Coach Benton

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor F acebook has its issues. It can become a festering ground for hate, misinformation and disharmony. But it has also become a valuable tool for helping connect folks and share news.

The social media site was how I learned last week about the passing of Buster Benton – or as many a former Marion Patriot knew him, Coach Benton. I did not have him for a classroom teacher like many of you reading this probably did. No, he was de_nitely “Coach” Benton for me. He was my high school baseball coach, along with Coach Kirby and Coach Fortner.

We weren’t great. It was de_nitely a “rebuilding” era for Marion baseball while I was there. And they got very good the year after I graduated, so it really was a rebuilding and not just a “we’re bad” time.

Coach Benton was usually a pretty chill guy, playing the “good coach” role to the others’ more stern approach. Somewhere, there’s an old Marion High School yearbook with him leaned way back in a folding chair in the gym or cafeteria or somewhere that I can see clearly in my mind’s eye. It’s been over 30 years now, so I guess I will always remember him feeding the pitching machine and telling us to send one “right back up the pooter,” which was his unique way of saying hit a line drive up the middle.

I suppose it’s just part of the way the world works. People live their lives, they grow old and they pass on as another generation rises. But there seems to be something special about teachers and coaches. I guess it’s because they come into our lives when we are at a very impressionable age and because it takes a certain kind of person to dedicate decades of their lives to mentoring, teaching and guiding children – because, let’s face it, children can be just terrible.

I taught school for _ve years, from 2004 to 2009. Those “kids” are all in their 30s now. I still run into them from time to time and they always tell me how much they enjoyed my class. My wife is in her 25th year in education. You want to talk about feeling old? We were having dinner with my daughter’s softball team. She’s a senior. One of the freshman player’s mother was sitting across from us and it turns out the Mom was one of my wife’s _rst students at West Junior High back in the day – and now her oldest kid and our youngest kid were on the same team.

My Dad taught social studied and coached in Earle for 30 years. You can’t go anywhere with him without someone yelling out, “Coach Hardin!” True story: About seven or eight years ago, I got a call from a lady whose sister had passed away and her obituary had been in the paper. She lived in California but was in town for the funeral. She was trying to get a copy of the paper to take home with her but they were not out on the racks yet and she was going to have to leave for her ight home.

Fortunately, I had a “press check” copy of the paper that I said I could bring to her. She gave me her address out in Earle, and I headed that way. The _rst house I went to wasn’t the right house. In fact, no one lived there. But as I stood up on the porch, with my back more or less facing the street, someone driving by stopped and hollered out, “Hey!” I turned around and a lady leaning out the driver’s side window said, “Aren’t you Coach Hardin’s son?” I said that I was. She then told me to tell him that Stephanie (something) said hello.

She also gave me directions to the house I was trying to _nd, but that’s the kind of impact a teacher or a coach can have on a student (I still don’t know how she knew who I was).

Coach Benton was that kind of teacher, that kind of coach and that kind of man. I can’t remember the last time I spoke to him. I think it was a few years ago at Colton’s in Marion. Between there, Walmart and church, that’s about where I see all my old teachers and coaches.

I hope all of you who remember Coach Benton will join me in sending thoughts and prayers to his family as they deal with his loss. And I hope if you didn’t know him, you have a Buster Benton in your life that you can remember being a teacher and a mentor in your formative years. And to those of you who are currently in the education profession – please hang in there. I know it’s probably harder right now to be a school teacher than at any point in time and it can be tempting to walk away, but for every knucklehead out there you have to deal with, there are a dozen or more kids who appreciate what you are doing for them in ways you (or even they) don’t even realize.

Just maybe don’t advise them to “send one back up the pooter.” Or maybe do. That sort of thing sticks with you …