I didn’t meet him until 2017, but I had come to know Elvin James years earlier.
I wasn’t, all those years ago, a sports reporter, but the local newspaper was down a man, and I found myself prepping for a Goldsboro High School football game when I started reading about the program’s storied coach.
At the time, he was not gracing the Cougars’ sideline, but when I got to the game, I was drawn to a man standing along the fence.
Seemingly every person who walked through the gate approached him.
It was like a scene out of “The Godfather” — you know, a kiss-the-ring moment where the GHS faithful felt the need to pay its respects to one of, if not its biggest, icons.
So, I walked up to a parent of one of the players and asked what must have seemed, to him, like a ridiculous question.
“Excuse me,” I said pointing over at the man. “Who is that?”
The parent raised his eyebrows and laughed.
“You must not be from around here,” he said. “That right there? That’s the legend.”
•
Between that night and last fall, I must have had 100 conversations with Elvin James.
But I never called him by his name.
I never even called him, “Coach.”
To me, he was, “Legend.”
Honestly, I could never tell how he took it.
Our chats would always start the same way.
“There he is,” I would say. “That’s the legend.”
James would look at me like I was crazy, laugh and extend his hand.
His voice was gruff, and we would talk football — and life.
That’s the funny thing about a man like James.
A ho-hum conversation about that year’s particular Cougar squad turned quickly into a master class on being a better human being.
Without knowing it, he would always say something that would make you want to strive to be great.
I never got a chance to thank him for that.
Other things strike me about our seemingly routine conversations now that he’s gone.
Back in 2017, when he decided to return to the GHS sideline after stints as a college coach and the head man at other high schools, I asked him what brought him back.
“I missed the men,” he said.
The men.
Sounds simple enough.
But looking back on those words, it is incredible just how much James believed in the young players he was charged with coaching and mentoring.
He saw them in a way that, if we’re being honest, other people didn’t and still don’t.
To him, the Cougars were capable of humility, maturity and, most importantly, greatness.
And if you have seen the flurry of social media posts that have gone viral since news broke of his death, former students — men AND women — talk about how much his faith in them meant.
Even in death, he was speaking to us.
From the heavens, he was preaching belief in a student body he was forever proud to walk amongst.
•
Years from now, nobody will talk about James’ legacy as a winning football coach who led the Cougars to nine playoff appearances and two conference championships.
They won’t talk about him being named USA Today Weekend Magazine’s “Most Caring Coach in America” in 1996 — or the fact that in 2007, he was a finalist for NFL High School Coach of the Year after being nominated by one of his former players, David Thornton, for the honor.
No, his legacy will be the people he touched, the young men and women who saw, in James, a hero — a mentor who, while tough at times, lived for the opportunity to push them toward something bigger than they ever dreamed they could achieve.
And perhaps, his immediate impact will be felt in classrooms and on fields and hardwoods across Wayne County this year — as teachers and coaches pick up the massive torch he leaves behind and redouble their efforts to cast a shadow as wide as James left on whatever sideline he graced these last several decades.
That, I think, is what James would have wanted.
So, rest easy, Legend.
We’ll take it from here.
