports in a healthy society.
That was the first time I competed against any girl that really had "game" and over the coming years I watched the evolution of Pat's round ball talent, her coaching discipline and the personal integrity she brought to the game. She challenged my thinking about pure competition, about women in sports and about the value of sports in a healthy society.
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Pat Summitt going into Basketball Hall of Fame for second time with two other Lady Vols
August 12, 2023
by Joe McCamish
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame will welcome Tennessee Lady Vols basketball legends Pat Summitt, Patricia Roberts and Cindy Brogdon to its 2023 class on Saturday in Springfield, Massachusetts.
With the trio's efforts along with the rest of the U.S. Olympic team that won silver in 1976, they will all be honored together with a list of other notable basketball contributors.
All three were on the roster and played a significant part in the Summer Olympic Games.
While Summitt was training for the games, she was also the Lady Vols coach. As she played alongside Roberts and Brogdon, she recruited them and got them to transfer to UT.
After the three were reunited, they helped start a legacy that made the Lady Vols one of women's college basketball's top programs. Summitt won eight national championships and 1,098 games before she retired in 2012 after being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's.
Summitt, who was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame as a coach in 2000, died in 2016.
Roberts helped the Lady Vols make their first Final Four in 1977. Brogdon joined the Lady Vols the next season and helped Tennessee make the Final Four in 1979.
With the trio's efforts along with the rest of the U.S. Olympic team that won silver in 1976, they will all be honored together with a list of other notable basketball contributors.
All three were on the roster and played a significant part in the Summer Olympic Games.
While Summitt was training for the games, she was also the Lady Vols coach. As she played alongside Roberts and Brogdon, she recruited them and got them to transfer to UT.
After the three were reunited, they helped start a legacy that made the Lady Vols one of women's college basketball's top programs. Summitt won eight national championships and 1,098 games before she retired in 2012 after being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's.
Summitt, who was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame as a coach in 2000, died in 2016.
Roberts helped the Lady Vols make their first Final Four in 1977. Brogdon joined the Lady Vols the next season and helped Tennessee make the Final Four in 1979.
Pat Head Summitt: A Post I Won't Be Able To Write in Past Tense by Celina Summers
November 14, 2018
by Joe McCamish
Sunday, June 26, 2016
Every Lady Vol who played under Pat Summit went to the NCAA Tournament EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR.
Pat Summitt was such a great coach that she was offered the UT men's head coaching position. Twice.
But that was all in the future when I met Pat Head Summitt for the first time. Even then, though, she was a big deal--a hometown legend in the making for my hometown, which had already given the world the amazing Wilma Rudoph, Olympic icon and the first woman to win 3 gold medals in one Olympics.
Clarksville, Tennessee breeds strong women.
And yet, there was something so awe-inspiring about her even then--a woman who'd been to the Olympics, who'd just taken her first team to the IAIAW Final Four, who suddenly saw me looking at her from the end of the counter and who promptly said, "Is this your daughter, John?"
My dad said, "Yeah, that's my girl Celina. She's not a ball player because they won't let girls play football."
The men around the counter laughed, but Pat looked at me with a smile. "They will someday," she assured me. "And you'll be great at it."
And I believed her.
How many 11-year-old girls did Pat Summitt say that to? "You'll be great at it." Probably thousands. And for each one of them, that moment still feels as personal and pertinent to them now as it does to me today. Especially today.
I'm writing this post today because I can't write a memorial post for Pat Head Summitt. I can't wait until she's gone because I can't believe she ever will be. I just can't process it--and the rest of Vol Nation won't be able to either.
I met Pat Summitt many times in subsequent years--in my dad's store off and on, in Knoxville, at games, random moments in the halls at school or the mall or in hospital corridors or at funerals. She always asked about me--about my grades and interests and talents--and she remembered them too. It was always, "Hey, Celina--congratulations on doing so well at that debate competition! Heard you beat the tar out of our boys--good for you!" or "I hear you're turning into a fantastic writer--you keep working at it!" or "I saw your wedding pictures; you looked beautiful." With everything she had going, she had the ability to index information on an amazing scale--what to most legendary coaches would be minutiae: the everyday accomplishments of a girl who grew into a woman and who'd never won a game of HORSE.
The last time I saw Pat Summitt, I didn't expect her to know who I was. I stood by in silence, while the people I was with gathered around for conversation and autographs and all the things we Vols do when we meet one of our most beloved legends. Pat Summit could turn a group of 60-year-old businessmen into fangurls. She wasn't coaching anymore, and I hadn't seen her in years although my dad had. I knew she was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's and what that meant. She acted the same as she always had, and I just watched from the outskirts--content just to be there. And when finally the group broke up to let her go on her way, she walked right by me.
