When the news hit last night during the third period of the hockey game it hit me like a ton of bricks, it couldn't possibly be true. The man that let my boss Antoine take a chance on a 24-year old and would later be instrumental in me being named Asst. Commissioner of Public Relations for College America.. The man that had a tough John Wayne exterior on the outside but a heart of gold on the inside couldn't possibly be gone. There was too much left too do. Things are so close to being here. It just couldn't be that Jim Harris, or as Antoine and I referred to him, "Chief" was gone.
With the 2012 Frozen Four right at hand and some of the final pieces of the baseball/softball complex coming together this year, it couldn't be true. Not now, not this close. Not now that our staff had weathered the tremendous budget cuts with the downfall in the economy and were getting close to getting our feet back underneath us. But it is.
I'll never forget my first meeting with the "Chief" and how imposed upon me one major rule just "get it done". Over the past near decade, that was just a piece of the great things I would learn from him as he began to entrust me with more and more responsibilities and "inside" information. The past few years he began to really value my opinion on many matters and would ask for my input on a number of important decisions. I'll miss that without a doubt. Hearing what was going on behind the scenes in the conference search for hockey and the realignment attempts before the CHA fell apart were priceless. I'll also miss how he would be willing to go to bat for our student-athletes and staff when he always didn't have to in every circumstance and I'll even miss how he would call you to the carpet when you screwed up and didn't get the job done or dropped the ball.
I'll miss how he would joke and kid around with our sports information student workers and student athletes. He genuinely cared about each and every one of them. I had only been on board about two months at UAH when he met Leah, who was then my fiance, at the CHA Tournament here in Huntsville. He was so warm in talking with her in their first meeting and offered her a scholarship working in sports information the next fall, jokingly saying he'd make Antoine give her some money whether he wanted to or not. Then when she got so sick, he was so understanding with all it took for me to help take care of her and after she died the time and concern he offered to me and graced upon me to recover was extraordinary.
Of course he had his quirks about him too. Like if we weren't starting two or three minutes early at baseball or soccer we were late in his opinion. And he wanted the fastest, least frilly version of the National Anthem we could find. The boss had some great sayings too and we had talked about putting together a quote board to one day have a book of them at his retirement. My favorite was one he said back in our office a couple months ago when we were talking about something that had already been done and he quipped "That's like trying to catch a fart in a skillet".
My heart breaks for April and J.R. and his siblings but I know they are a strong, resilient family and will weather this storm.
Things will never be the same in the UAH Athletics department but time will heal the wounds, we will adapt, overcome and persevere and most of all, we will "Charge On". The "Chief" would have it no other way and the sun will rise in the morning for gameday and the Lady Chargers will take the court just as he would have wanted them to. And then, we will get back to work and "get it done".
Arrangements are still pending at this time.
