Religious Inspirational Gifts

Byrd's Flight

He was larger than life.

That’s what you thought when you met Ricky Byrdsong. He filled the room with his smile. With his confidence. With his personality. Talk to him long enough and you might find yourself ready to follow him on a crusade against hate. Or hunger. Or just about anything. Ricky Byrdsong could do that. Could motivate people to follow him. Before they knew it, they were right next to him. Involved. That was his power, the power to lead.

Ask Jamal Meeks about that. He spent three years as an assistant to Byrdsong at Northwestern, going from glorified gofer to a valued bench assistant. “I had all the jobs everybody else didn’t have time for,” Meeks says, laughing. “I got the cars washed, filled them with gas and picked up the recruits from the airport. All the glamour stuff.” In return, Meeks learned about basketball and how to serve others. He saw that when Byrdsong showed up in Meeks’ office with three boxes of sharp Cole Haan dress shoes for the 24-year-old coach. “I’m making $1,000 a month, and he’s treating me like one of his kids,” Meeks says. “If I needed a new suit for the sidelines, he helped out.” And on that bus ride back from a loss (Northwestern had a lot of them) when Byrd made Meeks look out the window and consider “how many people in this city are hungry right now.” That really made an impression. “I’m 24 years old, and I’m trying to figure out how to afford a new car, and he’s talking about people who can’t eat,” Meeks says. “He says, ‘We’ve got to figure out how to feed them.’”

Then there was the time when Byrdsong told Meeks, “Come on, we’re taking a drive.” They jumped into the head coach’s maroon New Yorker and started driving into Chicago. Way into Chicago. To Cabrini Green, the most notorious projects in the city. A place where people who drive shiny New Yorkers don’t go, unless they’re moving at top speed. Not Byrdsong. He stopped. He parked. “The locals are trying to figure out who we are,” Meeks says. “They think we’re detectives.” Byrdsong took Meeks into one of the apartment buildings. It reeked of urine and despair. “Think about trying to raise kids in this,” Byrdsong told him. “We’ve got to do something about that.” Byrdsong wasn’t eyeing a recruit or trying to make contact with a street agent. He just wanted to see the place. And he wanted Meeks to know that even at $1,000 a month, he had it pretty good. “To feel that, wow!” Meeks says, a decade later.