And she paused.
We were at the same eye level, which seemed strange to me because I'd always remembered her as taller than me, a literal interpretation of looking up to this woman. She gave me a little hit on the arm and said, "Football. You'd be good at it, but writing--writing you're great at."
Then she walked away.
And I believed her.
Pat Summitt changed the world for women's athletics. She built not just UT but women's collegiate sports, and served as the foundation for both through four decades. She bridged the gap between the era when there were no NCAA-sanctioned women's basketball teams to the birth and growth of the WNBA, which is liberally stocked with her players. She is easily the greatest woman coach in any sport of all time, and one of an elite group of coaches whose achievements will never be superseded. On the Mount Rushmore of coaching greats, Pat Summitt's face will be there. But to generations of Tennessee girls, whether they played for her, or knew her, or even just heard about what she built for young women everywhere, Pat Summitt means so much more. And her loss will be correspondingly greater.
2016 has already taken so many greats. Too many. And this loss is personal for everyone whose lives Pat Summitt touched. But if you put this into perspective, the pain grows sharper. In a world where coaches are being busted trying to hide the fact that their players have raped women just to keep them playing, this coach and her impact grows commensurately greater. Because in the end, it won't be the scum like Art Briles who are remembered as the Greatest Of All Time coaches.
But Pat Summitt IS the Greatest Of All Time. Not just in coaching. But in life as well. And so to me she is, and must be, always referred to not only with unparalleled respect, but in the present tense. So I wouldn't be able to write this when she's gone. Only now, while we still have her, and when, hopefully she will know on some level what she means to millions of people--a true icon, with integrity and passion and the undiluted ability to not only do what's right but to inspire others to do so as well.
Today is a great day to make a donation to the We Back Pat Foundation for Alzheimer's research, not in Coach Summitt's memory but in celebration of who she is and what she's done.
You'll be great at it.
When I was a kid, I met a young woman whose influence on my life could never have been guessed by any of the farmers or Saturday lawn experts gathered around the counter of my dad's store. She was tall, but she seemed more than tall to me. I was not quite eleven, and she was the head women's basketball coach at the University of Tennessee. My family knew hers very well: the Head family lived not too far from my grandparents, and like me she was a Clarksville girl born and bred.
But even in the late seventies, everyone knew Pat.
Girl's basketball was bigger in north-central Tennessee, because Pat Head Summitt had single-handedly built it. Single-mindedly too, because that may have been her most singular personality trait. What she focused on, she focused on absolutely.
Tennessee basketball, for example.
Pat was an All-American player at UT-Martin. Back then (the dark ages) there were no scholarships for women athletes, so her family paid her way through school. She went to UT as a graduate assistant--women's basketball wasn't even sanctioned by the NCAA yet--and became the head coach of the Lady Vols in 1974. Paid $250 a MONTH, she washed the uniforms, drove the van to away games, and completed her Masters. In 1976, she won a silver medal as the co-captain of the Olympic team, and began an unparalleled coaching journey by leading back-to-back 20-win seasons and earning the Lady Vols their first #1 ranking.
But this is public history. Any Vols fan, any women's basketball fan knows this. The girl looking up at the tall lady with the infectious laugh and flashing eyes was only vaguely aware of what Pat had done. She was only aware of how magnetic she was, with all those old gentlemen farmers clustered around her as she talked with her brother and my dad.
Publicly, Pat Head Summitt is arguably the greatest coach of all time in any sport. 1098 wins to 208 losses, 8 national championships, 16 SEC championships, 8-time SEC Coach of the Year, 7-time National Coach of the Year, Naismith Coach of the 20th Century, First Olympian to win a medal and subsequently coach a medal-winning team with the 1984 gold medal-winning squad. Winning percentage of.841 and a stunning .913 at home. 45 players who are now coaches.
Every Lady Vol who played all four years under Pat Summitt graduated with a degree.
Every Lady Vol who played under Pat Summitt played in at least one Elite Eight.But even in the late seventies, everyone knew Pat.
Girl's basketball was bigger in north-central Tennessee, because Pat Head Summitt had single-handedly built it. Single-mindedly too, because that may have been her most singular personality trait. What she focused on, she focused on absolutely.
Tennessee basketball, for example.
