Change is good for Sam Cook

Sam Cook talks during a time out last season. Brandon is on the far right

It was a comment made in passing and one that he probably would not have even remembered, but it meant a lot to me. We stood together in the loading dock of the Sherwood Senior Center among bulk commercial kitchen supplies and Rubbermaid containers smelling of old lettuce. I had told Sam that some day soon I would be changing jobs to a more traditional work schedule and when I did would no longer be able to drive my Thursday Meals-On-Wheels route. Sam shrugged and not in a way that suggested indifference or even acknowledgement of the impending inconvenience of filling my spot. Sam was too blunt for such a subtle gesture. Sam shrugged and said simply "change is good".

I thought of his words often over the next few months. I was making a change in my life for the first time in a long time and that simple phrase became my mantra and gave me comfort. Anytime doubt snuck into my head I beat it back with Sam's words. This new job would be good, it was something that I needed.

Sam wasn't just the guy I went to when I ran low on milk on my M.O.W. route. I really knew him as Brandon's basketball coach for the last few years. Small in stature but large in authority he instantly had the support of the parents and the respect of the kids. He yelled at them, called them out in disgust when they did something dumb, and frequently stopped a practice session with a shout of LISTEN, LISTENNN! But the boys never took it wrong and more surprisingly there were never any complaints from the parents. Sam didn't have a kid on the team, he was just a hyper guy who believed in being involved in the community and he knew basketball. All of us looked up to him for that.

One morning during a tournament in Canby, Sam sat with our family when the team went out for breakfast between games. For some reason I had ordered my eggs "over easy" with my biscuits and gravy. When our food arrived and I chopped into the runny eggs and it started mixing with the gravy. Sam, who is at least a vegetarian and maybe a full out vegan, didn't hold back. "I gotta tell you" he says, "that is really disgusting!" I looked down at it and had to agree. What the hell was I thinking? Yuck. Sam was blunt but he was usually right on.

Sam was just one of those busy guys you saw all over town. I found that he lived in the same block as the fire station where I worked in southwest Portland. When I went for runs around the neighborhood while at work I would sometimes see him outside and just last week when the boys and I were doing some last minute Christmas shopping at REI in Tualatin we were surprised to hear Sam's voice call to us as he approached wearing an employee vest. He was working there part time during the holidays. You just never knew where he was going to pop up.

Last summer when we stood on that loading dock Sam confided to me, out of the corner of his mouth because he didn't want anyone at the Senior Center to know yet, that he was quitting there to accept a short term job as a teacher at the Sherwood High School. The position was only for the first trimester of the school but he hoped that it might open the door to something more permanent.

But a position never became available and now Sam and his wife have decided to move back to Kansas City where they grew up and she has found a good paying job. Sam called all the boys on the basketball team together after a practice and let them know that he wouldn't be able to finish the season with them as their coach. Everyone was disappointed and sad. But I think he left them, and certainly left me, as an example of an honest somebody who gets involved to make his part of the world a better place.

But now it's time for Sam to move on and we'll all need to try to remember his words. Change is good.