So last Thursday morning I come into the office after missing about 10 days of what now seems a pretty insignificant medical challenge, and I’m thinking, I better give Billy a call and get him to do a column on Jack Gotta.
Jack of course was a great Canadian football legend who coached the Calgary Stampeders back to respectability and he died June 29.
I knew that Billy knew him well, and worked with him in those football years.
And then I got the phone call.
Billy Powers was dead. So was his wife Donna Lee.
Denial and disbelief. Who could possibly do this to Billy P and Donna Lee?
There must be some mistake.
Billy and Donna Lee were two of the nicest, kindest people one would ever meet.
It simply couldn’t be.
But it was.
I go back to the 1970s with Billy P when I was doing public relations for the Calgary Centennials hockey team and Billy was the sports guru at XL radio and he was a good one.
Over the years we became great friends and survived many experiences and I’ll share a couple with you.
Billy loved his beer and I haven’t had a drink since 1966 so we made a great pair.
He was very proud and even protective of me and I recall one social function when a rather large, gruff guy came up and asked what I was drinking and he was buying.
I just said I was fine and didn’t need a drink and the guy persisted and almost instantly Billy was between us and in the guy’s face telling him in no uncertain terms I didn’t want a drink and to get the hell out of our faces. The guy did.
Just to put it into perspective.
We were at a charity golf tournament at Redwood Meadows a few years back and it was kind of a funny deal.
Two paying people received one celebrity, then the three of them purchased another celebrity with the purchase price going to the charity.
Well those two guys and Billy picked me and I was quite impressed.
For the wrong reasons it turns out.
When we had a quiet time before the game I had the opportunity to thank Billy for having chosen me.
I proudly told him how my game had improved and I appreciated the confidence he obviously expressed in me and my game.
He gave me kind of a funny look and said, “I don’t care about your golf game, I just want your beer tickets.”
Little wonder we were such great friends.
To lose three good people and three good friends in a week isn’t easy but there is a lesson.
We have to share with the living.
When’s the last time you thanked someone for simply being part of your life?
When was the last time you thanked somebody for simply being a friend?
We take far too much for granted.
It’s not that we don’t appreciate others in our lives it’s that we never seem to have the time or the courage to tell them.
I wish I had one more chance to tell Billy Powers and his wife Donna Lee what great people they were.
I wish I had another opportunity to tell Jack Gotta how much I enjoyed swapping stories with him.
And that’s the lesson.
Run the risk of rejection and tell people how important they are in your life.
Tell them now because we simply don’t know what the future may bring.
It’s not important how we die but there’s nothing more important than how we live.
And we live better by sharing our feelings, our emotions and ourselves with each other.
So my friends - Billy P, Donna Lee and Jack, rest in peace.
I’m the luckiest guy in the world for you to be part of my life.
I just wish I’d told you.
