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Hubert, Roy, Dabo Flashbacks Offer Mother’s Day Memories
By David Glenn
In the loving spirit of Mother’s Day (this Sunday!), here is a quick trip down Memory Lane, thanks to three famous coaches who have been willing to share some extremely personal stories over the years about their mothers’ truly special places in their lives.
Hubert Davis lost his beloved mother, Bobbie Davis, to cancer in 1986, when Hubert was only 16 years old.
About five years later, heading into his senior season with the Tar Heels, he described the anguish of losing both a loving parent and one of his best friends, and how those darkest days contributed to one of the most important turning points of his life.
“I still don’t completely understand it, but I just thank God for giving me the best mom in the world for 16 years,” Davis said, “because I think anyone in the world would love to have had a mom like mine.”
Roy Williams also speaks of his late mother in reverential, and often emotional, terms. Lallage Williams, who died in 1992 at 66 years old, raised Roy and his sister Frances as a single mom with minimal resources for long stretches in the 1950s and 1960s, as her husband battled alcoholism.
In late 2021, while speaking to a sports media class at UNC Wilmington, Williams briefly choked up while patiently retelling an extended, detailed version of one of his favorite anecdotes about his mother: the legendary dime-on-the-kitchen-table-for-a-Coke story.
“My mom, she just didn’t want me to feel like I was different. She wanted me to be able to feel comfortable,” Williams said. “Again, I was fine with (doing without a daily Coke while his friends enjoyed them) anyway, but — and that was the neat thing — it was important to my mom.”
Dabo Swinney is another famous coach from the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Carolinas who occasionally tells loving, unforgettable tales about his amazing mother.
As a regular guest on the David Glenn Show for 14 years (2007-20), the charismatic and personable Clemson football coach shared many interesting, meaningful stories.
Swinney’s longest, most personal and perhaps most unforgettable answer, though, didn’t come until he was asked (in 2019) specifically about his mother, Carol McIntosh, who recently had celebrated her 75th birthday with a visit to Swinney at Clemson.
Here is the entirety of Swinney’s mesmerizing, storybook-style response:
“Well, I think all of us, as we age and our perspective of life changes, especially when you become a parent yourself, you look back and you have a different understanding of things.
“I just have such a great appreciation for my mom. I mean she is an amazing lady, tough as nails. She’s probably barely five feet tall, if that. You know, she spent most of the first eight to 10 years of her life in the hospital, at the Crippled Children’s Hospital, there in Birmingham. She was away from her family, and her mother would ride a train to see her on the weekends. My grandmother worked at a plant, but she would travel to see her on Saturdays and Sundays.
“At one point, because of the polio and scoliosis, my mother had to have reconstructive surgery on her spine, just so she’d be able to walk. She had an iron lung for a while. She was in a body cast for more than a year, and during that time she couldn’t move anything but her arms. Can you imagine that?
“So my mother had all of these very difficult and scary things as a child, but it was something: We, as her children, never knew about any of this when we were growing up. It was later in life before I ever knew any of those things.
“She finally got into a normal school, during secondary education, and was there at Woodlawn High School in Birmingham. So she graduated from the same high school as Bobby Bowden! Even in high school, she couldn’t do most activities, and she couldn’t do any sports. Then, in her senior year, she became a majorette, which was a huge accomplishment, and they put a big picture of her on the front page of the Birmingham News. It was a true Cinderella story, because of all of her hurdles as a child, and again I never knew any of that until later on in life.
“She wasn’t supposed to have kids, but she went on to have three boys. She was married at 18 years old, with my dad, and raised us three. Now she has seven grandsons, too.
“She went through a lot. Obviously, she went through a lot, with my dad. (Swinney’s parents split while he was in high school, around the time the family lost their house to foreclosure.) But she always worked, always grinded, even when we didn’t have a place to live.
“My last year of high school, there was a school tradition where the cheerleaders would bring a gift to each of the senior football players, and they would deliver it right to their homes. Well, because my mom and I moved around so much, I was told they went to a bunch of different houses and couldn’t find me to deliver the gift. That’s how crazy things were for us back then. A lot of people lent us a helping hand when we needed one, and we always had each other.
“When I was in college, at Alabama, my mother actually lived with me for four straight years: my last three years of school, and then the next year when I was a grad assistant. She didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I told her to come live with me. One of my football teammates was my actual roommate, but we made it work, at the old Fountainbleau Apartments in Tuscaloosa.
“Even when she was living with me, she would get up at 6 o’clock every morning, drive about an hour to and from work, and she just never complained. I learned so much from her: her work ethic, her drive, her toughness, her love of family. It was just, she would do what it took.
“At the time, it just all seemed kind of normal, but as you go on in life and you look back, it’s just amazing. She has outlived all of her family; she had two sisters and a brother, and I don’t think any of them lived to 80. So that 75th birthday (in 2019) was a big day for her. She was here in town (Clemson), and we got to eat some cake and have a big time together.
“She’s a special lady, and she’s been a great inspiration to me my whole life.”
Happy Mother’s Day.
(featured image via Associated Press)
David Glenn (DavidGlennShow.com, @DavidGlennShow) is an award-winning author, broadcaster, editor, entrepreneur, publisher, speaker, writer and university lecturer (now at UNC Wilmington) who has covered sports in North Carolina since 1987.
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