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WARNING: Never go to lunch with this former Duke U basketball coach if you're hungry
WARNING: Never go to lunch
with Bucky Waters when you're hungry.
I made that mistake recently when the former
Duke University basketball coach and I went to a fine
Italian restaurant in Durham, and I realized that after
almost an hour, I'd only eaten a couple of bites.
Once Waters starts talking about his life, fork and
food may go untouched.
I picked him up at his home in Durham,
and when he sat down in my untidy car, he saw
on the floor a lone tennis ball. That led to a
hilarious story about the times football star Franco
Harris and he played tennis with
Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert.
Waters, at 82, is still fit and elegant, with a
bearing befitting someone with
the government handle Raymond Chevalier Waters.
As my buddy Dwayne Ballen and I discuss often
when making up lists on this and that, there are
only two men who've ever worn a turtleneck and
sport coat as well as Waters - Richard Roundtree
and Steve McQueen. That's Shaft and Bullitt,
respectively. (See the above picture if you think I'm
jivin'.)
After we got to the restaurant, he told about his
hardscrabble childhood in Camden, N.J., and an
early encounter with his high school basketball
coach, Jack McCloskey.
"He grabbed me by the collar one day and got
right in my face and said 'You've got enough talent
to get out of here, and I'm not going to stop until you
do,'" Waters recalled.
After the waitress brought our food, he asked if I
minded if he blessed it before we began eating.
He then unleashed into the heavens a short,
powerful grace that had even the people at the next
table staring, mouth agape.
He told me about one of his
childhood friends, Eugene Maurice Orowitz:
"We called him 'Oogie'," Waters said. "In high
school, he was one of the best javelin throwers in
the country. [Oogie held the national high school
record for years.] One day, when he was in
junior college, his roommate had a tryout for a play,
but the person who was supposed to read lines with
him didn't show up. He asked Oogie to go read
with him."
He did, and he impressed the director: Oogie
became Michael Landon.
Even though I was enthralled, Waters
would occasionally apologize for monopolizing the
conversation: I assured him I had no stories
to rival his.
If you're really hungry, you don't want him to
start talking about the great basketball players he