Sunday Reflections: Even Superman is human

My favorite week of the year, for as long as I can remember, typically came in August, just before fall sports tryouts and the onset of a new school year. We’d pack our car, whatever car we had at the time — a Trooper, Suburban, a different Suburban, a Jimmy — and cram three large boys, a gym class worth of sports equipment, boogie boards, skim boards, shovels, clothes, towels, golf clubs, and make the sometimes-8-hour-drive to Myrtle Beach, sometimes 11-hour-drive to Myrtle Beach.

For one week, we’d do nothing but play sports and build sand castle metropolises on the beach. When it was too dark to see, we’d retreat to the house and eat dinner from the deck, talking through the night, watching the storms roll in from the ocean. We’d stay up late watching movies and eating ice cream, playing cards and every board game you’ve heard of, and many you haven’t.

It’s impossible for me to say how many of us would go every year. The number of cousins from my dad’s side of the family — the Alcorns and Oberdorfs — seemed to multiply at a rate I couldn’t quite keep up with: Jayne, then Claire and Jimmy and Charlie and Betsi and Molly and Jack and Joe and Mark and Matthew and Mike.  

I loved everything about those weeks. It was the one week I’d get to see that set of cousins. The older ones — Matt, Dan, Mike, Jeannie — I admired the way a boy admires superheroes or the athletes he sees on television. That’s what they were to me, then: Superheroes. All of them. They had been college athletes. At the time, playing a sport in college was the only barometer of success I had in life, and here were four who did just that. I was too young to admit to any of them just how much I looked up to them, how much I admired them, respected them, wanted to shoot as smooth as Dan, act with the carefree looseness of Mike, play a perfect round of golf like Matt, stand as tall and strong like Jeannie.  

There’s a commonality, of course, between those four: They were all the children of my Uncle Jim.

Jim Alcorn is one of the greatest men I’ve ever met.

One of the most respected and admired in a life that has been full of excellent men. He died the other morning, and it was one of the bigger shocks I’ve had.

Uncle Jim was Superman. He was Captain America. Paul Bunyan. Made of iron yet soft as putty.

When we’d go to Myrtle Beach, Uncle Jim would be there, stopwatch in hand. We’d run sprints up and down the beach, all of us, trying to beat our times. Trying to impress Uncle Jim.

He never made us run these sprints, mind you. We just wanted to. We wanted to show Uncle Jim how much faster we’d get in a single day. How hard we’d work. He had magic in him, that man. Made you want to be better without ever prodding you to do so.

When we’d return from Myrtle Beach, I’d shoot hoops for hours in the driveway until my fingertips bled, because, hey, that’s what Uncle Jim would have done. That’s why he was the purest shooter my grandfather had ever seen, the greatest high school quarterback in the history of Pennsylvania. He put in the work, every day. Would hit golf balls till his hands were calloused and bloody. So I was told, anyway.

Most of these stories, I heard as a kid, and there is a blurry line where boyhood myth meets reality. I don’t know what is legend and what is truth — was Uncle Jim a better quarterback than, say, Dan Marino, another pride of Pittsburgh? I don’t know. But I believe them all to be true, partly because he’s a member of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame, partly because I’m convinced, through and through, that Uncle Jim wasn’t human like the rest of us. He was a legend to me then; he’s a legend to me now.

When he was coming out of high school, the University of Minnesota — this is when Minnesota was in its heyday as a football program — wanted him to play quarterback for them, and wanted him bad. He couldn’t go. Had to work in the steel mills for his dad. So he stayed close to home, worked for his dad, played for a small little school named Clarion, rewrote those record books and got drafted by the Cleveland Browns.

I think most of that is true.

What is unequivocally true is that my Uncle Jim never played a round of competitive golf in his life until he retired as a teacher. Not that this mattered. He picked up some clubs, worked at it, and competed in two USGA Senior Amateur Championships, with my cousin, Matt, on the bag.

Matt could hardly breathe — so he claims, anyway, though it’s hard to believe Matt could be nervous about much; he, too, is a stone cold killer in athletics — in the first round he caddied for him, but my Uncle Jim piped his first tee shot 250 yards down the middle.

Years later, Uncle Jim played a round of golf with Matt and his two kids, Charlie and Jimmy. Uncle Jim saved a 76, just a few strokes north of his age. Charlie shot 77. Exasperated, he told my Uncle Jim that “Popsy, I don’t think it’s possible to beat you.”

“Join the club,” Matt said.

He had an uncanny knack for finding balls, my Uncle Jim. I’d spray one 50 yards into the woods and he’d say “Ah, we’ll find it.” He’d come out with a dozen balls in hand, while also spotting my own. He’d point to a sliver of an opening through the trees and say “You know, I think you have an opening there.”

To him, it was an opening. To a normal human, it was a circus shot.

The man never seemed to miss. This could be on a course, a court, a field, anything. As far as his kids go, Uncle Jim and Aunt Jackie went undefeated. Matt, Mike, Dan, and Jeannie are all some of my favorite people in the world. It’s a bummer I can’t see them more than I do. We’re spread out now — Chicago, Pittsburgh, Florida. They all have grown kids I also wish I could see more. They were as close to Popsy, as they called him, as they were their own parents. Some of them played softball, some basketball, hockey, gymnastics, one got into film.

Uncle Jim supported all of them, regardless of pursuit, because, to him, that’s what life was all about: the pursuit. Practice. Getting reps. Improvement, every day. The few times I went to his and Aunt Jackie’s house, he turned his front yard into a makeshift football field. When we were tired of football, we took a break, then Uncle Jim arranged the yard into a miniature golf course to work on our short game. When we got tired of chipping, we’d pick up the basketball and shoot hoops, play one-on-one.

Competing, improving, always.

I miss those Myrtle Beach trips. I miss the endless games with my cousins. Nights looking at the ocean. Sunset barbeques.

Mostly, I miss standing at the water’s edge with three of the men I admired most in life: My father, my grandfather, my Uncle Jim. I wouldn’t say much, just listen, clinging onto every word I could, soaking it in. That’s what you did around Uncle Jim: You listened.

You took in every word you could of a life well lived.