Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 22, 1995 TAG: 9501240056
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DALEVILLE LENGTH: Long
Don Meredith always thought laughter was the best medicine.
Meredith lived as he coached his basketball team at Lord Botetourt High School. He was on the edge as much as he was on the officials. ``I was a wild man,'' said Meredith, a quote that gains significance because the verb is in the past tense.
Asked last week whether his former coach would retire from the sideline soon, VMI guard Bobby Prince said, ``No, Coach Meredith loves the game too much. I think he'll die on the court.''
Well, he does. And he might have.
Some of the rumors about Meredith are true. Others are false. There is more than 30 pounds less of Meredith on the Cavaliers' sideline this season. He's down to about 150 pounds on his 6-foot-2 frame. He missed Botetourt's opening game, and he has skipped some practices, too.
``I do not have cancer,'' said Meredith, 54, who has heard more than friends whispering about his health. ``I am not dying. Somebody asked me if the bus was coming for me. Listen, the only bus I'm planning to get on is the one that leaves Daleville on Tuesdays and Fridays [for road games].
``Actually, I'm feeling a lot better now. I'm getting my strength back. I eat like a horse, but I can't gain weight. And if I do gain more than a couple of pounds, I'm supposed to go see the doctor.''
Meredith's days on the bench are short, however. He already has talked with Lord Botetourt's principal, Jim Sledd, about retiring as the Cavaliers' coach after this, his 19th season, although Meredith says his physical woes aren't so much a contributing factor to those thoughts as are his desires ``to do other things, to help other people, to relax'' he said.
``I'd say there's a very good possibility this is my last season,'' said Meredith, recounting his recent months from the coaches' office in the Botetourt gym. ``It's probable, but it's not because all of a sudden I'm sick. I coach the same way I always have. I'll always love basketball.
``I'll probably decide pretty quickly. I haven't said a lot about it because I don't want a bunch of farewells and all that stuff.''
Seeing the symptoms
In recent months, Meredith has seen more doctors than regular viewers of ``ER.'' He was admitted to Roanoke Memorial Hospital on Thanksgiving and spent a week there, ``because my insides were all messed up.''
He had internal bleeding and learned he is a diabetic. Now, he gives himself an insulin shot each morning. There is something he no longer does, however.
``Let's just say that anyone with stock in George Dickel or Anheuser-Busch better get rid of it, because I can promise you their sales have gone down,'' Meredith said. ``I think people understand what I'm saying.''
He was treated for high blood pressure about 20 years ago, and said he took medication for elevated glucose levels for more than a decade.
``In my own mind, I always was a borderline diabetic,'' he said. ``The difference came when the doctors told me I had to do something. Telling me I should have done it wasn't enough.''
He admits his life - and health - ``started heading south in August 1992 when my mother died. We were so close. I just felt like there was a large hole there.''
Since Laura Bell Meredith died, her son has been running two beef cattle farms of about 600 total acres. He also is coaching basketball and is in his third year as president of Botetourt Country Club. He also is involved in a couple of private businessess with friends. He took early retirement from teaching a couple of years ago. He coaches because he enjoys the game.
``One of the things I was supposed to do is rest,'' Meredith said. ``When do I do that? My fiancee, Betty Vance, and a lot of neighbors and friends and family and doctors have helped me a lot through all of this, like on the farm. My mom always told people I wanted to live on a farm, I just didn't want to be a farmer. She was right.''
Getting the diagnosis
Meredith said he really didn't begin to ``feel awful'' until the summer of 1994. He already had gone through high blood pressure and been treated for gallstones and kidney stones.
``My color was terrible,'' Meredith said. ``People have always said I was colorful, but this was different.''
This is a coach who has thrown his jacket more times than he can count, who has watched a game from the stands and said, ``It didn't look any better from up there,'' and also lay down on the sideline to see if officiating he didn't like looked any better from that angle.
He stopped laughing the day in early autumn when a doctor told the coach he needed a bone marrow test.
``I went across the street from the hospital to the Rehabilitation Center, the Cancer Center [of Southwest Virginia],'' Meredith said. ``That's when it hit me that I might have cancer. I was so scared. I cried for a long time that day.''
Meredith had the bone marrow exam and a CAT scan. He started to feel better. He went hunting and killed two deer - and ended up with a staph infection.
``I must have gotten a briar down in my boot and it cut me,'' Meredith said. ``My one ankle swelled up like a melon. I guess I had so much infection inside my body, it just was another thing. Then, I got a bladder infection, too. I had edema, then ended up dehydrated. It's been one thing on top of another.''
He went bow hunting and ended up with a hernia pulling back the bowstring. ``They can't operate for that yet, because of my platelet count,'' he said.
Seeking the cure
There's something else different about Meredith besides his gaunt physical appearance, however. Before his illness, not long after his mother died, Meredith began discussing his past and future with Rev. John Armistead, the pastor of Fincastle Baptist Church. It wasn't that he suddenly had found Christ. Meredith said he simply was trying to relocate Him.
``The pastor told me he'd asked some people about me,'' Meredith said. ``I went to church with my father and mother when I was growing up, but I hadn't been much over the years. The pastor told me that someone told him, `If you can save Don Meredith, we'll keep you in Fincastle forever.'
``It's an area that has been void for me, and there's a lot I should be thankful for. There's no doubt God brought me home many a night when He didn't have to do that. I want to give something back to Him. I like talking to people. I'd like to visit the sick and the elderly. I'd like to help them.
``I like to fish, to hunt, to play golf. But there has to be more for me to do for others.''
Meredith said he has quit gambling on the golf course. When he uses the phrase ''play hard'' these days, he's talking about what's probably his last team after 27 years and 335 victories - and counting with a 7-4 club - as a head coach at Floyd County, Liberty and Lord Botetourt.
A Botetourt County native, Meredith qualifies as a coaching legend as much because of his style as his success. He also knows that whatever scoring records he owns at Fincastle High School won't be broken.
``The year after I graduated [1958], they closed the school,'' he said, laughing as loudly but more raspy than his old self.
Seeing the light
When he goes to clinics now, Meredith says it has struck him that the only basketball coach in these parts still in the game from when Meredith started is Martinsville's Husky Hall, who won his 600th game last week and is retiring at season's end. Meredith hopes the Cavaliers will give his longtime assistant, Ed Purdy, a shot at being ``palace director,'' as Meredith is described in a nameplate on the gym office door.
``I grew up with basketball,'' Meredith said. ``We had basketball goals all over the farm. I can show you X's and O's written on tractor seats out there. I've been a student of the game as much as anybody. I don't know if I'll ever really be ready to give it up, but that day may be right around the corner.''
Meredith is the same coach, but he's a different man. He's says he's still crazy, he's just not as wild.
``If my health holds up, Betty and I would like to get married in the summer,'' Meredith said.
He points to the corner of a piece of paper on which he usually diagrams plays. He has printed three lines. ``Sorrow looks back. Worry looks around. Faith looks up.'' He's drawn a box around them. He's walking from the gym, still talking as only Meredith can.
``Right now, we're concentrating a lot on getting better,'' he said.
He was talking about his team. He could have been talking about himself.
by CNB