One more thing...

By David Fleming '90

I once tossed a football around with former RedHawk quarterback Ben Roethlisberger while standing atop the Swiss Alps peak of Jungfraujoch where – no pressure or anything – an incomplete pass from the Steelers' two-time Super Bowl champion would have fallen into a glacier 22 kilometers long. Last spring, during Miami's ultimately heartbreaking run to the NCAA hockey finals, I had a nice, long chat in a hallway below the United Center with RedHawk center Justin Mercier about – what else? – Green Beer Day. And this past summer, after a minicamp practice in Baltimore, Ravens coach and Miami graduate John Harbaugh and I spent most of our time reminiscing about Mother Miami instead of talking about the upcoming NFL season.

Yet it was a skinny, silver-haired, 85-year-old fraternity brother of mine, with a proclivity for plaid golf slacks, who taught me the real depth and power of the connection we all have to Miami.

In 2006 my wife, Kim, and I moved to the quaint little college town of Davidson, N.C., with its campus of shady slant walks and red-brick buildings. Soon after, Sigma Chi's newsletter mentioned our move and the release of my first book, Noah's Rainbow. Reading this, Robert "Buck" Jones '43, another Davidson resident, did something unheard of in our era of texts and tweets: he dialed our number and said hello.

"I believe we're fraternity brothers," he said, failing to mention our pledge classes were 48 years apart.

To my great astonishment and delight, it never mattered. We had both attended Miami and that was enough of a connection for Buck to pick up the phone. Living just a short walk from each other, we started visiting regularly. Our two families instantly hit it off.

Besides our fraternity connection, we were both athletes at Miami. Buck played basketball and I paid for school with a wrestling scholarship. We also both pulled off Miami Mergers far above our stations – Buck and Betty Grace, a tri-Delt everyone calls BG, married in 1944. Kim (a president of AXO) and I married in 1996.

Buck was battling several illnesses, but his secret fraternity grip was strong and firm and his memories, especially of Miami, vivid and entertaining. In the five decades between our times on campus, the buildings had changed, the town had grown, heck, even the mascot got a PC makeover. But the people – the people like Buck and BG and all the other friends and contemporaries from school who we remain close to, the ones who make up the heart and soul of Miami – they haven't changed at all.

Buck always struck me as an overachiever who didn't take himself too seriously, a man riddled with cancer who still evoked a grand, magnanimous spirit; a true embodiment of the Greatest Generation.

I learned a lot from Buck in our short time together. He died May 14, 2007. A month after the funeral, BG was still clutching a framed, yellowing picture of Buck in her arms. They had been married 63 years. A number – and a commitment – that almost seems incalculable nowadays. Watching her, I understood for the first time how grief can be such a pure and profound form of love. "Have you ever seen a more handsome man in your whole entire life?" she asked with such sweet sorrow that it instantly drew my hand to my wife's.

BG has carried on with her typical warm, gentle reverence and her penchant for blunt, refreshing bursts of common sense and honesty. She has made it her mission to introduce us around Davidson and she has distributed more copies of my books than Amazon.

We still go to Buck and BG's home and when we do, BG usually brings out a box of old buttons for our girls – Ally, 8, and Kate, 5 – to play with. Somehow, even though the cover is not emblazoned with a 3-D picture of Taylor Swift or the Jonas Brothers, the girls always dive into this treasure of mismatched colors, shapes, sizes, and textures; from the heavy brass buttons that fell off one of Buck's overcoats to the tiny, intricately carved ivory pieces that once adorned a cashmere sweater of BG's. The girls are allowed to pick five buttons to take home after each visit, and, as you might expect, they hover over that box and agonize over their decisions for what seems like hours.

Watching them make their choices recently, I was struck by the notion that, if we're lucky and open to it, no matter how old we get or how far away we go, Miami will always act just like those buttons – a simple, strong, and timeless mechanism that secures the most important connections of our lives.

David Fleming '90 is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine and a columnist for ESPN.com. His second book, Breaker Boys, has been optioned as a movie. His work can also be seen in The Best American Sports Writing 2009 anthology.

"One more thing" is a place for you to share your own reminiscences and observations about everyday happenings. Submit essays for consideration to: Donna Boen, Miamian editor, "One more thing," 208 Glos Center, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056 or e-mail to Miamian@muohio.edu. Please limit yourself to 700 words and include your name, class year, address,
and home phone number.