by Love, Reggie
While the senator was giving his stump, I walked into the covered area where the rest of the staff was huddled, drinking coffee and staying warm. I gave one glance at them, glanced back at the crowd and Obama, and suggested it wouldn’t be in anybody’s best interest to be standing cozy and dry when the candidate finished the rope line.
Everyone glared at me. The weather was brutally cold and wet. (The same violent storm had also forced the cancellation of the World Series game in Philadelphia that day.) But they knew I was right. Down went the cups and out we went—all of us standing there, freezing and getting drenched in the deluge right along with him. Even in our misery, however, we picked up on the fact that something historic must be happening when several thousand people show up to see a presidential candidate in a torrential downpour.
I knew from the candidate that you don’t jump ship when it gets rocky. Just as I learned from Coach K at Duke that you always have your teammate’s back. You win as a team, lose as a team, you defend and rebound as a team—and never leave a man behind.
Obama slayed the speech, even without the teleprompter. The audience was pumped. He may have been unhappy about not having a better bad weather game plan and having to stand in a monsoon for half an hour, but it would have been much worse had his team not been united with him in the suffering.
Sports, politics, families—it’s no different. When the rain hits the fan, you rally round your teammates. Just as in help-side defense in basketball—if your man has beaten you off the dribble, you have to trust that your teammate will step in to take the charge and protect the basket.
Everyone makes mistakes. Your turn will come. Remember to bring an umbrella.
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LITTLE THINGS ARE BIG THINGS IN DISGUISE
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If there was ever a role model for me in humility and class it was Pete Rouse. He was the guy who always worked as hard as every other person in the office and never made a fuss about anything. No job was beneath him. He handwrote letters. He returned every phone call. He never punted the crappy assignments. And he never claimed credit for the incredible work he did do. If there was internal strife, Pete would fix it. Between the DNC, the PAC, the campaign, the Senate, the House, and the presidency, he handled it all. He was the politician whisperer.
After I’d put together my early mail system, Pete came to me with a problem, needing my help. I was imagining some complicated systems request, or another data entry dilemma. We walked into his office, and he said, “I just got this new car. It has something called ‘Bluetooth’ and I can’t seem to figure it out.”
It was kind of funny, but his request also meant something to me. Of all the staff members in the entire office, I was the person he came to for help. I was just six months into the job. We had a professional IT guy on staff. But Pete picked me. I took it as a show of trust. After I set up his Bluetooth, he would travel around the office telling everyone he saw, “This kid is awesome! He can fix anything!”
Later, when Pete would introduce me to folks, he would announce, “The reason we hired Reggie is because Coach K said there was no task too small for him.” That was why I got the job. Not because I went to Duke, or was a two-sport athlete. But because I understood what teamwork really meant.
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I figured out early on in my athletic career that there is only one basketball. Everyone can’t shoot a three-pointer on every play. Everyone can’t be J. J. Redick. Someone has to do the unsexy stuff—setting screens, rebounding, defense, taking charges. Because I was never the star, that person was usually me. In football, I did much the same, acting as a downfield blocker and as a receiver. I understood that the less flashy, small jobs weighed as heavily in securing victory as a dunk or a touchdown. You can’t have the latter without the former.
In a similar vein, the more mature I grew, the more I trusted my coaches. If they told me something was important, I believed them. I didn’t need to know why. This learned willingness to care about the minutiae served me well as a bodyman, because minutiae and doing what the boss says are pretty much your whole existence.
Back in 2006, one of my earliest jobs at the senator’s office was taking calls from constituents. To put it nicely, a lot of the callers were a little out of touch with reality. People who hated Democrats. Who hated people of color. Who believed all the vitriol coming from right-wing talk radio and television about Obama being a socialist, a Muslim, a terrorist among us. I had to be calm in the face of their hostility, basically talk them off the ledge.
Other callers were just lonely. They wanted someone to hear them. These folks called repeatedly. It got to where I could recognize some of their voices before they even said their names.
Once the senator announced his intention to run, on February 10, 2007, I transitioned from calls to finding office space and furniture. I traveled all over Washington, checking out every available location—tracking down who owned the building, how much the rent was, how long we could lease the property for, if and when we could scale up, how many more units we could take over. In a nutshell, I did whatever I could to keep Pete and the team telling the candidate I was a smart hire.
In truth, I was intimidated by the notion of helping to manage a presidential campaign. I was basically learning something new every day, though I did take some comfort in the fact that I wasn’t the only one. As the candidate himself said to us on more than one occasion, “We are building this plane together as it’s taking off down the runway.”
Obama’s typical day started early. Which meant I would get up thirty minutes earlier so I could: pack my bag, check emails and respond to the critical ones, check voice mail, make an abridged version of the day’s schedule, and make sure the candidate woke up and got to a gym with enough time to work out and not be too late for the first event. Early on I was also responsible for figuring out his breakfast. This meant that no matter where we were, I had to find a place that made eggs, wheat toast, and bacon before sunrise. Then I had to bring the food back to wherever we were staying, trying to time my delivery so the meal wasn’t cold by the time he was ready to eat, which I eventually got down to a science. But it started off as an experiment I was woefully unskilled at executing.
