(This ran originally in The Times and The News-Star, 7-21-2019. Today JJ and I both take a stab at offering a tribute to a friend, a former employer, and a fellow traveler.)

He was not particularly well known outside of Lincoln Parish. But if you grew up in Ruston or Choudrant, Grambling or Simsboro, Bernice or Dubach or Vienna, O.K. “Buddy” Davis was the King of Sports for the past 50 years.

Since one of every six inductees into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame has a direct Lincoln Parish tie, that’s saying something. As executive sports editor of the Ruston Daily Leader, Buddy covered them all with joy and wit. He was a sportswriter, historian, and encourager who always wrote with a positive slant and a good nature. He lived the same way.

Buddy, 72, passed away in his sleep at Princeton Place in Ruston early last Saturday morning, July 13, six years and a week after a stroke that left him with full use of his brain but bodily use of nothing more than his right arm. Until the end, he used his right hand to tap out stories and columns and blogs from bed in his assisted-living suite, sometimes on his cell phone.

To the nice people at Princeton Place and to Buddy’s friends, especially Rick Hohlt, T. Scott Boatright, Tammie Oakes, and Michelle Jimmerson, what they’ve done in their constant care for Buddy since his stroke is nothing less than a holy act. You never forget seeing love in action, and their care was constant.

In the months and then years after his stroke, I’d get these command sentences on my phone. “Coffee at 3” or “coffee at 2:30.” This was Buddy texting in his order.

The first time it happened, I didn’t know what coffee he wanted. Most everybody in Ruston came to know that he wanted a Starbucks Pike, two Sweet’N Lows, two creams. I had only been in a Starbucks a couple of times and was “sponsored” on those two trips and noticed that coffee was about eight bucks when I could get it up the street at Mrs. Jan’s for fifty cents.

“This is going to cost me about 30 bucks a week forever,” I remember thinking. Turns out though, a large Pike is just regular coffee and is $2.19, something in my price range. I still have around $14 left on my Starbucks app if you’re thirsty.

Through the years the texts grew less and less as Buddy tired and then, last Saturday, ran out of gas. But he was Buddy to the end. Just in the past three weeks he enjoyed long visits with three of his old athlete friends. Two of them called me right after they’d left Buddy’s suite and went on and on, like Little Leaguers, about the past hour they’d spent with Buddy. He could still dial it up at times, but as the rest of us will understand one of these days, there comes a point when nothing is left in the tank.

Not many people get to do what they wish to do their whole life. Buddy came close. These last six years he would have liked to have been more mobile of course, but courageously he battled on, an example to any star he ever wrote about and to each of us of determination and will and grace under pressure. You visited Buddy in his suite, a museum of photographs and autographs and bobbleheads, and left feeling better than when you’d shown up.

The only other job he might have considered was with the Three Stooges. He loved that trio and was an official member of the Three Stooges Club since 1996 “with all the rights and privileges of all such members” his framed certificate states, whatever those rights and privileges might be. I guess he was legally allowed to hit someone on the head with a big rubber hammer. With his round face and challenging hair, his simple and silly sense of humor, his upbeat attitude, Buddy could have easily been the Fourth Stooge.

Instead his was a born sportswriter, a bachelor who more or less married the newspaper life, the perfect guy at the perfect place at the perfect time. That was God’s gift to Buddy. And Buddy was a wonderful steward of that. He didn’t cheat, he took his cuts, right to the end.

It was an honor to work with Buddy and serve with Buddy and work for Buddy – it was awesome to get those $25 checks for covering a Simsboro or Choudrant game back when I was 21 and a student at Louisiana Tech. Everyone in the Louisiana Sports Writers Association agrees that none of us could have handled the past 2000 days with the heroic attitude that Buddy did.

Ball and athletics, it’s a noble thing. And work is a noble task. I think this is one of the things that drove Buddy, and one of the reasons why this week I have witnessed the tears of 70- and 80-year-old men who’ll miss him so. It’s “just” ball, but God is in the grass, he’s in a Little League uniform, in the smell of a ball glove and in a high sky. Everything good reflects the Maker.  It’s never about us, it’s always about Him. Buddy never made it about Buddy. He was a worker bee who served others, and with his stories and bad puns and terrible jokes and mostly the quick and sly smiles, he brought joy.

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