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View Full Version : OU color commentator Charlie Spoonhour Needs Lung Transplant



SoonerShark
8/5/2010, 05:27 AM
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38554460/ns/health/

Excerpt from story:

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Charlie Spoonhour, the popular basketball coach known for his homespun humor and success on the court, is on the waiting list for a lung transplant at Duke Medical Center.

Spoonhour's son, Jay Spoonhour, told the Springfield News-Leader on Tuesday that his 71-year-old father began coughing and feeling ill about a month ago. Doctors at Duke diagnosed him with a lung disease called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which requires a transplant.

SoonerShark
8/5/2010, 05:29 AM
http://www.timesreporter.com/sports/x2102347249/Enjoying-sports-at-any-level

By Jeff Williams
The Times-Reporter
Posted Mar 08, 2010 @ 11:06 PM
NEW PHILADELPHIA, OH — Full of wit and humor, former Division I men’s basketball coach and current Oklahoma color commentator Charlie Spoonhour befriended — and then amused — a crowd at the Voices of Distinction Series at Kent State Tuscarawas on Monday night.

Spoonhour, best known as head coach at Saint Louis and later at UNLV, had a simple set of messages that were wrapped around several stories of whimsy and humor.

There was his first head coaching job at Rocky Comfort, Missouri (high school). He was told that he was hired as the boys’ basketball and baseball coaches, as well as an English teacher. He was given $4,250 and a small house trailer (8 by 28 with pink siding, a silver roof and brown carpeting, he recalled).

By the end of his tenure at the school he had coached softball, volleyball (“The first volleyball game I ever saw, I coached,” he quipped) and baseball and basketball. He was vice principal in charge of street discipline, he drove a bus, acted as yearbook advisor and directed the junior class play.

“You learn to do stuff, but you learn to work with people to do that stuff,” Spoonhour said simply. “A lot of things you find out with coaching and teaching is that you like working with young people.”

He also sent out other messages, like the simplistic approach to enjoying sports: “Sports should be fun at any level, at any time.”

About staying positive: “If you’re positive and do things in a positive way and tell people what they can do instead of what they can’t do, you’ll both learn and accomplish things.”

And his thoughts on the college game today: “There’s too much ‘I’ and ‘me’ and not enough ‘we.’”
To best sum up his humorous demeanor, one must go back to how he started off his speech.

“I looked at the pictures on the wall (at Kent State Tuscarawas showing all of the past speakers in the Voices of Distinction Series) and I saw authors, I saw actresses, I saw football players and finally I saw some coaches,” he said. “I will say one thing, I’m not as fat as the one coach but I’m not as ornery as the other one, either.”

And on a softer note: “Family values mean something. It’s why I coached in the manner I did. The main thing was that I had a lot of enjoyment and I thought I had a purpose.”

SoonerShark
8/5/2010, 05:33 AM
Get well, Coach. It is sad, however, that only a tragedy endured by some other family can save him by providing the lungs he needs to survive. God comfort the families of the transplant donors whose lives end but whose contributions to existence live on in their life saving gestures of passing on their organs and tissues. Salute.