There were times when I felt a little like What am I doing here? I mean, I knew it was something, but I didn’t know exactly what yet. The nuts and bolts of the work weren’t innately inspirational. No one graduates from college and dreams of a career in bacon delivery. But the bigger picture was mind-blowing. And every day along in the campaign, it became easier to see how big that picture might actually become.
It was in the spring of 2007, after a visit to St. Louis at which Senator Obama lost track of the time while he was on the treadmill, that Marvin took me aside and advised:
“From now on, you go with him.” “You think I liked biking at 6 A.M. with Kerry? If I could do that when I was thirty years old, it should be easy for you at twenty-five years old.”
From that day on, I would dress in my exercise clothes and show up outside the senator’s hotel room at the advised time for the gym departure and then wait there until he came out. Some days, when he was late, I would knock to make sure that the gym was still on the agenda. And some days he’d holler back, “Ten more minutes,” which could turn into twenty. Against that possibility, I learned to take a pillow, prop it against his door, and go back to sleep until he emerged.
At the gym, we each had our own routine. Sometimes he would need a spot. Other times the TV would be on and the candidate would say, “Did you see this play last night?” The talk was generally about sports or pop culture. It was a nice break from the campaign.
Most of the facilities we used were terrible. Usually a squeaky treadmill and a couple of inoperable machines. The senator still committed to breaking a sweat every day for at least an hour. We’d share our exercise philosophies. I liked push-ups and sit-ups. He preferred weight tra
ining. Sometimes he would ask me how I used to bulk up in between basketball and football season.
In cities and hotels that we would visit routinely, like the Airport Hampton Inn in Des Moines, Iowa, it was a small victory to know that there was a gym less than two blocks away that actually had legit equipment. Obama appreciated being able to use seventy-pound dumbbells, a squat rack, or adjustable benches. And the fact that there was a Perkins open early enough for breakfast that shared a parking lot with the hotel? Like winning the lottery.
Those early gym hours seemed trivial on the surface, but they were key to surviving the rigors of the campaign. Everyone loves to win games, but most people hate conditioning. They forget that conditioning is what puts you in a position to win the close games.
At first, the workouts were just another item on the morning’s list, along with emails and abridged schedules. But they did allow us to interact in a more relaxed setting. You were never unaware of the campaign, but when we were working out, it receded a bit. The experience was normalizing. And like installing the Bluetooth for Pete Rouse, the exercise routine was a big thing disguised as a small thing. It showed that I was along for the journey. Every sweaty step of it.
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TOSS OUT THE PLAYBOOK
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At Duke, as the debacle that was 2002 and my sophomore year lurched on, I called the wide receiver coach from UCLA, since they had recruited me in high school. I was looking into transferring schools. Our starting QB wasn’t returning to the team because of academic challenges. I’d weathered a shitty semester and a shitty football season. Given all that had happened, getting out of Dodge seemed like a good idea. I’d never lived outside the South. And I started to think that now was the time.
My father had become ill. He’d been sick most of the academic year, but then he took a scary turn and was admitted to the hospital at Duke. His eyes had swollen shut. His motor skills were failing. The doctors were initially at a loss. After a month, he was diagnosed with a rare respiratory virus.
His illness shook me to my foundation. My father had always been my rock, steadfast and invincible. Present at every game. Leading me through the crosshairs of life. As he was waylaid in a hospital cot, I was spending much of my time running around playing sports. For the first time I deliberated, What am I actually doing with my life? When time with someone you love stops being a guarantee, you begin to examine how you spend the hours you do have. Did I even want to continue to play sports?
One night, I shared with him my plan to transfer and move to California. And my dad said, “Look, I don’t know how long I’m going to be healthy. And I definitely won’t be able to travel out to California to see you play.”
In all my self-absorption about the commotion surrounding Duke, I hadn’t thought about what it would mean to leave my family. I knew my dad wanted me to stay close to home, in case the worst happened and my mom needed me. But he also wanted his son to finish what he’d started. He didn’t want me to be a quitter just because I’d faced some adversity.
He was home by then, but I remembered him in his hospital bed, this six-foot-one, 240-pound stoic giant of man leveled so suddenly, and I knew what he desired was a small ask. Even in that weakened state, he was guiding me, reminding me what was really important. Family. Seeing my commitments through to the end. Rising up, not scurrying away. My father had bent over backward for me my whole life. Not running off to California was the least I could have done for him. So I stayed.
After six weeks, my dad was released from the hospital. But his brush with death left me deeply unnerved. I found myself exploring parts of my psyche that I’d previously ignored in favor of pursuing athletics. All my life I’d wanted to be a professional athlete. But what if there was something more?