Pat was an All-American player at UT-Martin. Back then (the dark ages) there were no scholarships for women athletes, so her family paid her way through school. She went to UT as a graduate assistant--women's basketball wasn't even sanctioned by the NCAA yet--and became the head coach of the Lady Vols in 1974. Paid $250 a MONTH, she washed the uniforms, drove the van to away games, and completed her Masters. In 1976, she won a silver medal as the co-captain of the Olympic team, and began an unparalleled coaching journey by leading back-to-back 20-win seasons and earning the Lady Vols their first #1 ranking.
But this is public history. Any Vols fan, any women's basketball fan knows this. The girl looking up at the tall lady with the infectious laugh and flashing eyes was only vaguely aware of what Pat had done. She was only aware of how magnetic she was, with all those old gentlemen farmers clustered around her as she talked with her brother and my dad.
Publicly, Pat Head Summitt is arguably the greatest coach of all time in any sport. 1098 wins to 208 losses, 8 national championships, 16 SEC championships, 8-time SEC Coach of the Year, 7-time National Coach of the Year, Naismith Coach of the 20th Century, First Olympian to win a medal and subsequently coach a medal-winning team with the 1984 gold medal-winning squad. Winning percentage of.841 and a stunning .913 at home. 45 players who are now coaches.
Every Lady Vol who played all four years under Pat Summitt graduated with a degree.
Every Lady Vol who played under Pat Summit went to the NCAA Tournament EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR.
Pat Summitt was such a great coach that she was offered the UT men's head coaching position. Twice.
But that was all in the future when I met Pat Head Summitt for the first time. Even then, though, she was a big deal--a hometown legend in the making for my hometown, which had already given the world the amazing Wilma Rudoph, Olympic icon and the first woman to win 3 gold medals in one Olympics.
Clarksville, Tennessee breeds strong women.
And yet, there was something so awe-inspiring about her even then--a woman who'd been to the Olympics, who'd just taken her first team to the IAIAW Final Four, who suddenly saw me looking at her from the end of the counter and who promptly said, "Is this your daughter, John?"
My dad said, "Yeah, that's my girl Celina. She's not a ball player because they won't let girls play football."
The men around the counter laughed, but Pat looked at me with a smile. "They will someday," she assured me. "And you'll be great at it."
And I believed her.
How many 11-year-old girls did Pat Summitt say that to? "You'll be great at it." Probably thousands. And for each one of them, that moment still feels as personal and pertinent to them now as it does to me today. Especially today.
I'm writing this post today because I can't write a memorial post for Pat Head Summitt. I can't wait until she's gone because I can't believe she ever will be. I just can't process it--and the rest of Vol Nation won't be able to either.
I met Pat Summitt many times in subsequent years--in my dad's store off and on, in Knoxville, at games, random moments in the halls at school or the mall or in hospital corridors or at funerals. She always asked about me--about my grades and interests and talents--and she remembered them too. It was always, "Hey, Celina--congratulations on doing so well at that debate competition! Heard you beat the tar out of our boys--good for you!" or "I hear you're turning into a fantastic writer--you keep working at it!" or "I saw your wedding pictures; you looked beautiful." With everything she had going, she had the ability to index information on an amazing scale--what to most legendary coaches would be minutiae: the everyday accomplishments of a girl who grew into a woman and who'd never won a game of HORSE.
The last time I saw Pat Summitt, I didn't expect her to know who I was. I stood by in silence, while the people I was with gathered around for conversation and autographs and all the things we Vols do when we meet one of our most beloved legends. Pat Summit could turn a group of 60-year-old businessmen into fangurls. She wasn't coaching anymore, and I hadn't seen her in years although my dad had. I knew she was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's and what that meant. She acted the same as she always had, and I just watched from the outskirts--content just to be there. And when finally the group broke up to let her go on her way, she walked right by me.
And she paused.
We were at the same eye level, which seemed strange to me because I'd always remembered her as taller than me, a literal interpretation of looking up to this woman. She gave me a little hit on the arm and said, "Football. You'd be good at it, but writing--writing you're great at."
Then she walked away.
And I believed her.
Pat Summitt changed the world for women's athletics. She built not just UT but women's collegiate sports, and served as the foundation for both through four decades. She bridged the gap between the era when there were no NCAA-sanctioned women's basketball teams to the birth and growth of the WNBA, which is liberally stocked with her players. She is easily the greatest woman coach in any sport of all time, and one of an elite group of coaches whose achievements will never be superseded. On the Mount Rushmore of coaching greats, Pat Summitt's face will be there. But to generations of Tennessee girls, whether they played for her, or knew her, or even just heard about what she built for young women everywhere, Pat Summitt means so much more. And her loss will be correspondingly greater.
