‘Coach’ Left Behind a Long List of Winners

Just about all the players were there--politicians, entrepreneurs, celebrities and community activists, scrunched elbow-to-elbow in the sanctuary of Chip Murray’s First African Methodist Episcopal Church.

It was an impressive gathering: Maxine Waters, Gwen Moore, Johnnie Cochran, Bernard Kinsey, Danny Bakewell, Bondie Gambrell, Walt Hazzard, Brenda Richie (Lionel’s ex), Chilton Alphonse, Diane Watson, Ron Burkle, Jim Harrick, Kerman Maddox, Nate Holden, Tom Bradley, Sweet Alice, Mark Ridley-Thomas, John Mack, Walter Tucker III, Larkin Arnold, Larry McCormick, Carlton Jenkins, David Cunningham . . . and the list goes on to the tune of some 2,000 souls.

“If you had dropped a bomb in there, you’d just about have wiped out all the black leadership in Los Angeles,” observed Kinsey.

They had come to say goodby to a little man whose enormous heart gave out on him in Washington the same day that the earth shook here. He died just moments after he had visited with Vice President Al Gore and minutes before he was to meet with President Clinton.

To most, he was known as Fox. Others called him Coach. His real name was Fred Snowden. Doesn’t ring a bell, does it? But that’s kind of the way Fred played it. He touched, he moved, he molded, he motivated. But he never sought credit.

*

I didn’t really know Snowden that well. I met him last summer at the rehearsal of somebody’s fund-raiser. Bored, I noticed this dapper guy sitting all alone by the entrance puffing on a cigarette. I joined him.

We talked about hometowns and kids and community concerns and somewhere along the way he mentioned casually that he used to coach basketball. He skipped the part about being the nation’s first black head basketball coach of a major college when he was at the University of Arizona and being named NCAA Coach of the Year. And I guess it slipped his mind that he is a legend in Detroit, where his high school teams won an astounding 207 games against six losses, including seven consecutive Detroit Public League championships.

I just knew that I liked him. He seemed honest and extremely committed to helping people. So I asked him for his card. Executive Director, Food 4 Less Foundation, it read.

What does that mean?

“Well, we give money to various organizations.”

Like who?

“Well, sometime next week we’re going to give some money to the school system to help them a little with their athletic program. That way they can put more of their money into academics.”

Really, I said, rather nonplussed. How much?

“Ten million dollars.”

*

It seems that everybody has a Fred Snowden story.

Wilbur Tate was wandering aimlessly through life, having squandered a college education and basketball career, until Snowden, for whom he had never played, put him on the path to an undergraduate degree, a master’s and his first job--field representative for Speaker Willie Brown.

“It’s a miracle that I’m here,” he said.

The future of Ernest Arceneaux, now a senior field deputy for state Sen. Diane Watson, was balancing precariously on a mini-mall he had developed on Broadway and Slauson when Fred Snowden happened by. He had only one tenant until Snowden, then a Baskin Robbins vice president, rescued his family investment by placing a black-owned franchise there.

Melvin Franklin of the Temptations had been kicked out of school for singing in the hallways when his coach, Snowden, walked him through the downtown school board and got him back in class with the caveat that he would no longer play basketball. And when they tried to boot Franklin out again for going to New York to record his first LP, there was Coach to save him.

“He was like a father to me, to so many of us,” Franklin said. “I think he was one of God’s own angels.”

Dr. William Harvey, president of Hampton University and Snowden’s cousin, had for years tried to pay back the money Snowden would stuff into his pocket every payday when Harvey was broke in Detroit.

“He’d always say: ‘Bill, I don’t need it,’ ” Harvey recalled. “Pass it on to somebody who does.”

Maybe Sweet Alice, a Watts community activist, had the best remembrance of Snowden. She noted during the memorial service how in a scant 12 years after his arrival in Los Angeles, Snowden had ascended the corporate and political hierarchy.

“But he never forgot us down in Watts. He never was ashamed of us. He was always there for us.” He was always trying to pass it on.