That summer I decided—somewhat spontaneously—that I was going to head to Indiana to work for secretary of state candidate John Fernandez. I was majoring in political science and public policy, but I knew nothing about the intricacies of a statewide campaign. It was my first official dip into politics. And my first extended stay away from everyone and everything familiar. Much to my shock, I loved every minute of it. I’d met John Fernandez, the mayor of Bloomington, Indiana, through Alan Hogan. When I met John, I liked him immediately. He was smart, progressive, full of passion. Part of my job was to canvass with the candidate and speak to people all over Indiana, to find out the issues the constituents cared about. Sometimes we talked sports, but more often I was drawn into conversations about social policy, day care, minimum wage, health insurance, the effect of daylight saving time on livestock. I spent my days exchanging ideas and listening to folks I would never have spoken to before. I also traveled as an aide to Fernandez for specific events and fundraisers, depending on who was hosting and who the guests were. Indiana is not what I’d call the most progressive state in the union, but during the campaign there were appearances during which it made strategic sense to display some diversity—aka me. I didn’t mind being “the diversity.” Being a new kind of role model came naturally. And let’s be honest: Hoosiers love basketball.
I remember walking with the candidate, a man not a lot of people knew much about, touring alien cities, getting water when he was thirsty, handing out literature, keeping pace side by side as we marched in Fourth of July parades in places like Fort Wayne and Gary. I was experiencing new territories literally and figuratively. I was well out of my comfort zone, in an atmosphere where my physical abilities were irrelevant. My brain was alive. I felt stimulated and tuned in to a world bigger than my own, and certainly bigger than athletics, which was all I knew.
The people I worked with on the campaign were also a new breed to me. They were dynamic and fervent about making Indiana a better place. I saw how one person, even in a lowly position, could make a measurable difference in the outcome by contributing his or her best effort for the team, and I became even more impressed with John’s will to win. And I assumed everyone else was too. I was confident we would win the election.
That Indiana gang taught me more than just how a local campaign was managed. I recall one weekend, as I was driving to an event with a couple members of the group, when my ex-girlfriend called. Lydia Guterman was a smart and beautiful woman who constantly pushed me to be better personally, athletically, and academically. She was about to be a senior at the University of North Carolina as a Morehead Scholar and had seen the world by age twenty-one. Lydia and her parents, Wylly and Jim, always treated me like I fit in and belonged even when I didn’t. Lydia had recently shared that she had started dating women. She rang to tell me that she was traveling to D.C. for her first LGBT march.
“Why would you waste your time on that?” I said glibly.
“Seriously?” she snapped back at me. “Is that your actual opinion?”
“Yeesssss,” I said, unsure of why she was so tweaked. I was at the age where I thought the only things that were important were things that I did.
My ex spent the next twenty minutes educating me on the value of activism and of fighting for your rights, and, perhaps most vociferously, explaining in minute detail why I was being a Grade A jerk.
When I hung up the phone, my new campaign pals were oddly quiet.
“What?” I asked. “Not you guys too?”
My friend Alan gently suggested that maybe I should rethink my perspective. “Try and understand what is important to other people even if you don’t understand why it is. Listen first, and endeavor to be respectful.”
That landed with me. It didn’t matter if I wasn’t invested in my ex-girlfriend’s cause. She was. It was a big move forward for me in developing some emotional intelligence. And though I didn’t know it then, it was good preparation for the future, when the concerns of an entire nation would become peripherally my business. My boss would need to listen with empathy to every single one of them—and by extension, I would too.
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&n
bsp; The Indiana campaign was in full swing when I had to return to Duke for football training camp. The fact that I had given up any part of the summer for something other than training in Durham had struck some of my coaches as breaking a fundamental rule of the playbook. So, as much as I hated to leave, my Duke commitment was calling. Then, as life tends to do, it threw me a curveball in the form of a knee injury, MCL and PCL tears—you have a better chance of winning the state lottery than tearing both those ligaments. Less than a month before the Indiana election in October, and I was out for the year in both sports.
My coworkers from Indiana, Angie Gates and Lori Lambert, who had become good friends, sent a “Get Well” balloon bouquet to my apartment. I was touched. The injury came in the middle of the season and when I was one of the top receivers in the ACC for yards and catches, and my coworkers were among the few to truly appreciate what a blow it was. Of course, I was bummed to be sidelined. But I wasn’t as demoralized as I’d been about previous injuries. I was beginning to understand how life goes off script. Things may not happen the way you want them to. And the true test of character is how you respond when they don’t.
In the end, John Fernandez lost the election. He put together a well-run, well-financed effort. Turnout was strong. His support was visible and vocal. He outraced his opponent in every measurable way, and still lost. He was sidelined by fate, just like me.
It was after his loss that I fully recognized how much I’d evolved that summer I spent in Indiana. I’d witnessed the uncertainties of the political culture. How unpredictable it can be. How exciting. I’d learned how to communicate more effectively and to invest in the concerns of people outside of my circle of understanding. I’d embraced emotions beyond anger and disdain. I’d seen that I was more than a point on a scoreboard. And I realized that the final score isn’t always the whole truth of the game.
