Jack never really learned to play sports at home, yet in third grade at Grand Prairie’s LBJ Elementary, he wanted to join the school’s football team. Oh, to be a Longhorn!!

He began with an eagerness typical of Jack. He was anxious to learn; anxious to be accepted; and eager to become the football star I believe he saw in his mind’s eye. My focus was part Mama, is he gonna get hurt, coupled with pride that he was participating, mixed with the tedium and aggravation of trying to scrape all the daily mud and crud off his uniform and shoulder pads, etc.

After a couple of weeks of practice, Coach Kuhns a fellow parent and teacher, pulled me aside to compliment Jack’s great attitude and spirit. He shared that he believed Jack was gifted. He was destined to become an extreme mathematician. I didn’t understand. He said, “When the boys are running at the swinging dummy for tackling practice, Jack manages to watch and calculate the exact moment that he should run and connect to meet the LEAST resistance to this object upon impact. He must become a physicist. The process of watching that 8-year-old mind calculating velocity, distance, angle, and rate of acceleration. It’s mind-blowing!” And he grinned and shook his head as he added, “He just loves running laps. When I notice him goofing off or not listening to me, I tell him, ‘Campbell, take 3 laps,’ and off he goes as if he’s been rewarded. I’m still not sure who’s the smarter one in that exchange”.

Alas, his gridiron career didn’t last that long, Cub Scouts became a conflict and he chose Scouts. What a historical loss for the Longhorns!

Jack’s greatest gift was the skill of persuasion. He used it to sell just about anything: cars, phones, concert tickets or just about anything else you could name. He also used this skill of making the outcome he desired so pleasing that before you knew it, you were going out of your way, sometimes in the opposite direction that you had planned—to do his bidding.

One embarrassing, sometimes maddening example was our division of labor in the family. With 5 children, 4 of them twins, I had a great plan. Or so I thought. Each child had a section of housework and rotated to another each week. One had floors (vacuum the carpet and sweep the kitchen), one had bathrooms, one had kitchen…you get the idea. It was a great plan; the kids would do better at one task than another but rotating and Mom’s encouragement and help got us through the rest. And then there’s Jack.

He would begin to vacuum and then stop. He’d do that several times. I’d go and ask him what the trouble was. He’d say the machine wasn’t working right. I’d operate it myself and check it out. He would insist it wasn’t picking up. Asked me to show him again how to raise the nap, or whatever. And before I knew it, the floor was spotless—and Jack nowhere to be found. He’d done it again!!

I seriously doubt I was the only one to succumb to Jack’s persuasion. In fact, in the last few months I have learned how often Jack exercised his persuading talent to share his faith—his most prized possession.