About four months ago, I received a call from a woman who wanted to bond her husband out of jail. She said that she had a sensitive situation and had been given my name by her attorney. Her husband was in jail, was terminally ill and not expected to live much longer. She wanted to get him out as soon as possible.

I met with her and did the bond. I didn’t give it much thought until he called me later that week. He was extremely grateful and assured me that he would make every court appearance. He said “I’m just so glad that I don’t have to die in jail.” That comment left me speechless. I didn’t know how to respond to him.

We had several conversations over the months regarding court dates and his appearances. He called me last month and told me that he wanted to take one last trip to visit family out of state and needed my consent. Again he assured me that he would make all of his court dates and would keep me informed of his whereabouts at all times. I told him that I would consent to the trip and would provide the appropriate document to the court.

He called me two weeks ago and said that the trip was planned and he needed the document for the court. Again, he repeated his itinerary and gave me contact numbers for those he would be visiting. He ended the call by saying that he wanted to have lunch when he returned from the trip. He wanted to meet me because I was one of the few people in the system that he met who cared about his situation. I told him that I would very much like to meet him and that he should call me when he was rested after his trip.

His wife called me…he died while on the trip. I won’t get that chance to meet him. He was a man facing a certain death and was concerned about making his court appearances and reassuring me.  I wish I had others who cared half as much.

This week, I learned that my high school football coach passed away. No finer man ever paced the sidelines of a football game. He coached football and life at the same time. We were a small school and won a lot of games that we had no business winning. He made the best of our limited talent by installing innovative game plans each week. You hear about the pros doing zone blocking on offense and zone blitzes on defense today. We were doing it in the 60′s. I was privileged to have played for him for the four years I was in high school.

Another client once told me that in life we are all running a race that we cannot win…the most we can hope for is style points. I think about that everyday.

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