On the night of Feb. 7, 1994, Ricky Byrdsong was in a Minnesota arena to coach a basketball team . . . or so everyone there thought. It certainly started out like a routine collegiate experience, with Byrdsong's athletes from visiting Northwestern University beside him on the bench, eager not to lose their eighth game in a row.
While watching his Wildcats on their way to another defeat, Byrdsong could no longer just sit there. The coach, 37 at the time, abruptly took what he would later call "a walk on the wild side."
He marched to the other end of the bench and sat on a stool, far from his assistant coaches.
Then, twice, he walked onto the court to make complaints to the officials, once drawing a technical foul.
When a timeout was called, Byrdsong did not join his players in the huddle.
Finally, without explanation, he turned over the team to Paul Swanson, one of his aides. Going up into the stands, Byrdsong shook hands with the fans, high-fived the Minnesota Gopher mascot and took a seat in the aisle, at least until an usher asked him to move.
Upon returning to Evanston, Ill., to his school's campus, Byrdsong requested a leave of absence. Actually, his wife, Sherialyn, made the request.
"My wife, after watching me, obviously got concerned," the coach said a few days later. "Now, any time I'm going to take a walk on the wild side, I should let her know."
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A few minutes past 8 o'clock last Friday night, in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, not far from the university where he had once competed against some of the greatest coaches in the business, Ricky Byrdsong went for another walk.
His wife was not with him. Two of his three children were.
A few miles away, Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, 21, a white supremacist, got behind the wheel of a 1994 Ford Taurus, a couple of handguns by his side. He allegedly opened fire on a group of Orthodox Jews walking to a synagogue. Six were hit by bullets.
Smith drove off to Skokie. There, he saw an African American man strolling with two young boys.
He allegedly shot Ricky Byrdsong in the back.
Only three blocks from his home, Byrdsong fell to the ground in front of his kids. He died four hours later, on an operating table.
I knew Ricky Byrdsong a little. Met him once, spoke to him on the phone more than once. What a lovely man.
