Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 22, 1993 TAG: 9302220056
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WILT BROWNING LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: RALEIGH, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
VALVANO RETURNS TO SCENE OF GLORY
SURROUNDED BY players from his 1983 national championship team, Jim Valvano made an emotional homecoming to North Carolina State's Reynolds Coliseum on Sunday.\ They played a basketball game in an old building called Reynolds Coliseum on Sunday. One team won. One team lost.
It didn't matter.
What mattered most to the sellout crowd was that for one emotional hour, James T. Valvano was back. Once more, it was 1983. Once more, Thurl Bailey and Dereck Whittenburg and Terry Gannon and most of the rest of that national championship team sat where they used to sit a decade ago.
This time, Valvano shuffled along on legs whose strength has been stolen by the cancer that has left him more frail than he was 10 years ago. Dressed in a blue ABC-TV blazer, gray trousers and colorful tie, Valvano, 46, moved slowly, hugging each member of the '83 team until he came to Bailey, the 7-footer at the end of the line.
Always the showman, Valvano drew up a chair, climbed onto the seat so that he looked Bailey squarely in the eye and hugged the long-time NBA star.
"Jimmy Veeeee! Jimmy Veeeee! Jimmy Veeeee!" the crowd chanted again and again as 12,000 people stomped their feet in cadence with the chanting.
Slowly, Valvano lowered himself into a seat exactly where he once plotted strategy for the Wolfpack. This time he sat beside his wife, Pam, who Saturday had received 83 red roses from a star of the '83 team, Cozell McQueen, who is playing professional basketball in Italy.
She hugged Valvano's arm and drew him close. And when she thought no one was looking, she lovingly patted his right knee. He dabbed the emotion from his face with a white handkerchief.
Then he was there, one moment an old man, the next young again, it seemed. He removed the house microphone from its cradle. He waved to the crowd and smiled.
"I'm at a loss for words," he said, and the crowd roared.
Jim Valvano knows how to work a room, and he's never been at a loss for words. For 15 minutes he proved it, speaking eloquently and without notes, mostly about his national championship team.
"Nobody had more fun than I did for the 10 years I was fortunate enough to stand in that corner before every game," he said, pointing to the far end of the Wolfpack bench, "and thank God for the opportunity to coach at North Carolina State University."
Of all his teams, he said, "the '83 team was special - not because it hung up that banner." Pointing to the national championship flag spotlighted in the distance, he added, "but because it taught me so many lessons."
It taught him to hope and to dream, Valvano said.
"And it taught me the idea of never ever quitting," he said as the roar of the crowd again began to build so that Valvano had to speak even more loudly.
"Don't ever give up," he said, and the crowd picked the chant "Don't give up! Don't give up!" until it died away in some distant corner of the old building.
"Today, I fight a different battle. You say I walk different, and I do. You say I stand different, and I do . . .
"What cancer cannot touch is my mind, my heart and my soul," he said.
Again, the crowd - which had not been seated since Valvano appeared at the corner of the court - cheered the way it used to cheer the work of Sidney Lowe and Whittenburg and Bailey and McQueen and Lorenzo Charles.
"I have hope that things may get better for me," he said. "I have faith in God and my fellow man that things might get better.
"But I miss all you people who write and say in such special ways, `Jimmy V, don't give up.' "
"Don't give up! Don't give up! Don't give up!" the 12,000 chanted again.
Valvano smiled as he looked around the big, noisy coliseum. He stood squarely at midcourt in the building from which he rose to national prominence as both a coach and as a talker.
His smile grew even more broad.
"And if by chance the Lord wants me, he's going to get the best damn broadcaster and coach he's ever had," he said.
The noise, the cheering and the stomping, for a moment was deafening. And once again, from somewhere in the distance it began: "Jimmy Veeeee! Don't give up! Jimmy Veeeee! Don't give up!"
Then he was through, slipping the microphone back onto its stand and waving to the crowd dressed mostly in red. And for a moment, the '83 team gathered around its coach once again.