The world needs more men like this.
The world needs more men like this.
I n early January, I lost a dear friend, Jeff Guillebeau, a natural leader of men. His human heart could not keep up with the sacrificial love demanded of it by his warrior spirit. Jeff was 59.
Almost a month later, actor Carl Weathers died in his sleep. Hollywood cast him in various roles, but to men of Generation X like me, he’ll always be Apollo Creed, Rocky Balboa’s nemesis-turned–best friend in the Rocky movie franchise. Weathers was 76.
Now Toby Keith has traded time for eternity, succumbing to stomach cancer at the age of 62. Two of these three losses are felt by red-blooded Americans everywhere; all three are felt by a close fellowship of men in Charlotte, of which I am one.
My brother and I were too young to appreciate the original at its release, but after seeing Apollo Creed’s sculpted abs in Rocky II, Jack, age seven, and I, nine, made immediate changes. We started doing elevated sit-ups off the edge of my bed. One sat on the other’s ankles while the other, in a movement surely considered business development by chiropractors everywhere, extended his torso from mattress to floor and back up again.
My wooden bed frame expressed its disagreement by breaking. Soon after, our dad voiced his own displeasure with equal vigor. Born in each boy’s heart, though, was a desire to find the limits of strength and to pursue excellence, just as Apollo did.
Toby Keith had too many hits to name. But “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” released into a country reeling in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on our homeland, had particular resonance. Fittingly, he wrote the lyrics in his gym.
Channeling Rocky Balboa, in whose words winning was not about how hard you hit but how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, Keith reminded a stunned nation that Americans do not stay down for the count. It was a turning point in popular culture.
Last, my friend Jeff recruited me into an exercise group that changed my life immeasurably for the better. On a flight from Atlanta in June 2016, I had offered him, a stranger to me, a stick of gum, whereupon he took the entire pack and left me one stick, “just to see how I’d react.”
What followed was neither fight nor flight but friendship, one in which Jeff encouraged me just the way Jack and I used to motivate each other. My friend lacked the star power of Messrs. Weathers and Keith, but I have no doubt they’ve found one another in heaven. If sparring is permitted, they’re doing it.
Singing of men with exactly this indomitable spirit, country singer Kris Kristofferson assured in his beautiful paean “Wild American” that heroes happen when you need them. Let’s hope so, for the world needs more of these three archetypal men — men in full.