Just a basketball?

Weeks before they won the NCAA National Championship, my friend bought a basketball autographed by the University of North Carolina basketball team. He paid $ 160.   This is the team that went on to become the most successful college basketball team in the world, at least for the 08/09 season.

On this basketball, were the signatures of Hansborough, Lawson, Ellington and Williams, historic quick strokes of a magic marker in the hands of champions.

A lifelong Tar Heel fan, my friend saw an opportunity to achieve his own victory, that of making a winning contribution to his daughter’s Mt Pleasant school fund raising effort.

Keeping the ball for his trophy case was surely tempting.  After all, these were the signatures of the 2009 NCAA National Champions. He had graduated from UNC.   He had cheered for the Tar Heels since childhood. They were again in the basketball history books and surely he deserved this trophy.

His daughter, a teenager, knows the sacrifice her dad made. She knows exactly how much he would have loved to have been able to show the ball off to visitors for years to come. She knows how much her dad would have loved to have kept the ball for himself or sold it for a cool few thousand.

But instead she knows how much she is appreciated by her dad. She knows what he gave up to make his donation to her Mt Pleasant school auction. The autographed basketball sold for $2,200.

She will soon forget the NCAA National Championship Tar Heel team, but never forget her father’s act of affection, devotion and commitment.

Children are our future.

Great parents like Richard, not basketball players, are our society’s true champions.