2016 has already taken so many greats. Too many. And this loss is personal for everyone whose lives Pat Summitt touched. But if you put this into perspective, the pain grows sharper. In a world where coaches are being busted trying to hide the fact that their players have raped women just to keep them playing, this coach and her impact grows commensurately greater. Because in the end, it won't be the scum like Art Briles who are remembered as the Greatest Of All Time coaches.
But Pat Summitt IS the Greatest Of All Time. Not just in coaching. But in life as well. And so to me she is, and must be, always referred to not only with unparalleled respect, but in the present tense. So I wouldn't be able to write this when she's gone. Only now, while we still have her, and when, hopefully she will know on some level what she means to millions of people--a true icon, with integrity and passion and the undiluted ability to not only do what's right but to inspire others to do so as well.
Today is a great day to make a donation to the We Back Pat Foundation for Alzheimer's research, not in Coach Summitt's memory but in celebration of who she is and what she's done.
You'll be great at it.
The Climb -- Patricia Head Summitt 1952-2016 In Memoriam
November 14, 2018
by Joe McCamish
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Let me tell you a story.
I'm not a particularly spiritual person, but I strongly believe in iconography. And some days, that type of story may work better than your standard comforts of faith. Today I wanted to see an image that represented how I felt, but I'm not an artist. I wish I was, just for today. I wish I could paint what I see. I even talked to artists this morning, grasping for a way to solidify what I felt. But I'm a writer, and I paint in words. And while I *never* post fiction on this blog, today is the day I am going to break my own rule.So let me tell you a story--an allegorical tale, the kind I never tell. But be warned--the real story is far better written than this poor one. The story's title is:
THE CLIMB by Celina Summers
A red-gold sun rose one morning on a woman standing alone in a field. She looked around for a moment, confused. She wasn't used to being alone, and wasn't sure if she liked the way it felt.
What the heck am I doing out here?
The sun was hot--Tennessee in summer hot, when the suckers are climbing the tobacco leaves and the heat shimmers over the turned, red earth like fumes of gas. The woman didn't waste time worrying about why she was suddenly in that tobacco field. She took off through the rows, her long stride snapping with impatience and more than a little irritated. Irritation was a familiar sensation, just like the red earth that was cool between her toes. The tobacco leaves slapped against her as she passed, but softly--not the slicing shear she remembered in an abrupt flash of skinny arms and stinging slashes into tanned skin.
As she marched through the field, the sun rose higher above her--rising oddly fast, searing into her skin with a pleasant heat. In time, those long, lanky strides relaxed--her irritation faded, and was replaced by a sense of challenge.
How big is this darn field anyway? Not big enough to scare me.
She was going to find her way out of it.
She topped a small rise, and just ahead a line of trees interrupted the endless monotony of the tobacco field. Her steps grew faster, longer, because anyone in a tobacco field in Tennessee knows that the only promise of escape from the merciless sun and the smell of the arid, pungent leaves lies under those trees. The woman turned back for a moment, surveying the immense field with its red clay and green plant stripes. As the verdant shadow of the century-old oaks darkened the ends of the infinite rows, the clay underfoot moistened and cooled until a trail of evenly paced footprints tracked her out of the field and into the breathless silence of the wood.
She breathed easier there, under the cooling caress of the shade, but when she thought about brushing the sweat away from her face she decided not to. She liked the feel of that sweat, liked the scent of it against her skin--infused with the unmistakable sting of the tobacco field and hinting at some greater promise.
She could rest here and no one would blame her. But herself.
A breeze rustled through the trees, and the leaves' silver underbellies gleamed throughout the wood. As she passed under them, streams of sunlight gilded the path. The entire wood was a series of contrasts--silver and gold, cool and hot, light and dark. Like an imperfect checkerboard, laid out like a promise beneath her feet.
She liked the contrast. She loved the conflict between the elements. This all felt familiar, comfortable and beloved. She had left the dusty monotony of the tobacco fields behind, and traded it for this elemental struggle without a twinge of regret. The golden light faded and the leaves turned back into their normal bland summer green, the breeze abruptly stopped and the woods began to rise into a steep hill. She came out of the shade into the scorching blaze of the afternoon sun.
As she walked, she thought: No one has ever walked here before. I am the first.
Animals watched as she walked by, unafraid but hesitant--like they'd never seen such a thing in their forest before. Eyes everywhere, gazes fixed on her at first with suspicion or disdain, then comprehension lightened those feral looks. Other animals--small, shy, uncertain ones--emerged from their hidden dens. She stopped, crouched low, and smiled.
