The end of youth
I had a column cooking about noted gambler and Texas Tech quarterback, for now, Brendan Sorsby, but I can’t write it.
Maybe later.
I can’t write it because I got a phone call from my friend Tim Aven on Wednesday, that another friend, my very best friend from high school, though David Quinn offered real competition, but David was not on the golf team, a huge Atlanta Braves fan, nor a purveyor of heavy metal, had died.
Tim called to tell me Chris Kenney had died.
Over last weekend, he said.
Perhaps a cardiac event, which I include because whenever somebody’s died before their time our mind goes to another cause of death. I was told it wasn’t that.
Because I could not find mention of his passing anywhere online, nor an obit, a death notice, a funeral arrangement (and still can’t), I very nearly texted Chris just hours after getting the call. But my daughter, who’d met him and who I’d told, found a mention on social media from a loved one.
Confirmation.
I’ve had three best friends in my life, or four or five if you count Barry Webster, who I thankfully still know, and Travis Howard, who I lost track of between fourth and fifth grade, when he and his mother moved to Houston, who I’ve not been able to locate since, though I’ve tried.
But mostly three.
Chris Bright, since forever.
Brent Cooper, since college.
Chris Kenney, since arriving at Bishop McGuinness in the fall of ’82.
Brent died on Dec. 30, 2017.
A brain tumor, after outliving his prognosis for years. I didn’t think I could write a whole column about him for the newspaper, so I memorialized him like this.
I hate now having to do that for Chris. But I must.
I’ve cried three times since writing the headline you see at the top, which I usually write last but this time wrote first. It’s the way I pay tribute, the way I grieve, the way I get through the worst of it.
I never really cried after my father died, but it was a long goodbye, the majority of which he endured in good spirits until the illness killed the spirits and his body a couple of weeks later. And I got to write about him as it was happening, even in the sports pages he’d first graced as a young basketball star, managing to put him in touch with some old friends along the way, which he appreciated.
I digress.
Let me tell you about Chris.
Let me begin with a trait of his that wasn’t my favorite, because it will take us to the ones that are.
He’d hang out at my house. Maybe we were headed to the golf course, maybe it was in high school, college summers, or even after he’d finished law school and I was home for some reason during my early sports writing days.
We’d be talking, about baseball, pro wrestling, music, whatever, and my dad, an Oklahoma City attorney of note, would enter the room behind me and before I knew it, Chris had ended our conversation mid-sentence, bounded off the couch, put his hand out and said something like, “Good to see you, Mr. Horning.”
Who’s this Mr. Horning, I would think for about half a second before putting it together and realizing my dad was there.
Times he and I had social plans in our 40s and 50s, only for him to push them back to the next week or the next one, I tended to believe another “Mr. Horning” must have entered the room.
But I didn’t sweat it.
It was just a part of him and we’d see each other eventually.
Though there were times we’d go long periods without seeing each other, I still knew he valued the friendship. I’d get a text during the World Series, during an OU football or basketball game, or from the theater as he watched “The Iron Claw,” the movie about the American tragedy that was the Von Erich family.
Always, I knew when we spoke again, it would be as it had always been, as though no time had passed, and it always was.
To be fair, I struggle horribly with friendships.
Struggle to pick up the phone. Struggle to text. It’s so easy to insulate within yourself. If you’re very lucky, you get to share your life with your person, your best best friend, who encourages you to stay in touch with your other best friends.
I have been very lucky.
That, and after my dad died, Chris woke me up with a phone call after the obit ran. It was a loss for him, too.
When we’d get together, as we did last, after a couple postponements, maybe three months ago, it was terrific. He was happy to see me, happy to meet Gwenda, interested, full of life, generous.
We always talked politics, yet later in life I couldn’t pin him down. In high school, we had the same heroes, yet the bigger he made it, and he made it very big, I think he occasionally drifted toward the party of those who’d made it big.
But his core values, I’m pretty sure, never changed.
He was always the same guy I grew up playing golf with, talked sports with and who introduced me to bands like Dokken when Breakin’ The Chains came out in ’83, and Whitesnake when Slide It In came out in ‘84, three years before David Coverdale began making videos with Tawny Kitaen and they took over the world.
Here, four things, apropos of nothing, about Chris and our friendship.
I’m a funny guy, a counterpuncher, who doesn’t tell jokes but gets off good lines. Meanwhile, nobody laughs — let’s stick with the present tense — nobody laughs more or bigger than Chris. So there was chemistry, but something more. He heard you. When he was there with you, he was there with you.
I mentioned the Braves. When we were in high school, we’d be on the phone for an hour, both watching the Braves live as we talked, both wringing our hands over the Braves’ inability to come up with a left fielder they could trust, both guessing what the next pitch would be, both managing the team.
The first flop shot I ever saw came from just off the back and left side of the first green at Lincoln West. Chris hit it. The pin was in the middle of that very large green and what I thought would be a routine chip came out 10 feet in the air and finished three or four feet from the cup. Amazing. I’ve never used it from that near the green, but I wanted that shot, learned that shot and have used it from all over the place since. I don’t use it like I used to, but I’ve still got it and it all goes back to Chris.
We both had great affinity for the intricacies of officiating sports. For instance, we were aficionados of called third strikes. If you know, you know. And we particularly loved basketball referees blowing the whistle and waving their arms in a rush to reveal, “no basket,” and if it was “charging, no basket,” even better. There’s very little personality among NBA refs these days. But in the old Big Eight, they had style.
We just connected. Like Brent and I connected. Like Chris Bright and I connect.
About Brent I wrote, “He was sweet, not cool; gracious, not fearful; helpful, not selfish; open, not shut.” I think Chris achieved coolness, but the rest of it goes for him, too. He was one of the good guys and what’s better than that?
I’ll miss him.
I loved him.
I fucking hate that he’s gone.
Until 10 days ago, we were the same age.
I hate that, too.
👊🏾 What a nice tribute to Chris. My condolences on the loss of those foundational friendships.
This took me back to those halcyon days of entering high school in Oklahoma in the fall of ‘82.
Clay,
There’s a kind of grief that comes not just from losing someone, but from losing the person who knew the version of you that no longer exists anywhere else. Chris carried forty-plus years of shared language for you — the golf course, the Braves, the metal records, the officiating minutiae nobody else would have sat still for.
You’ve now lost Brent, your father, and Chris. That’s a particular kind of accumulation. The people who made you are going, one by one, and each one takes a piece of the record with them.
What you wrote about presence — that when Chris was with you, he was with you — that’s rarer than we say out loud. We live in a world that rewards performance and distraction. Chris apparently just showed up and listened. That’s not a small thing. That’s, in fact, the whole thing.
The flop shot detail is the one that stayed with me. You learned it, kept it, still have it. That’s how the people we love remain. Not in monuments. In the small embodied things. The way you hold a club. The pitch you call. The wave of the arms — no basket, charging.
I’m sorry about Chris. I’m sorry about Brent. I’m sorry about your father. Losing the people who remember who you were is one of the loneliest griefs there is.
Thank you for writing it anyway.