”There is something there.”
Richard ”Bud” Williams, 60 years old, listened as his doctor recited those four words. It was only a sentence, but to Williams, it was another kind of sentence with only the period missing.
”There is something there.”
”Bud” Williams, on the verge of starting his first season as the basketball coach at Providence-St. Mel High School, never flinched. The something had to be found and dealt with. ”You meet things head on,” says Williams. ”You choose your best option. Then you get on with the rest of your life.”
It was Nov. 6, 1987. Williams, a diabetic, was in for his regular 60-day checkup. There was also this nagging smoker`s cough Williams believed came from his pack-a-day habit. You meet things head on. You check out everything. There was something there. Five days later he was told. Lung cancer.
”I was told it was a type that was very responsive to treatment,” he says. ”We went to chemotherapy. (”Choose your best option . . .) I`ve had three treatments and it seems to be working. I`ve got one more visit before we can tell how well it`s been working. But I`ve got a basketball team to coach.” ( . . . then you get on with the rest of your life.”)
Cass Davis, 16, a junior on the St. Mel team, was an almost unbelieving listener as Williams talked to them the first day of practice. Williams didn`t mince words. He told the team he had cancer. ”I wished there was something I could have done,” Davis said. ”Cancer! That`s scary!”
David Jones, 15, a sophomore, tried to understand. ”He told us he was undergoing therapy and that we shouldn`t worry. All he wanted us to do was work hard.”
Davis and Jones remembered Williams as their lower-level coach. ”He`s the only coach I`ve ever had in high school,” said Davis. ”I didn`t want anything to happen to him.”
Williams insists he`s going to be coaching as long as possible. ”I hope I`m around next year,” he says. ”Our only player with experience, Ronald Coleman, played seven games last year. The others never made it to the varsity. We`re not bad this year. Next year, I think we`ll be very good. I hope I`m still here.”
Williams and St. Mel have been together for more than a decade, but never in the fast lane. Three of his seven children attended the school in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His wife, Rita, was one of 13 women arrested in 1974 while protesting the closing of the school by the Archdiocese of Chicago.
When Pete Christie, now at Niles North, was the basketball coach, Bud Williams coached the team during the summer leagues. In 1977, his wife Rita died. Two years later, after paying off all the hospital bills caused by his wife`s illness, and at the age of 52, he took early retirement from Sears, where he had been a buyer for most of his 29-year career at the store.
”I talked it over with my kids,” Williams said. ”I told them what I wanted to do and said the only reason I was working was to increase their inheritance. They told me to get out and do something I want to do.”
All Bud Williams wanted to do was help Providence-St. Mel as it became a non-affiliated private school in the heart of the West Side-a school dependent on fundraising and good will to keep it going.
Williams, a graduate of Fenwick in 1945 and Loyola in 1950, offered his services as a teacher of religion. He also became a full-time substitute, taking his place in any classroom that needed him. Soon he volunteered his services to new basketball coach Tom Shields.
”I asked to help. For the first two years it was only Tom and me. I coached all the under-level programs. I never wanted to be a head coach.”
When Shields left St. Mel after the state championship season of 1984-85, his successor was Bill Ociepka, who had coached the lower levels with Williams for a number of years. ”I was happy where I was,” said Williams. ”For all those years I had a 165-22 record. But when Ociepka quit suddenly this fall we had a problem.”
Ociepka left the first week of the fall semester, and it was, thought Williams, too late to find an acceptable replacement. Always the volunteer, Williams offered his services to principal Paul Adams.
”I wouldn`t have worked for anyone else,” he said. ”I told Paul I`d be happy to do it.”
It was a rocky start. St. Mel was 0-3 after three games in the Oak Park tournament. ”We didn`t have anyone with any varsity experience,” Williams said. ”I was always a tough coach. I`m a screamer. But this time I needed a lot of patience.”
Adams is a tough, hard-nosed principal. He`s part fundraiser, part promoter, part educational theorist, part disciplinarian. There are three ways to do things in school-the right way, the wrong way, and Paul Adams` way. Guess which way works at St. Mel?
In an era where athletes need to maintain a 2-point grade average in order to play sports, Adams insists it must be 2.25 at his school. At a time when earrings for men are nothing more than a fashion statement, Adams will not allow boys with earrings to attend games. If you are from the visiting school, too bad. It is Adams` school. If you don`t like it, go get your own school.
So nothing should surprise Adams, who has even managed to lure President Reagan for two visits to St. Mel. Williams surprises Adams.
”He wouldn`t take a salary for anything he`s done,” said Adams.
”Sometimes I literally had to force him to take money that was due him.
`Look,` I told him, `we got to pay you. You have to take the money.` Bud Williams is unbelieveable.”
Williams told Adams of his medical problems.
”He told me there was something there,” says Adams. ”He said there was some kind of mass near his throat, but he told me it wasn`t that bad. He said he could work; that he could coach.
”I believe in him so much that there was no question in my mind. I still wanted him as the coach. I think he just blocked out everything else. He didn`t say `cancer,` he just said there was something.”
”When he told us I was scared and angry at first,” said young David Jones. ”I thought we were a good team, but now I think we work even harder because of the coach.”
Less than two weeks ago, St. Mel trailed Leo by 10 points in the third quarter. The team huddled together after a timeout. Jones recalls one of the players saying, ”Let`s win it for Coach Williams.” St. Mel almost did, forcing an overtime before losing by three points.
There is this drill that Williams always runs. For two minutes, the players run from baseline to baseline. It`s hard. It`s tough. The legs ache. The breath is forced. It`s conditioning, but to Jones and Davis, it`s also hell. ”Sometimes I think of coach when I`m running,” says Jones. ”I don`t stop then.”
Williams thinks the entire team has reacted with a greater intensity in practice and in games. ”I told them what I had the first day, and I think they were all stunned. Maybe that`s why they work so hard. As a coach, their practices are a delight. They never quit.”
Davis thinks Williams ”is very hard to please,” but the coach knows how much he`s changed.
”Sure, I`m different, now,” said Williams. ”I thought I was a tough coach at the underlevels, but these kids are so young, so inexperienced at times, you can`t be so tough.”
The treatment for cancer is also mental. It is one day at a time, and mornings Williams wakes up with his silent prayer. He can get out of bed. He can go to work. ”And that`s not bad.”
His children, Rick, Tim, Jerry, Martin, Marita, Beth and Monica all graduated from college. He`s got six grandchildren, and by the end of May, there will be four more. All three of his daughters and one of his daughters- in-law are pregnant.
When he heard the doctor say ”there`s something there,” Richard ”Bud” Williams` mind flashed forward, not back.
”I wanted to be around for next May,” he said. ”I wanted to see my new grandchildren.”
There is something there.
It`s called courage.
