Deck Halls with Sports Balls

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s new book STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter is available for Pre-Order HERE NOW! In time for the holidays!

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‘Holiday Ball Drive’ needs rainbows

The images, in both pictures and thousands of words, coming out of Paris the past week have been overwhelmingly horrific and overpoweringly heart-wrenching.

And, over and over, also heartwarmingly magnificent: taxi drivers shutting off their fare meters and rushing people out of harm’s way; citizens opening their homes to total strangers; and, most remarkable – yet also somehow common in times of terror and disaster – heroes rushing not away from danger but towards it to help.BallDrive

In a kaleidoscope of dark images, I choose to focus on these brightly colored ones of people helping one another.

It is not only in times of tragedy we need to try to be, as the late Maya Angelou put it, “the rainbow in someone else’s cloud.” It is every day. Most certainly, this includes the holidays.

Dorothy Jue Lee, a longtime Venturan who passed away last month at age 81, was a rainbow daily. Growing up, she helped others while working in her family’s singular Jue’s Market.

In adulthood, for nearly four decades as an educator, she was a rainbow in the lives of school children.

Too, she served on more service groups and philanthropic boards than there are days in the week.

Here is how I also remember Dorothy: being a loyal and generous supporter of my annual “Woody’s Holiday Ball Drive” which strives to provide gift sports balls to local disadvantaged youth.

Last year, for example, Dorothy personally gave me two NBA basketballs and one official NFL football to pass along for her, saying: “As a retired elementary teacher, I know how valuable balls are for children.” A few days later, she donated two more Christmas-morning smiles.

Being a rainbow is easy: just drop off a new sports ball at a local Boys & Girls Club, YMCA, youth recreation center, fire department or house of worship – the organizations’ leaders will see that the gifts wind up in deserving young hands.

New this year, here are three businesses that have agreed to accept balls (Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., through Dec. 21) which I will pick up and deliver to kids in need: in Camarillo, the Ventura County Star offices at 550 Camarillo Center Drive (near the Premium Outlets); in Thousand Oaks, Mustang Marketing at 3135 Old Conejo Road (across the 101 Freeway from Home Depot); and in Ventura, Jensen Design & Survey at 1672 Donlon St. (near Target on Telephone Road).

Why sports balls? To begin, a basketball or football or soccer ball does not need batteries, will outlast most toys, and promotes exercise.

Actually, to begin, let me retell a story from about 20 years ago. I was at a youth basketball clinic when former Ventura College and NBA star Cedric Ceballos awarded autographed basketballs to a handful of lucky attendees.

Leaving the gym afterward, I happened upon a 10-year-old boy who had won one of the prized keepsakes – which he was dribbling on the rough blacktop outdoor court and shooting baskets with while perhaps imagining he was Ceballos.

Meanwhile, the real Ceballos’ Sharpie signature was smudging and wearing off.

Curious why he hadn’t carefully carried the trophy basketball home and put it safely on a bookshelf, I interrupted his playing to ask.

“I’ve never had my own basketball,” the boy answered matter-of-factly between shots.

That Christmastime, visions of the boy – and other boys and girls like him who don’t have their own basketball to shoot or soccer ball to kick or football to throw – danced through my head. So I asked you dear readers to help make the holidays happier by donating new sports balls.

You responded that year, and every one since, like MVPs – Most Valuable Philanthropists.

This year’s holidays will not be the same without Dorothy Jue Lee. In her honor, I am kicking off the 2015 drive with two NFL footballs and three NBA basketballs.

Who will you honor with your own gift ball or balls? Email me at woodywriter@gmail.com so I can add your generosity to this year’s tally.

Together, we can turn the clouds of many children into rainbows.

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Wooden&Me_cover_PRWoody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Check out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”