Make Martin Luther King Proud

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Sidewalks with Tom Deignan

Make Martin Luther King Proud

January 16, 2008

by Tom Deignan

WE should probably spend more time listening to the likes of Jack O’Brien when it comes to race relations in America. True, he’s an Irish guy from Boston, so it’s not like he was on the ramparts during the civil rights movement. As is well known, the Boston Irish have a particularly tortured relationship with African Americans.

Then again, to judge from the racial chaos which has exploded out of the Democratic presidential race, it’s pretty obvious even the best-intentioned people can’t seem to get this race thing down.

Bill and Hillary Clinton are on the defensive. He used the term “fairly tale” to describe specific Barack Obama proposals, but some took it to be a description of Obama’s unlikely presidential prospects, as if he is not worthy.

Meanwhile, she noted that President Lyndon B. Johnson was the one who signed most of America’s civil rights laws. That was taken, by some, as an insult to Martin Luther King and others who led the mass movements which compelled lawmakers to create those laws.

You know what this all means? It’s probably going to be a very rancorous Martin Luther King holiday this coming Monday, January 21.

Which brings me back to Jack O’Brien.

All he does is go out there every day as coach of the Charlestown High School basketball team and struggle alongside the African American youth that so many people -– black, white, Irish, presidential — claim to be speaking for.

In fact, on Martin Luther King Day, while pundits and politicians are speaking and spilling ink into newspapers about the state of race in America, particularly as it relates to the presidential run, you might instead want to think about the Irish in basketball.

In Springfield, Massachusetts, as part of a weekend high school basketball tournament, O’Brien will join legendary St, Anthony’s of New Jersey coach Bob Hurley for a discussion about teens, sports and writing.

I may be wrong, but I get a feeling that Hurley and O’Brien -– with their decades of coaching experience –- will have more interesting things to say about poor kids, race and class, than any person running for president.

Hurley’s achievements at St. Anthony’s are well chronicled by now. He has won over 90% of his games over three decades of coaching, and has nabbed over 20 state titles.

Now, a new book puts Charlestown’s O’Brien, if not in the same class as Hurley, at least in the same school. They are disciplined, dedicated coaches working with the toughest kids in America.

The book is called The Assist: Hoops, Hope and the Game of Their Lives (Public Affairs) by Neil Swidey. It opens with a haunting image of O’Brien and two of his players in a graveyard, standing before the grave of one of O’Brien’s great success stories, a talented but unfocused kid who used his basketball talent to earn a college scholarship, graduate early, and move on to graduate school. The kid, however, died from an enlarged heart.

“Across the street was the larger, more established Mount Cavalry Cemetery, where the gravestones dated back more than a century and carried the names of Boston’s Irish Catholic past. That was O’Brien’s (past),” writes Swidey.

But O’Brien has become much closer to the kids he coaches –- and thus, he knows the predomunantly black Oak Hill cemetery better.

He tears up, hugs his two co-captains, and comforts himself with the knowledge that at least his former player, with all that potential to lead a great life, had died of natural causes, rather than on the streets.

Later in the book, a minister says O’Brien does the Lord’s work “filling the space in these boys’ lives.”

“Suburban coaches have to contend with meddling parents furious when their kids don’t get playing time,” Swidey writes. “They wish the parents would just go away. City coaches get to see what it’s like when that wish comes true.”

So, it’s not to say the race for the White House is unimportant. And, sure, there are more important things than sports.

But this Martin Luther King Day, it seems that Hurley and O’Brien may have some important things to say about some very important topics. The question is, will we listen?

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