By Segun Odegbami
This is not the biography of my friend.
His story is better captured in the avalanche of tributes pouring in since May 18, 2021, when the sun of his life on earth finally set.
Lee was born to run.
His rise up the rungs of success in athletics started from the age of 19 when he won his first national championship. For the next 9 years, only a handful of humans could touch his rear lights on the tracks.
In the 400 metres event, he became the best in the world, posting the fastest times, remaining unbeaten in all but one of his top races, breaking 11 world records across distances from 400 to 600 metres, becoming the first human to break the sub-44 seconds barrier, winning 2 Olympic Gold medals, and creating two world records that lasted 20 years. For his success in sport he was inducted into the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1983.
Lee was amongst the first athletes in American history to deploy the power of sports as a political weapon, protesting, along with his colleagues, against racial inequality at the biggest theatre of sports in the world, the Olympics, in 1968, and organising the establishment of the Olympic Project for Human Rights.
All of these he did within an elite athletics career that lasted only 9 years. Thereafter, he embarked on another journey, transferring his knowledge and experience to the younger generations, through teaching and coaching young athletes and elite athletes in several countries around the world. He became recognised as one of the foremost sprints coaches in the world. It was in Nigeria that he did the most substantial part of his work, spent the longest cumulative period in any one country, and produced the largest number of world-class athletes. That is the reason Nigeria became his adopted ancestral home in Africa.
His last few months on earth were spent dreaming big about a future with young boys and girls passing through the Segun Odegbami International College and Sports academy, SOCA, and teaching and training them to be first class student athletes. He was passionate about establishing a high-level training centre facility with the help of the International Olympic Committee, the Nigeria Olympic Committee, and OlympAfrica on the campus of SOCA. One month before his death, he supervised the clearing of the land area for the centre.
With these dreams to pursue, he had settled in his mind to live, to work, and, if possible, to die in Africa. He often joyfully shared this with some of his close friends and family – Ron Freeman, Ron Davis, Oliver Johnson, his siblings and children in the USA.
Lee was an athlete, teacher, coach, social and political activist, and civil and human rights crusader.
His story is abundantly available to all who seek to know more in the information super-highway, (the internet).
One area of his life that is hardly ever mentioned, that I witnessed from living with him in the last two years of his life, was his close relationship with nature and the environment.
As we mourn his death and celebrate his life on this day, it seems like a life time ago now, yet it has been only five weeks since Lee embarked on a celestial journey of no return. Since that fateful day of May 18, I have realised that time never stops, even as memories fade fast and the pains of missing a friend lingers as they have done every day of the past 5 weeks since he left, suddenly, like a candle light blown out by a gusty wind.
This past week, in particular,
every morning, I would look out and down from my bedroom window expecting to see Lee below, in the front yard, in his jaded singlet and sports shorts going about his daily morning chores, unfailingly.
I often watched in fascination the unique romance between Lee and the plants in his ‘garden’, a narrow L-shaped, sand filled ledge running parallel to the base of the walled fence surrounding the gated front yard. Lee had converted this ledge into a garden of exotic and diverse plants.
I watched him every day, watering hose in hand, gently spraying the plants, one after the other, muttering a song under your breath in an amazing communication he seemed to be having with the plants as he cleaned, fed and nursed them. He was never in a hurry to pay meticulous attention to the plants. He had plants of Mustard, King of bitters, bitter leaf, spinach, pineapple, experimental GoronTula, melon, cent leaf, and several other small plant specie whose names I never caught. I watched him carefully remove weeds around the plants, pruning off unwanted leaves and branches, gently wiping dirt from stained ones. From time to time, he would give them a treat by injecting fresh dung gathered from cattle wandering around the campus of SOCA in Wasimi Orile, into their soil. He collected the manure in a bag and kept them in the front yard.
All kinds of butterflies, insects, small rodents and birds made his garden a new sanctuary, and I often had to listened to his sermon when we would met later in the yard for our morning coffee and he would regale me with beautiful stories of his mother who taught him the art of gardening, and your father with whom he and his siblings worked on the farm in Madera County, California, where he was born in the United States, harvesting grapes and picking cotton.
I watched in admiration as his plants flourished. They were very green, healthy looking, luxuriant and, obviously, happy.
It’s been 5 weeks since Lee passed on and left his plants.
Yesterday morning, I opened my windows and looked down, expecting to see him busy at tending to his treasured plants in his treasured garden.
It struck me like an uppercut punch that his garden is now overgrown with weeds, unkempt, and the leaves drooping miserably. Even the birds and insects that used to ‘sing’ in excitement are now silent and are nowhere to be found.
As I stared and peered at the lonely garden, I heard some eerie sound emanating from the direction of plants. I strained my ears. It was the faint echo of rustling leaves. There was nobody around. So, I stared again at the plants and sensed a trembling sensation. Then, I heard the sound again. I knew what it was – the sound of sobbing. Even the plants in Lee’s garden were weeping. Like me, they too miss him!
Wasimi, the earth-place that waits to receive the remains of Lee Edward Evans on July 1, 2021, in accordance to the wishes and directives of his siblings and children, in the Yoruba language, means, “Come and rest”.
So, my beloved brother, come and rest, here amongst your ancestors, in eternal peace.
NOTICE
In accordance with the wishes, and with the support of the siblings and children of Lee Edward Evans, his remains will be laid to rest in a Tomb in the private cemetary of the Segun Odegbami International College and Sports Academy, in Wasimi Orile, Ogun State, Nigeria, on Thursday, July 1, 2021, from 11:00 am in the morning.
There is also a Service of Songs ceremony that will take place today, Wednesday June 30, 2021, at the “Lee Evans Power and Speed Training Centre”, SOCA, Wasimi Orile, Ogun State, from 5:00 to 6:00pm.
Both events are organised by the staff and students of SOCA.
