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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2009 > June > 09
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Who will carry the Martin Bayless torch?
Few people know Martin Bayless better than Ron Todd.
They went to the same Belmont High and both played football at Bowling Green State University‚ albeit some four years apart. Most importantly, they’ve worked side by side at the free football camp Bayless has put on for Dayton-area youth since 1986.
Last Sunday, Todd, now a Dayton sports agent, joined Bayless — who played 13 seasons in the NFL and now is the assistant defensive coordinator (Denny Green is the head coach) of the San Francisco team in the new United Football League — eight NFL players and dozens of volunteers at Welcome Stadium for a camp that drew close to 1,400 kids from grades 3-12.
There is not another athlete from the Dayton area who has made this kind of commitment to his hometown and the young people here. Not for this long, not impacting so many thousands of lives and all done without a charge to any of the youngsters.
Why does Bayless — who grew up on Enroe Drive, now Martin Bayless Drive — do it?
“He was taught to never forget where you came from,” Todd said. “He made a promise to his mother and father (Stella and Charles) that he’d do this camp as long as he can. He wants to make an impact on young people’s lives and show them if you hang around good people you can do good, too.
“And what’s interesting when he first started, those kids are now bringing their own children to the camp. He’s made an impact on a couple of generations.”
Over the years — back when Bayless launched the effort with fellow Daytonian and NFL player Keith Byars and since 1994 when he’s run it by himself — his camp has always featured NFL players to teach the local kids, laugh with them, hug them and give them someone to look up to.
Pros like Boomer Esiason, Reggie White, Marcus Allen, Jim Kelly, Derrick Thomas, Cris Carter, Jerome Brown and Randall Cunningham all have taken part here.
This year’s NFL attendees included St. Louis Rams defensive tackle LaRoi Glover, the 13-year vet and four-time All Pro, 13-year fullback Zack Crockett, Browns safety Brandon Mitchell, Tampa Bay safety Will Allen, New England’s Shawne Crable, Detroit’s Marcus Demps, Bengals receiver Greg Orton and Tampa Bay quarterback Josh Johnson.
“Every kid is not as fortunate as I was to be raised by two parents,” Bayless said. “A lot of kids are raised by one parent, their grandmother, their aunt or uncle and sometimes those folks have their hands full and can use some help instilling great values.
“As for me, I’m just carrying the torch and one day it will be someone else running the Martin Bayless camp.”
As to who picks up that challenge, I don’t know?
One positive sign is Daequan Cook — the Dunbar High product who is about to start his third season with the Miami Heat — launching a camp for area youth that will run June 22-23.
It will cost $20 and features Greg Oden (Portland Trail Blazers), Mike Conley (Memphis Grizzlies) and Heat teammates Michael Beasley, Udonis Haslem and Mario Chalmers.
And then there is the Chaminade Julienne girls basketball camp that’s running this week and features Eagle alums Megan Duffy (Minnesota Lynx and New York Liberty) and Brandie Hoskins (Seattle Storm) and Lindsey Goldsberry, who just finished a stellar career at Bowling Green. That camp costs $80.
But for its longevity, its no-cost proviso and the overall sheer impact it has made, nothing compares to the Bayless camp.
“I came to this camp when I was a little kid and ran around and had lots of fun, and then when I got to high school I came back again and learned some things,” said Orton, who went from Wayne High to Purdue to the Bengals. “This camp helped me see a dream …a nd I’ll never forget that. Martin Bayless has taught me what it means to really be a pro and hopefully one day I’ll be able to do the same thing here for kids.”
That, too, would be part of Bayless’ legacy.
TweetCOLUMN: Chasing an Open dream while grieviing late POW dad
His thoughts were divided.
As Billy Bomar played the 36 hole U.S. Open Sectional qualifier at the NCR South golf course Monday, June 8, the 46-year-old pro from Anchorage, Alaska found himself thinking not only about the fairways , but also about family.
His daughter Brittany was caddying for him.
