THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 28, 1996 TAG: 9607260176
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 19 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY VICKI L. FRIEDMAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 101 lines
MADISON ``POP POP'' Chavis had Olive Branch Little League in his blood.
Likewise, the folks from Olive Branch keep the memory of Chavis in their hearts.
``OB, OB, OB-positive,'' is the shrill cheer that the man everybody called Pop Pop used to chant while roaming the stands at baseball games. Long after his sons, Lutrell and Romac, stopped playing Little League, Chavis would be at the ballfield off Clifford Street with Gatorade and good cheer for every kid on the team.
``He was the kind of guy, if you asked him for $5, he'd give you $10,'' said ex-Little Leaguer Danny Self, 17. ``He came to every game. If we traveled, he traveled. I feel like he's still with us.''
In a way, he is. Chavis died in his sleep three years ago. Nearly every ballplayer at Olive Branch sat through the funeral and watched a three-gun salute put Chavis to rest in the cemetery across the road from the Little League complex behind Simonsdale Elementary. Danny's brother, Dennis, said Chavis' death tugged at him long after that.
``When he died, it got to me,'' Dennis said. ``Me and my dad and my brother were talking about it one day and I said, `I think the whole team ought to get together and pray before every game.' I thought it would be a good thing to do. We've been doing it since I was 11, and I'm 14 now.''
The players began visiting his grave before each game to call upon his encouragement. After big games, they return to tell him how it went. The ritual, continued today by coach Allen Boyd's Senior (14-15) Little League team, often leaves opposing teams puzzled, but it became something of a tradition to keep Pop Pop alive in the players' memories and abreast about what's going on over at Olive Branch.
``If we don't have time,'' said Aaron Kelly, a rising sophomore at Alliance Christian, who leads the opening prayer, ``we make sure we have time.''
Madison Chavis Sr., originally from Richmond County, S.C., lived on Horne Avenue in Portsmouth. He worked for 20 years as a Virginia Employment Commission tax investigator. Also a decorated Navy veteran, he retired as a master chief after 23 years. His sons, Romac and Lutrell, played Little League ball at Olive Branch, which became a second home to Chavis.
``He whooped it up and hollered it up,'' recalled Boyd. ``If a kid needed a drink or bubblegum or a steak dinner, he was there. He loved all kids.''
You could hear him a mile away. ``OB, OB, OB-positive,'' a cry that sounded like a cross between a whooping crane and a wolf.
Said team mom Renee Cauldwell, ``He never stopped.''
Chavis loved to share coolers of Gatorade with whatever team was playing. He became a father figure to many of the Olive Branch players, buying lunch or dinner, giving rides to and from games, talking out whatever needed to be talked out. It was a given that he'd make the seven-hour plus drive to Pound, Va., at state tournament time.
``You know, the people in Pound, they knew him, too,'' Boyd said. ``They still ask about him.''
Many of the players on the team Boyd coaches didn't know Chavis all that well. Nathan Johnson is an exception. His brother played football with one of Boyd's sons. Sometimes he visits Chavis' grave on his own, riding his bike over and stopping to talk.
``We just got back from state,'' Johnson said. ``I wish we could have taken him with us.''
Instead many of the players shaved his surname on the back of their heads. And as usual they took one of the ball caps that they had made up the year after his death. Sewn into the cap in gold lettering is ``Chavis.'' During trips to Pound, the cap hangs in a place of honor in the dugout.
Last Tuesday evening, Boyd's Olive Branch team, this year's District 6 champions, met to turn in their uniforms. The weekend before, they had been beaten in the state tournament in Pound to end the season.
Shortly after 6, the familiar procession began. In shorts and sneakers, the boys wearing the blue and yellow hats labeled ``OB'' shuffled through the gravel parking lot, across the two-lane road, over a gully and onto the cemetery crabgrass. The trek took them to Chavis' grave, at the far end of the graveyard. There sits the marker, underneath a sprawling oak tree about a stone's throw from an American flag blowing atop an enormous pole.
``Madison Chavis Sr.,'' it reads. ``SKCM. U.S. Navy. Korea. Vietnam. May 7, 1930 to Aug. 3, 1993.''
A tiny American flag stands next to the stone along with a dying arrangement of white roses, daisies and carnations. The balloon the boys placed there before the state tournament is barely inflated, visible mainly thanks to the blue and yellow streamers hanging from the string.
Danny Self had lagged behind the others. ``Get out of my spot,'' he tells a teammate and takes his place around the stone.
The boys kneel in a circle, removing their hats and placing them in the middle. Bowing their heads, Kelly leads them in prayer. He speaks softly, almost inaudibly to the casual observer.
``We just wanted to say thank-you for letting us go there safely, play safely and come back safely,'' he says while his teammates remain silent.
The Lord's Prayer follows, a louder, spirited version. ``For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.''
Right hands atop each other, the boys break into a cheer before dispersing.
It's easy to figure what they yell.
``OB, OB, OB-positive.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos by MIKE HEFFNER
Members of the Olive Branch all-star team gather around the grave of
Madison Chavis to tell him they had lost the state championship.
An American flag, flowers and a balloon from the Olive Branch boys
decorate the grave of ``Pop Pop'' Chavis, across the street from the
ballfield. by CNB