By DONALD DeMARCO
To the general public, National Basketball Players can seem larger than life. However, can this perceived stature, in any way, translate into political effectiveness? On the night of August 26, six NBA teams boycotted their games as a reaction to the ongoing social justice that victimizes African-American citizens. The boycott spread to other NBA teams as well as to baseball and hockey squads.
The question arises: How powerful is professional sports to Americans? Can professional athletes be more effective in combatting social injustice than elected political leaders? Their effort may be admirable, but is it a real solution? Can athletes succeed where legislators and politicians have failed?
On that same night, Sr. Deirdre Byrne, POSC, offered a radically different approach. Speaking at the National Republican Convention, she began by identifying herself as a member of the Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Her religious order does not have the stature of the NBA, nor does it have anything close to the exposure that that organization has to the public. Sr. Dede and her religious order are relatively unknown commodities. Can there be effectiveness that comes out of obscurity?
Sr. Dede spent 29 years in the military as a doctor and a surgeon in places such as Afghanistan and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. After entering her religions order, she served the poor and the sick in Haiti, Sudan, Kenya, Iraq, and in Washington, D.C. As a Christian, she is a follower of Christ whom we saw born in the “poverty of the cave.” The poverty that Sr. Dede encountered is the antithesis of the multimillionaires that perform for the NBA.
Yet, Sr. Byrne enjoins us to “fight against a legislative agenda that supports and even celebrates destroying life in the womb. Keep in mind, the laws we create define how we see our humanity. We must ask ourselves: What we are saying when we go into a womb and snuff out an innocent, powerless, voiceless life?
“As a physician, I can say without hesitation: Life begins at conception. While what I have to say may be difficult for some to hear, I am saying it because I am not just pro-life; I am pro-eternal life. I want all of us to end up in Heaven together someday.”
She is working for social justice, but throughout her life, she has taken a different path. She has taken the path outlined by Christ, what is traditionally known as “the seven works of corporal mercy.”
The NBA and the Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary are traveling along divergent paths. Society may need better laws and more diligent politicians.
Important as these factors are, however, they leave the soul of man unfed. The corporal works of mercy urge us to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the imprisoned, shelter the homeless, and comfort those who mourn.
NBA players can do these things, but not by having their courts and uniforms bearing the words “Black Lives Matter,” or by posturing, despairing, holding meetings, or boycotting games.
One of the proudest moments in NBA history involves the extraordinary care that a white man, Jack Twyman, provided for his black teammate, Maurice Stokes, when the latter became paralyzed a result of hitting his head on the court during a basketball game. Twyman became the legal guardian for Stokes, raised money to pay hospital bills, and provided a close friendship that lasted for 12 years until Stokes’ death in 1970 at the age of 36.
A June 4, 2012 posting at nba.com by Sam Smith offers this account about Twyman shortly after his death:
“It’s the greatest story never really told.
“Jack Twyman’s care for paralyzed teammate Maurice Stokes was the subject of a movie, though almost 40 years ago. It’s a subject familiar to many who know and are around the NBA. But its significance on NBA history and the absolutely remarkable humanitarianism of Twyman may make it one of the most important stories in NBA and American sports history.
“Twyman, 78, a Hall of Famer who along with Wilt Chamberlain were the first NBA players to average 30 points in a season, died last week. And though Twyman last shot a basketball in the NBA 46 years ago, his influence and inspiration are perhaps as great as anyone who ever has played the game.
“Twyman’s care of paralyzed teammate Stokes, one of the premier players of the first great era of the NBA, was a truly amazing story, the best sports story I’ve ever heard.
“Twyman would become Stokes’ guardian at a time Twyman was not only playing pro ball for the Cincinnati Royals, but having a full time job selling insurance to support his family and care for Stokes and sharing local TV nighttime sports duties with Ted Kluszewski of the baseball Redlegs. After retiring, Twyman would become a national TV broadcaster for NBA games and a successful local businessman. . . .
“ ‘I was the privileged one to be exposed to Maurice,’ I remember Twyman saying when I once asked him about it. ‘I witnessed courage every day’.”
And their story is dramatized in the 1973 motion picture, Maurie, as Sam Smith noted. Here is a beautiful example of corporal mercy on several levels.
NBA players are right in stating that there are more important things than playing basketball. But what are these “more important things”? They are the things that emanate from love and deal directly with the most fundamental needs of human beings.
And that is exactly where social reform begins. To overlook the basic importance of the corporal works of mercy is to undercut the work of everything above it, including the work of politicians and legislators. Sr. Dede has taken the right path. She should be an inspiration and a role model for all of us. The genesis of social reform lies in the unheralded acts of love that are expressed between ordinary human beings.
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