His dad was not.
Colonel Jack Bomar — the much-decorated Air Force pilot who once used to tote his son’s clubs at various mini-tour stops — died following a battle with pancreatic cancer the day before Billy won the local Open qualifier in Wasilla, Alaska that got him the trip to Dayton.
Wednesday, Col. Bomar’s funeral services will be held in Mesa, Ariz.
A lot of people probably would have pulled out of this tournament to grieve or regroup, but the way Billy Bomar saw it, there’s no better way to honor his dad than by playing golf.
Plus Jack Bomar wasn’t about quitting or giving up. With him it wasn’t a lesson he simply preached, it was one he painfully endured.
For six years and one month — 2,221 days between February, 1967 to March of 1973 — then Major Bomar was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Held by the North Vietnamese in the notorious Hanoi Hilton, he spent much of his time on the other side of a cement wall from then Navy pilot and now U.S. senator, John McCain, who was in an adjoining cell.
“I was three years old when my dad went to Vietnam and 10 when he finally came home,” Billy said. “I especially remember when he wasn’t there each Christmas. We’d always put together a care package for him — I’d send along some stuff I made — and he did get a few of those things.
“That’s how he found out we had landed on the moon. One of the sugar packets we sent, the Vietnamese didn’t confiscate and it had a picture of the moon landing on the back.
“They didn’t give the prisoners much information back then.”
But they did torture a select group of them — including Jack Bomar — almost daily.
STORIES MADE IMPACT
Jack Bomar and five other crew members were aboard a Douglas EB66C Skywarrior that was shot down by surface-to-air missiles some 80 miles north of Hanoi on February 4, 1967.
As the plane plummeted end over end, Bomar ejected with shrapnel in his leg. When he landed, villagers captured him, wired his thumbs behind his back and beat him before turning him over to North Vietnamese troops.
He was in solitary confinement for eight moths. When he ended up next to McCain, he’d put a water glass to the wall to listen to his fellow POW.
“They communicated through tapping similar to Morse code,” said Brittany, who spent the past year around her grandfather while working on her own golf game before heading to the University of Hawaii to play. “From his stories, I know the beatings were brutal.”
Billy shook his head: “What he went through I can’t imagine. Several of the POWS didn’t survive captivity.”
Three of the six men on Bomar’s jet made it through their days in captivity. The remains of two crewmen were eventually sent home — one in 1977, the other in 1990 — and one man remains missing.
While Billy remembers the parades for his dad when he got home he also remembers how tough it was for a lot of the returning POWs: “They had a lot going on inside them and most of them — my dad included — ended up divorced.”
While returning POWs found many things in their lives drastically changed, Jack Bomar showed one thing remained, quite amazingly, in tact.
“That first year he got home — after not playing golf for more than six years — he won the club championship, where he had played,” Billy smiled
A VICTORY THROUGH THE TEARS
Billy had never advanced through a local Open qualifier before this one on May 21 and had only played four competitive rounds this year because Alaska’ s golf season doesn’t begin until the end of May.
He’s also been spending much of his time with the national First Tee program. He’s Alaska’s new executive director of the effort to introduce golf to inner city and less advantaged kids who would otherwise have no access to the game. Since taking over in January, he’s already brought the game to 4,000 grade school kids in the Anchorage area.
Yet against all that — and maybe banking on his dad’s old bromide about not giving up — he thought he had a qualifying shot. The local was being played at Settlers Bay GC where he’d once been the pro.
“It was still the hardest round of golf I’ve ever had to play,” he said.
Brittany was his caddy and said: “He kept it together just fine for 17 holes. But on the last hole it kind of hit him. He’s a really fast player, but it took him 15 minutes for us to chip out and then make the putt. He’d set up on the chip, then back off and you could see the tears starting.
“The chip was maybe from 30 yards and then he had a 15-foot putt and it was clutch. They were only taking one person (from the field) and if he missed it would go to a playoff.
“When he watched his putt rolling in, he broke down and then I was crying, too.’
