His name was James Robert Kennedy. However everybody knew him as “Radio,’’ and nearly everybody in Anderson, South Carolina, understood of him before his story started to disperse.
He had been the group supervisor, however he walked and prowled the sidelines as if he had been among those soccer coaches.
“GotId get the quarterback!” He advocated the defense.
He celebrated street successes with gusto, gyrating about the team bus and functioning the players into a frenzy with his dance movements.
“Proceed, Radio, you have it!” they chanted.
Finally, he became much better known than some of the coaches or the players in T.L. Hanna High School in Anderson — he had been the inspiration for a film that starred Cuba Gooding Jr. and seized a rare sports narrative.
On Sunday, information came that Radio, in the time of age 73, had expired, and that I found myself thinking just of the way he lived — , regardless of his intellectual disabilities and other obstacles.
At the late 1960therefore, the coaches in T.L. Hanna High School seen him pushing a shopping cart and carrying out a transistor radio. Together with Coca-Colas, the coaches enticed him into the practice areas, and over time their connection with Radio climbed — did his narrative.
Never mind he could not write or read, he attended courses with the students, served as staff manager at clinic and on Friday nights exhausting and prowled the sidelines, at which I spotted him at the first 1990s.
In 1993, a reporter for the Anderson Independent-Mail, I wrote concerning his narrative. He had been 46, lived at a little, wooden-framed home together with his ailing mother. Both of these suffered from elevated blood pressure, and she suffered from diabetes and heart problem. Harold Jones, then the head soccer coach in T.L. Hanna, started to take care care and his health care needs.
Having a mythical desire, a passion for a childlike soul, Radio became a source of entertainment and inspiration.
“He does not understand what a lousy mood is,” Terry Honeycutt, then an assistant trainer at Hanna, informed me. “He has always got that grin on his face. …
“I do not understand what could happen if he abandoned us. It simply would not be Hanna when he were not here.”
Twenty-six decades after, Radio has been now gone. He stays a precious part of the livelihood thanks in part to what occurred next.
I shared my story with Gary Smith, afterward with Sports Illustrated. Gary composed his own version for the magazine. His narrative caught the attention of Mike Tollin, a movie director and producer.
Tollin, that chose to turn the story into a film, directed”Radio,” with a cast that included Debra Winger, Ed Harris and Gooding starring as Radio. It was a joy to see the premiere and, since the credits rolled, my name appear next to”special thanks”
Particular thanks to youpersonally, Radio. May you rest in peace.
