We met with Alison Sagar, our neice, at 10:30am at the Duke University Chapel - a central point on campus.
Jan and I wandered the campus with her, touring her room in her dormitory building, a couple of coffee shops, athletic facilities (deluxe!!!), the Duke Gardens, and a long walk through the woods around a golf course. Had lunch at the Washington Duke golf course, then wandered some more and arranged to meet later for dinner with Alison and her boyfriend Kinney.
They came by our hotel about 6:30pm. They had to pick us up because our car has had the back seats removed to allow for more storage, so we are strictly a two-seater now. We went a short distance down the road to Durham, past the Duke east campus, to an upscale and trendy area called Brightleaf Square. The name commemorates the background that tobacco has had in Durham and the south. At one time a very large cigarette factory employed a lot of people in Durham, making the Lucky Strike brand. All gone now, factory and tobacco farmers, and much of the tobacco used to make cigarettes in the US and Canada is imported from around the world while the North American growers have been largely cut out. I first learned of this in PEI, where tobacco was an important crop in the past, sold to Imperial Tobacco. No longer, Imperial imports from Europe now and the PEI farmers have had to switch to corn for the ethanol market. Perhaps the same story with southern farmers, I'd like to learn more about that.
A sidebar to that topic is that Duke U is a big time medical facility and teaching hospital, and justly famous for the quality of care. Signs everywhere note that smoking is prohibited anywhere around or (heaven forbid) inside the numerous hospital facilities on the campus. But guess where Washington Duke, the founder and patriarch, made his fortune that he used to create and fund the University? Yup, tobacco and cigarettes. A cynic would say he funded the hospital to take care of those damaged by his own product. Not me, though I am a cynic. I think it is just a sign of our greater knowledge now. My mother was advised by her doctor to start smoking to help her relax when she was pregnant with me.
Alison and Kinney are a charming couple as the pictures show. They are both 21, both in their senior year at Duke and on full athletic scholarships, she in rowing and he in football. Over dinner I spoke with him at length about University football, and realized how much the game has changed since I played at UBC. Still 11 per side and 100 yards, but the play is much more structured now than the 'knock him down and jump on him' of my day. Kinney is a defensive tackle, 6' 4" tall and somewhere north of 280# at this time in the season. He is BIG, and dominates by his sheer size at a dinner table or in a conversation. He is looking to turn pro in April with the NFL, and I look forward to seeing him mangling running backs on Monday Night Football in the near future. He can, I assure you, though at heart he is a really nice, quiet, and sort of reserved guy. Providing you're not wearing the other team's colors.
He opened my eyes with other details. Such as Duke's head coach's salary is 2.5 million dollars a year, plus free car, housing, gas, cell phone, etc. Wow, and I thought corporate America's CEO's were overpaid. And that coaches are spiritual leaders to the atheletes as well. Things like 'Practice makes Permanent', that's nice, and I agree, as well as being thankful (and giving thanks to god on the field) for the physical gifts that the players enjoy. Nice, humble.
We didn't speak about my own thoughts about the message of greed and vanity inherent in those remuneration figures, which apparently all coaches of nationally competitive college teams receive. Another detail was the amount that the alumni were prepared to donate to Duke Athletic Programs should the football team have a winning season and a bowl appearance. Amounts like half a million per year, for multiple years, from some individuals - if the team has a winning season. Which brings up the topic of Vince Lombardi's ageless dictum that 'Winning isn't everything, its the ONLY thing'. It matters less how you beat them, just beat them. History only records, and rewards, the victors. Now there's a lesson to teach the kids coming out into the business world and society at large. Just win, baby, as the Oakland Raiders said. That's what the coach wants, results. And the bankers who took huge chances with other people's money on the possibility that they could hit it big and cash in the bonus rewards. When they collectively guessed wrong, the leaverage they used caused the economy to teeter on the brink of the credit crunch. In the end we deserve the society we create, and the young will follow their role models.
