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Columbia head coach Steve Faulkner (second from right) and his two sons, Jordan (left) and Tyler (right) are pictured with Ernie Johnson on Wednesday. Johnson made a surprise visit to the school after hearing of Faulkner’s battle with throat cancer. (COURTESY)
Losing a child is unimaginable for any parent.
For Ernie Johnson, best known as the host of NBA on TNT, it became very real two weeks ago.
Johnson lost his 33-year-old son Michael to muscular dystrophy, but instead of letting tragedy tear him and his family apart day by day, he’s been delivering the story of the beautiful life his son lived to anyone who needs to hear it. That story made its way to the Columbia High School gymnasium on a surprise visit Wednesday afternoon.
The legendary voice of the NBA recently met with the Alabama football team to tell that same story at the request of head coach Nick Saban. The video of that speech went viral, and for good reason, and it sparked conversation at Columbia’s basketball practice Tuesday.
Assistant coach Mardell Jackson brought the video to the team’s attention, but it particularly caught the attention of assistant coach Ryan Bell, who had never seen it. After watching it later that night, Bell was moved, especially after head coach Steve Faulkner had battled throat cancer in the offseason.
Bell, who considers himself a Twitter junkie, felt the urge to reach out to Johnson. He opened his direct messages and shot him a text, explaining everything Faulkner had been through since the summer, from gruesome radiation — which Faulkner described as “your throat getting a sunburn five days a week” — to chemotherapy one day a week to missing the beginning of the school year.
It was a shot in the dark, Bell thought, but one that may reach Johnson some day. By chance, it reached him at the perfect time.
Johnson and his wife, Cheryl, just happened to be driving from Atlanta to Palm Coast for vacation early Wednesday. He had just decided to hand the wheel over to his wife, and he sat down in the passenger seat and opened up his Twitter account.
There was Bell’s message, one that struck a chord with Johnson. He, too, had beaten cancer in his life not once, but twice in 2003 (non-Hodgkin lymphoma) and 2006 (prostate cancer).
Two hours away from Lake City, the couple was taking a detour. He tracked down Bell’s number and gave him a call.
“It’s crazy because I didn’t even give him my number in the message,” Bell said. “I said, ‘I didn’t know what it would take for you to come down and speak to our team but we’d love to have you.’ But then at about 1:45 I got a voicemail and a text from Ernie Johnson, and I couldn’t believe it at first. I had to listen to his voicemail about five to 10 times before I called him back. I was thinking it was from a fake account. But I called and it was Ernie Johnson. He said it was God sent.”
That quickly put in motion a surprise for Faulkner and the basketball team, which was playing a preseason game later that night. Johnson arrived at the gym around 4 p.m. before Faulkner made an entrance and began talking with the junior varsity team.
When Faulkner entered, all he could see was a bald man talking to his players. Then Johnson turned around and Faulkner was in disbelief.
“I was shocked,” Faulkner said. “At first when I walked into the gym I was like, ‘who is this bald guy talking to my guys?’ Because all I could see was his back. And then he turned around and started walking toward me and I was like, ‘it’s freaking Ernie Johnson!’ I walked over to him and told him, ‘I just watched you on the TNT halftime show last night before I went to bed. Now you’re standing in my gym. This is kind of weird.’ And then he told me the whole story of how Ryan sent him the message. I thought it was really cool given what he’s gone through the last couple of weeks with his son passing away. But it’s clear watching him speak that that’s kind of his mission now — to let that story continue to be told as long as he has left and not let Michael’s story die with him. It was really, really cool, and I thought the kids really got something out of it.”
Michael was adopted by the Johnsons from Romania in 1991, three years after he was found in an abandoned park at birth. He couldn’t walk and he couldn’t talk, and the woman at the orphanage even told Cheryl not to take the boy.
“He was no good.”
Not in the Johnsons’ eyes.
Cheryl and Ernie brought him home to a family that already included two biological children and three more adopted. Although Michael was confined to a wheelchair and told he’d never live past his teens, he beat those odds to double that life span.
How’s that for perseverance?
Faulkner just persevered himself through a two-month treatment after being diagnosed with throat cancer in the spring all while thinking about his own two sons, Jordan and Tyler.
“There are some things in this world that you just can’t wrap your head around of why it happens,” Johnson said. “My wife and I are driving from Atlanta to Palm Coast. We get outside Macon, she takes the wheel, I sit down, I look at my Twitter feed. Sometimes I look at those DMs, sometimes I don’t. I read this one from this coach in Lake City. Talks about this coach (Faulkner) in Lake City. Talks about something I’ve been through myself twice — cancer. It’s no fun. It’s no fun being the one that has it and no fun being the one whose family is hit by it because you’re worried about your old man and you’re trying to keep everybody strong. I’ve been down that road. So then you get a message like this. Can you believe this coach is saying it would be great that you could come down to Lake City some day? I looked at my wife and said, ‘we are two hours outside of Lake City right now.’ Sometimes God winks at you and says, ‘I know you didn’t see this coming but go over there. Take the opportunity. Don’t let it pass you by.’”
Johnson spent about 45 minutes with the team, getting choked up as he spoke about his son once more. But it’s also a story he’s more than happy to tell.
In high school, Michael was asked to join the basketball team much to Johnson’s surprise. Michael couldn’t speak but he loved to tell everyone “love you too” in sign language.
That became a movement not just for the team but the entire school. And it taught the importance of respect and heart.
“When God winks at me and Cheryl on a day like this,” Johnson said, “and says, ‘Hey, you know what? I know you weren’t planning on reading anything from Twitter, but there’s this coach in Lake City who has another coach in Lake City and his team is in Lake City and you’re only a couple of hours from Lake City, why don’t you stop by and spread the message about the boy you just lost?’ That’s why I’m here. I can’t explain it but I appreciate it, and I’m kind of floored by how awesome the moment is. Things you don’t plan can make your day.”
It certainly made Faulkner’s one of the most memorable of his life.
“It was really cool,” Faulkner said. “When I initially saw the video of him talking to the Alabama football team, that got me just hearing that whole story. Hearing it again (Wednesday) and then watching him talk about and getting choked up at one point really hit me being a father myself. It’s crazy to think two weeks after that you could be in a gym talking to kids about it. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do that.
“Ernie Johnson is a phenomenal human being, just everything he’s about and he’s done in his life.”
Before the Johnsons departed, Cheryl had one last request. Everybody in the gym gathered together in the bleachers to take a photo saying “love you too” in sign language.
A picture worth three of the most powerful words in the English language. All made possible by a friend showing his love to another after the battle of a lifetime.
“I think people are put in place for a certain calling in life, and I think that’s my calling — to impact somebody else’s life,” Bell said.
“Love you too” is here to stay at Columbia too. The Tigers broke the huddle at Wednesday night’s preseason game with those exact words, and Faulkner said the plan is to do so for the rest of the season.
“I think it’ll kind of reinforce with the guys that it’s important to tell not just the people around you and your family that, but everybody,” Faulkner said. “The state of our world right now is so divisive, and everybody is at everybody’s throats. I think we need more of people spreading love and not hate. So that’s going to be our little way of doing our part to continue to spread the message.”