Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 27, 1994 TAG: 9401270351
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: E-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RAY COX STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
When you've blown whistles, hollered or glared from alternately dusty or muddy sidelines as long as he has, you tend to think of a lot of things in football terms, maybe even cancer.
This is the situation:
The good guys have the ball, but they're in a bind.
They're looking at third- and- 13 from their 11 with 3 minutes 27 seconds left.
They're down by two touchdowns and an extra point.
And the rain that started in the first quarter has just turned to sleet.
It doesn't look too great for our heroes. But the good part is, now it's time for them to show us what they're made of. Time to show a little character.
If Bob "Guts" McLelland had a bunch in those straits, he'd know what to tell them. Man, he could go to town with stuff like that.
And in a sense, he does have a team in a situation like that. Members include his wife, Barbara, his partner of 43 years. His four daughters - Becky Whisnant, Ginny Headen, Susan Ware and Robin Nichols. His four sons-in-law. His 13 grandchildren. His 22 trainloads of former players. All those coaches. All those athletes he's written about for so many years. All those friends in all those diverse congregations of God-fearing souls who have him in their prayers. All those doctors and nurses. All those folk who have admired and not forgotten his life's work even though he hasn't drawn a paycheck for a full week's toil in 15 years.
They're scared. He's sick, and they're scared.
He's had to show some leadership here. So that's what he's done.
When things are rough, that's when the coach has to be stout on account of everybody else.
Leadership is no new experience for McLelland. He worked in the newspaper business in Roanoke for 29 years, 14 as sports editor of the Roanoke World-News.
He delivered the message that high school sports, the state colleges, the local news, were most important of all. He's officiated high school basketball games. He's carried the torch for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He's taught Sunday school. He's been a confidant. He's coached his tail off.
Politicians don't name football fields after lightweights. Victory Stadium has included McLelland Field for a while now.
"I told Dr. [William] Fintel [his oncologist] that if I could have a couple of more years, I will have coached 50 years," said McLelland, 69. "He told me, `If the good Lord wants you to coach 50 years, then you'll coach 50 years.'"
The good Lord must have wanted McLelland to be comfortable while he coached. That's why he saw to it that Guts had a chair to sit in these past few years. A man can't be uncomfortable when he's scheming ways to get the Optimist Club team back to the Sandlot Super Bowl.
Since he had his strokes back in 1978, McLelland hasn't been as light-footed as he used to be. The heart surgery took some of the starch out of him, too. But he hung in there, writing his free-lance articles, coaching his boys and being your basic pillar of Raleigh Court Presbyterian.
McLelland's the sort who tends to look life in the eye. So when he started losing weight this summer - 30 pounds - he didn't hide behind any skirts of delusion.
"I bet it's cancer," he told Barbara, who assured him it was something else.
But it was cancer, the doctor said, and it was working on his esophagus.
McLelland found some black irony in that. Most victims of this sort of malignancy fit a profile. But aside from the occasional pipe or cigar years ago when most of the fellows who worked in the Roanoke newsroom were puffing on something, he was pretty much vice-free. Never cigarettes. Hadn't smoked anything in no telling how long. No booze, no beer, no nothing.
McLelland just shrugged at the mystery of life.
One of his daughters railed at it.
"I shouldn't say that," she said.
But why not? Why not rage against fate? Why not just stomp outside and spit and scream your head off and start throwing things? Who says you shouldn't go ahead and cuss a blue streak?
What person would not in a similar situation?
"He'd be mad at me," she said.
Bob McLelland can be a stern man who is not to be trifled with.
But everybody's angry about the raw deal the guy's got. Why him? How come all the no-good scoundrels make every type of rotten mischief known to man and walk away scot-free and Bob McLelland is sick?
How come, indeed?
"I've never asked why," McLelland said. "I've never questioned God. I have never asked why he did this to me. I am content with my life. I have a wife and four lovely daughters. I've got four sons-in-law, I've got 13 grandchildren."
Thus it behooves him to confront this menace and defy it. For them.
And they for him. In football, they call it teamwork.
"Daddy expects us to," daughter Ginny Headen said. "Daddy's raised us to be a fighter. Never give up. There isn't anything you can't do, if you set your mind to it."
It's hard, though.
"When we came home from the hospital after we'd heard about the cancer, he told me he didn't want any tears," Barbara said. "Of course, I cried all the way home."
First thing he did was call the important people to tell them what was going on.
"Hey, this is Bob. I've got cancer."
Click.
Guts is not one for a lot of ceremony.
Or regrets.
"I have no second thoughts."
Oh, maybe there were a couple.
"I think his only regret was, when he had his strokes and had to retire early, that he couldn't take the grandchildren with him to all the clubhouses and locker rooms he went to," daughter Robin Nichols said.
Generally speaking, though, second thoughts are apparently down and out for the count. They've had plenty of time to whip him, and they've failed.
If chemotherapy, and radiation, and an upset stomach, and fatigue, and strain, and a blood infection, and taking lunch through a tube and still being hungry don't get you, then maybe you aren't going to get got.
"The doctor told us he knew of a man who had this type of cancer for five years," Barbara said. "Then he died of a heart attack."
They got worried about McLelland when he had that blood infection. For 24 days, they kept him in the hospital. Seemed like all he did was sleep. Didn't look good at all.
"Then he said something about a quarterback in his sleep, and we knew he was dreaming," Barbara said.
Good dreams.
He came home Dec. 15. In a few days, he was sitting up in the living room accepting visitors. Lots of visitors. Even more phone calls.
"When he started fussing, I knew he was feeling better," Barbara said.
Guts has been tough, and she's been his equal at going chin to chin with this thing.
"Mama's a fighter," Headen said. "She's had a lot to put up with, married to him."
Not bad stuff, just inconvenient. Sportswriters are gone all the time. Sportswriters like McLelland are gone even more. All those hours with his sandlot team. All the time helping somebody.
"But he always had time for us," Headen said.
Even being ill, McLelland has had a good year. He got to visit with the members of the 13-0 Patrick Henry High 1973 state football champions when they had a reunion in the fall. McLelland coached a lot of those kids - their fathers, too. Even wrote about them in the newspaper.
Merrill Gainer, the crusty West Virginian who coached those Patriots and has himself gone home to battle emphysema, called to wish McLelland well a few days ago. They've been friends for years, even though Gainer wouldn't talk to him for weeks after the column McLelland wrote about that Jefferson game.
People didn't think McLelland wrote anything bad about anybody, but Guts ripped PH and Gainer up one side and down the other because he thought the team had run it up on a routed Jefferson that night.
Frank Beamer sent a football that had been signed by the other coaches and players up at Virginia Tech, the place McLelland used to call VPI in his columns. Beamer called and said the Hokies were going to win the Virginia game for him, and daggone if they didn't go do it.
McLelland got to see seven of his grandson Shane Whisnant's games for Northside this fall. McLelland knew Whisnant was a good quarterback. He coached against him in sandlot. One game late in the year, McLelland was too weak to get out of the car. So they drove him to where he could see the kid run that Viking wishbone.
"I've been feeling pretty good," McLelland said.
Meanwhile, things have been looking up.
"I'm very optimistic," Nichols said. "He's got that meanness and drive."
And he's got a lot of support.
"You wouldn't believe how good people have been to me," he said.
Sure we would.
Memo: NOTE: Also ran in February 17, 1994 Current