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Bob Mann recalls those who have passed on, March 2001.
There is a borrowed phrase about obituaries that I share in journalism I classes I teach at the University of Texas, "that the best subjects are people who - were huge once -30 years ago, minimum -then lived long enough to be widely forgotten."
Those words came to mind when I read the most recent Cameron Herald -a thankful gift from my considerate mother for more than three decades -a bundle of hometown news that reaches me wherever I have resided since finishing, barely, C. H. Yoe High in 1962.
For in last week's Herald was a five-paragraph obit about a fellow who in the early 1960s was indeed huge, the most natural amateur runner ever I have seen.
Amos Doskocil, a year behind me in Yoe High, was also a quiet, modest decent all-around athlete, a strong student and, even as a teen, a gracious gentleman, who never fell prey to swagger and loud talk.
He was a reluctant participant in contact sports, but when he agreed to play football, nobody in Central Texas could catch him if he had anything approaching an opening on the football field in front of him.
I've no recall- though even as a high schooler I was writing sports for the Herald back then -of the gridiron statistics or marvelous track meet performances of Amos Doskocil, in part because, with Amos, it was never about the numbers. It was about the magic.
With his sandy, brown hair falling over his eyes, Amos Doskocil ran like Stan Musial and Joe damage swung bats, with a heavenly grace, his feet barely touching the ground and the wind seemingly always at his back. His quiet ways, like Musial's and DiMaggio's, made him a solitary, often isolated figure amidst a bevy of back-slapping, yahooing young Yoemen chargers.
Never did I hear Amos Doskocil brag or, for that matter, say much at all. When he did talk, he usually made observations we wish we'd made. As I recall, he was a top student, but college and leaving Milam Country were not in the cards for Amos. He stayed near the country he obviously loved and, simply was a good worker, a good a citizen, a good man.
When the class of '62 held a reunion at the legendary Oak Club a few years ago, Amos, class of '63, strolled in after asking if that would be OK. Surely it was and many of us rushed to greet this still silent man who, rather than joining in our celebratory antics, sat at the bar and silently sipped a beer, a worn, straw cowboy covering whatever was left of that shock of hair the breeze whizzed through when Amos shot out of the blocks at Yoe Stadium four decades ago.
Someone that night at the Oak Club told me Amos was not well and the obit I sadly encountered of his death at 57 surely confirms that.
Although the Herald has become one of the finest weekly newspapers in this nation, there are only so many resources even the best of newspapers can allocate to final stories written about those who were "huge once," particularly if "once" was four decades ago.
Likely the most memorable character I encountered growing up in Cameron in the 1950s and early '60s was the infamous lawman, Sheriff Carl Black, the Matt Dillon of Milam Country whose wrath one never would choose to incur, but whose style of law enforcement -quick, honest, sometimes brutal but usually fair, or even kindly if you were a kid or down on your luck -is the stuff of novels and the Big Screen.
But Mr. Black lived to be 95, a couple of decades past what the majority of aging readers can easily recollect, so, for all his legendary fame and fear, the obit I remember reading about the sheriff was similar to the one on Amos Doskocil, nice, but necessarily abbreviated, a few paragraphs with the basics.
And unless one remains visible nearly up to the day of departure from this earth, as ageless City Councilman Dana Kestenbaum did, we can't expect a lot of ink when we pass on. That is understandable, as frustrating to journalists as it is to journalism teachers who have to warn students not only about time and space limitations, but about legacies lost with the passing of years.
It also is why I am taking time to remember the shy kid who could outrun the wind -as well as to remember the lawman who the wind wouldn't dare cross - for I think it important for some of us over 50 to occasionally invoke public measure so the whipper snappers will learn something of the past and so we can remind ourselves that, even in this complex and complicated world, it is still sheer honesty, modesty, fairness and decency that we value and remember the most.
That and a remarkable sandy-haired country kid named Doskocil who, while hardly breaking a sweat, could have run circles around Bugs Bunny.