December 1, 2005 Issue

In 1966 the Atlanta Braves relocated from Milwaukee and the Atlanta Falcons became the NFL’s newest franchise. The Braves had a history from their years in Milwaukee, and they had players like Felipe Alou, Eddie Mathews, and of course Hank Aaron. They were terrible, but occasionally they would win a game. Their first game in Atlanta was a 3-2 loss in 13 innings to Pittsburgh. Tony Cloninger pitched all 13 innings for the Braves and I don’t think he ever recovered. My father taught me to keep score at that game.

The Falcons however, were beyond terrible. The first year the Falcons drafted Tommy Nobis, who had broken my 10-year old heart by stopping Joe Namath and Alabama on a goal line stand in a late season game, while starring as a linebacker at Texas He was the only bright spot on a disastrous team.

My father had somehow secured season tickets to the Falcons games. We had almost no money and I’m sure it was a sacrifice for him. My mom, and me and usually a friend would go to the games.

I was raised on Alabama football. George Wallace may have been the governor but coach Bryant was our leader. Though the state consistently ranked at the bottom of education and poverty statistics; the University of Alabama always ranked at the top of the football polls. It was all we had to be proud of.

The first season the Falcons had drafted a quarterback named Randy Johnson from Texas A&I. One of the highlights of the year was when he lined up under the left guard and waited for the ball to be snapped. The crowd howled in laughter until he figured out his mistake.

It must have been difficult for odds makers to set lines for the early Falcons games. The contests were rarely competitive. I can remember sitting in our end zone seats, high up in the stadium, and in the cold of winter we would watch the game slip away early. By the fourth quarter all was lost. The crowd would begin leaving shortly after half-time. But even at 40 to 0, with two minutes left in the game, we sat, shivering under our crimson Alabama blankets. Not because I wanted to—but because my father made us. “You never know,” he’d say, “We might come back and win.”

I was only 11 years old but I was good in math. And I knew more about football then than I do now. But as the stadium emptied, we’d sit, huddled in blankets, and wait for the final 10 seconds to wind down. “10.9.8.7…. we’d scream them out as though we were helping the Falcons with their clock management, as though it was the end of a tight basketball game and our team had the ball. I guessed that since we had so much invested in the tickets my father wanted to make sure we got our money’s worth.

When he would make his inevitable pronouncement, “The game is never over until the end,” I would glance around at the mostly empty seats in our section and hope that no one had heard him. There were actually more people in our pitiful end zone section than any place else in the stadium. The wealthy folks in the boxes and the good seats had long since gone. I think we sat with people who were, for the most part, familiar with defeat.

My father was a civil rights lawyer. He didn’t start out that way. But, as a young lawyer in Birmingham, Ala. a combination of a lack of clients and a family to feed kept him from being choosey as to whom he represented. He also felt that a lawyer was obligated to represent whoever requested help. Picking and choosing clients wasn’t an option for him. There weren’t many lawyers in Birmingham in the early 1960s eager to take on cases involving civil rights. Aside from there being little money involved, there wasn’t much future in it.

The years of Bull Connor, police dogs, fire hoses and the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing was responsible not just for my family leaving Birmingham, they were responsible for the Braves and the Falcons, and the Atlanta Airport for that matter, being in Atlanta instead of Birmingham. So in the mid ‘60s we all ended up in Atlanta together.

It was a good fit. My father’s clients through the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War were underdogs. Even Muhammad Ali, who was represented by my dad during his draft evasion case, was an underdog in that instance. One spring afternoon after a track meet at Grady High School my father took me and some friends to Paschal’s Motor Hotel on Auburn Ave. In the parking garage there, we sparred with Ali. The thing we were most impressed with was a telephone he had in his brief case.

They were great years for a kid who loved sports. In 1966 athletics in the Georgia High School system became integrated. To this day, the high school basketball state championships held at Alexander Memorial Coliseum, remain my favorite sporting events. We pulled for Druid Hills, but were mesmerized by the almost exotic black schools such as Carver of Atlanta and Beach from Savannah.

I remember meeting my father at his gate at the old Hartsfield Airport. He had been traveling with Ralph Abernathy, Andy Young, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. My father reached out and gave me a hug and a kiss. I was 13 and must have reacted like the awkward adolescent I was. As we walked toward the terminal I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t ever be embarrassed to show affection for another man; particularly when it’s your father,” Rev. Young told me. Lessons learned as a kid seem to stick.

I live in Destin, Fla. now and only visit Atlanta occasionally. I meet old friends from North Fulton High School just before Christmas every year. I wander through Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza, and remember what Lenox was like when we used to run through it on our afternoon cross country runs.

That was many years ago. My life has been a privileged one. I have been blessed with health, family, and some success. But like everyone I have had some difficult times. There have even been some desperate times in my life—but there have never been hopeless times.

I remember those cold, grey winter afternoons high up in the north end zone of the old Fulton County stadium. I remember those hapless, bumbling Atlanta Falcons. And I remember my father, sitting resolutely in a seat we could not have possibly been able to afford, counting off the seconds of a game that had been lost much earlier.

He knew there wasn’t much chance of the Falcons winning any of those games. But he also knew that he had many clients who had little chance of winning their battles. And he knew he had an 11- year-old son who was growing up during a complicated period in our country’s history. He wanted me to know that there is always hope, regardless of the circumstances.

Every day, I thank him for that gift.

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