Sports have become almost completely a TV experience. Running into a famous Tar Heel in real life? Odds are against it. For most of us, watching a game in person might be the the closest we get to seeing our favorite Tar Heels in real-time three dimensions. Seeing them outside of uniform, going through their day the same way we go through ours, would be a rarity.
Longevity gives some of us an edge on that front. I attended UNC at the same time as Mia Hamm, and we commiserated in the back of a Spanish
3 class about a Portuguese instructor who spoke almost no English. The instructor claimed in halting English that a Spanish 3 class conducted entirely in Spanish would be in our favor in the long run. She was wrong. As for Hamm, I had no idea she would be internationally famous one day, so I’m not going to count that one.
I once spent 40 minutes on the phone trying to sell season tickets to PlayMakers Repertory Company to a guy named Ulrich. Ulrich had far more theater knowledge than anyone else I called that summer, and he seemed genuinely excited about the season’s slate. I couldn’t get him to buy, though. Finally, he said, “Uh, you realize I’m on the basketball team, right? We travel a lot?” That’s when it clicked that Ulrich was Rick Fox. But again, I had no idea he would go on to such celebrity status.
In 2008, our son had a performance at school with the rest of his 3rd grade class. This was up in the mountains, a small elementary school in a small county, at least in terms of population. After the show as done and the kids had bowed through a round of applause, attention turned to a commotion in the back of the gym.
Dean Smith had snuck in the back door to watch his grandson, after the show started, to avoid being a distraction during the skits. He politely and graciously shook hands with the entire gym, his daughter politely trying to extricate him so they could go celebrate over dinner as a normal family. That was the first time any of his grandson’s schoolmates learned he had a famous granddad.
The scene was notable to me because it was Dean Smith, grandfather, rather than the guy I’d watched on the sidelines for decades or happened to walk by on a brick path on campus. He seemed embarrassed to the center of attention when that was supposed to the kids. The crowd slowly figured it out and left Dean and his family to themselves.
That’s my closest encounter with a famous Tar Heel. What’s yours?