And they came running to her, eyes lit in wonder and unaffected joy. She stroked their soft fur, ruffled their feathers, and turned them all to look up the hill.
"That's where we're going to go," she announced.
They all stared at her, and for a moment they were all frozen in shock.
"Up," she explained.
With that, she stood up, turned her face to the hill, and started to climb. At first, only a few of the animals came, bounding alongside her without fear. But then the rest followed, running--leaping with her, proud to be in her company and elevated because she led them. There were pockets of shade around hinting at rest and relief from the heat, but she avoided them. She embraced the heat like a long-lost friend, welcomed the trickle of sweat down her spine as she continued her ascent of the stone-tumbled mountain she was determined to conquer.
Once something loud crashed in the underbrush, shattering the silent joy of the animals and the shade that had been so alluring was now threatening and dark. The woman stopped and leveled a hard, challenging look at the beast growling at her from its den. Her animals suddenly straightened and glared at the challenging beast without fear.
"Don't even think about it," the woman warned the beast. "And shut up."
She turned her back and continued her climb, and the animals that followed her burst forth around her, unafraid of the predator who'd slunk, chastened, back into its dark den. They swarmed around her, raced through her legs, jumped as high as they could for her approval. They couldn't keep pace with that unhurried stride, the constant pulse of determination that fueled her long limbs, so they ran instead. As the crowd swelled around her, the animals passed her and ran up the hill that was more like a mountain. Some that had followed her took wing, and soared through the trees into the sky.
None of them looked down, afraid to fall.
None of them looked back.
And all the time the crowd of animals that had volunteered to accompany her on this ascent ran harder, flew faster, soared higher--because she willed them to.
At last, the woman reached the summit of the mountain--and stopped dead in her tracks. A grim-faced man was sitting on the rocky top of the mountain, an old Bluetick Coonhound at his feet. The dog looked up at her mournfully from smokey-colored eyes, so she knelt and scratched his ears. His fur was silky under her fingertips, and he swiped her hand with a rough tongue.
Best dog in the world.
The man's face was craggy, his short cut salt and pepper hair receded slightly from his weathered features. He glared at her and growled, "What the hell are you doing here?"
She glared back. "Had to get to the top."
The man relaxed slightly. "Know what you mean, but you're here too damn early."
She stared at him for a long moment, something whispering against her mind. The connection suddenly clicked and she laughed. "Butch looks a lot like you."
The man laughed too, as if her comment had surprised him. The hound lifted his head, his ears pricked up. The woman looked down at the now-alert dog.
"What's wrong with him?"
The man squinted past her, his eyes twinkling. "Nothing wrong. Smokey always gets excited when they show up."
The woman turned around. The forest was gone; the animals were no longer clustered on the mountainside. Instead, she, the man, and the dog stood alone on the summit of the mountain. Smokey got to his feet and lifted his muzzle in a loud, joyous howl. His tail thumped hard against the side of the woman's leg, as the sun illuminated an endless field of faces--faces of girls she'd known who'd grown into legends, of women she'd known who'd worked at her side, of men whose dismissal had turned into reverence, even people she'd known only well enough to smile at when they passed on the street or in the arena halls. But there were millions of face she'd never seen, never known--all smiling, all wreathed with the same expression of awe and love.
"You remember 'em?" the man asked softly.
"I always remember the faces." And for the first time in what seemed like an infinite climb, she did.
"You brought 'em with you," the man said. "Brought 'em all to the top--millions of 'em you never met have all climbed the mountain because of you."
"Not me," she replied. "Themselves."
"One increasing purpose, Coach." The man clapped his hand on her shoulder--an approving clap that wasn't lessened because she was a woman. "You kept everlastingly on the job."
She turned to the man with a smile, a smile unlike her usual infectious laughing grin. A shy smile, the smile of a child seeking approval from a god whose maxims she revered. He extended his hand, equal to equal. Giant to giant.
But his eyes softened, and glittered with unexpected tears as he said quietly, "Welcome home, Pat."
Without hesitation, she gave him a huge hug. "Thanks, General."
Between them, Smokey howled, and a final vagrant breeze brought a whiff of the heat-baked tobacco fields as the white-hot June sun finally slipped from the sky in a blaze of orange. The sea of faces flared in front of her one last time, gilded by the last ray of light, then sank and receded into the darkness.
The last thing she saw was the tobacco field, tiny and deserted, its green rows fading into the blood red clay--distant, but still clearly visible. The foundation. The root. The impetus that began the climb.
Requeiscat in pace, Patricia Head Summit 1952-2016