Bomar shot a 71 to advance to Dayton along with 67 other players from 17 states and five foreign countries. From that pool only the four with the best scores would make the Open field at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, N.Y. June 15-21.
Struggling some with his putter — after prepping on the still winter-slow greens back in Alaska — Bomar shot a 75-79-154, finished back in the pack and by mid evening he and Brittany were back in their rental car, driving to Chicago, for an early morning flight to Seattle and then another to Phoenix.
Jack Bomar’s Memorial service will be at 11 a.m. Wednesday — and a miliary service will be at Arlington National Cemetery in the fall — but there’ll be another special remembrance Wednesday afternoon.
“It’s is dad’s birthday and Wednesday is also the day he used to play golf with the same bunch guys each week,” Billy said.
“They called them The Wild Bunch,” Brittany laughed.
Billy nodded: “They moved their tee time back a couple of hours to go to the service and then we’re all going out and tee it up.”
There’s no better way to honor his dad than by playing golf.
TweetCOLUMN: Martin Bayless — The Capistrano Swallow of Dayton
NCR is packing up and leaving town. GM declared bankruptcy and has gotten rid of most of its local work force here.
The pro golf tours that used to make annual stops here have moved on and a lot of Dayton-bred athletes — once they found fame and fortune — have put this town in their rear view mirrors.
And then there’s Martin Bayless.
He’s as reliable as the swallows of Capistrano.
For the 24th year in a row the Belmont High grad — who played 13 seasons in the NFL and has been a pro coach since — returned to Welcome Stadium, Sunday, June 7, to put on his day-long, free football camp for area youth, grades three through 12.
It was a heart-warming sight. His morning session for grade schoolers drew close to 700 kids. They were white, black, brown, skinny, chunky, mostly boys, a few girls, some skilled, all wide-eyed.
They congregated around eight NFL players he’d brought in to help. Guys like LaRoi Glover, the four-time All Pro defensive lineman with the St. Louis Rams and veteran NFL fullback Zack Crockett, as well as local Wayne High products: starting Tampa Bay safety Will Allen and Bengals receiver Greg Orton.
There also were lots of volunteer coaches and the kids would later gets lunches and t-shirts, but the key figure Sunday was Bayless.
He and fellow Daytonian and NFL vet Keith Byars started the camp in 1986 and he took it over himself in 1994. This year he also has camps in San Diego, Houston and Phoenix.
“Anyone who’s looking for a person who played in the NFL and is doing the right thing and giving back to his community, he’s the prime example,” said Josh Johnson, the Tampa Bay quarterback who starred at the University of San Diego.
The 46-year-old Bayless said the reason is simple:
“I’m from Dayton and I’m proud to be from Dayton. When I was a kid, I didn’t have this kind of opportunity, but when I was able to have some expendable income as an NFL player, my mom and dad told me: ‘You’ve got to come back and do something. It’s your responsibility to make positive contributions here.”
The 34-year-old Glover was a kid in one of Bayless’ initial camps in San Diego, as were future NFL players like Dan Wilkinson, Marco Coleman, Peerless Price, Allen and Orton here.
“This speaks volumes on Martin’s character,” said Glover, who now partners with Bayless in San Diego. “There are lots of successful people from here, but few come back. But here you have a guy the kids can high five and hug, a guy they can talk and joke with and learn from. His camp gives them someone to look up to.”
And as you watched Sunday there was Glover pulling aside 12 year William Hobbs, a Mad River seventh grader, and giving him a running tip. At the same time Crockett was coaxing Taylor Hines, an eight year old girl from Bauer Elementary, through an agility drill.
“You never know when you might say or do something that might change one kid’s life,” said Johnson. “What’s better than that?”
When he was at San Diego, Johnson visited Welcome Stadium in 2005 and beat the Dayton Flyers 48-24, throwing for three touchdowns and running for another.
He thought that would be his best day ever in Dayton.
Sunday was better.
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