0102220127
DETROIT FREE PRESS
010222
Thursday, February 22, 2001
METRO FINAL
1D
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 2001, Detroit Free Press
JANITOR COACH SHOWS PLAYERS HOW TO SHINE
This is a story about taking pride in your work, whether it's saving children
or cleaning toilets -- or, in Willie Davis' case, both.
Willie Davis is a janitor. Oh, you can call him a custodian, or a caretaker,
or a sanitation engineer. You can call him the King of England if you want, he
still takes a broom every day and cleans the dirtiest corners of Arthur Smith
Junior High School in Alexandria, La.
And when he's done sweeping, he mops. And he waxes the floors. He does the
windows. He mows the lawn. He plucks the weeds. When he has to, he cleans the
toilets.
And when the day's work is done, he puts a whistle around his neck.
And he coaches the boys basketball team.
And it wins like crazy.
"I tell the kids, whatever you do in life, do it well," Davis says. And true
to his word, he has led them to three district titles in the past four seasons
and has a 91-14 record. His kids listen. They look up to him.
He also has the cleanest locker room in the league.
"Oh, yeah," he says, laughing. "The kids know, if there's a candy wrapper on
the floor, I'll be the one saying, 'Let's pick that up.' And they do, too. No
questions asked. They say 'OK, Coach Davis.' "
He laughs again. It's the "coach" part of that sentence that he enjoys the
most.
No raise, but he would do it for free
Now, we all remember school. Wasn't the custodian often the guy kids looked up
to the most? He was an adult, but he wasn't to be feared, like some teachers.
And he usually had a sense of humor -- unlike almost everyone in the school
office.
Davis, 38, who stands just 5-feet-7 ("A Calvin Murphy type," he jokes), was
only hired to sweep up and empty the buckets when he took his job nine years
ago. He was paid, he says, $1,200 a month, and hasn't had a raise since.
The only increase in his income has been the $900 a year they give him to
coach the boys team.
And that he would do for free.
"My kids ask me all the time, 'Coach Davis, how come you coach us but you're
the janitor here?' " he says. "I tell them, 'That's why you have to stay in
school and get an education.'
"I tell them I never got the chance to go to college. But you kids can."
Davis' own basketball career was snipped, ironically, just after junior high.
His father died. Suddenly, he no longer could spend his after-school hours
shooting with his teammates. He had to work.
"My mother was on welfare, there were five of us in the house, and I needed to
help out," he says.
He graduated from high school, thought about going into the Army, but decided
to stay around his hometown. He worked tirelessly, assorted cleaning jobs,
including the one at Arthur Smith. When a coaching shortage left the school
without anyone to guide the basketball team, Davis -- who had spent time
coaching in Catholic leagues -- said he would do it.
His team has been cleaning up ever since.
The Lord, books and basketball
There are several reasons Davis succeeds. The first, he admits, is a love of
children. He has three of his own. He can talk their language. He is also a
father figure for many of his kids. He believes in discipline.
In the first game Davis ever coached -- this was in a Catholic league -- he
had a young man named Juan Pierre, who would grow up to become a star rookie
for the Colorado Rockies baseball team. Pierre was a hotshot young player. But
his attitude, Davis recalled, was bad.
"So I sat him down. I said, 'When you're ready to play with a good approach,
you tell me. Otherwise, you're on the bench.'
"Fifteen minutes later, he said, 'Coach, I know how I have to act.' And I
never had a problem with him again."
Here is where you will have problems with Davis: schoolwork. The custodian
takes it seriously.
"I tell my kids it's the Lord first, books second, basketball third," he says.
Last year, his five starters had straight-A averages.
It's hard to find a coach with those numbers.
Basketball season just ended in Louisiana. So Willie Davis concentrates on his
day job now, sweeping, mopping and mowing. There is no feeling that he's above
the work.
"I tell my kids, whatever job you do, do it the best you can," he says. "If
it's cleaning a bathroom, make that bathroom shine and you're gonna get some
credit."
You listen to Willie Davis, surrounded by brooms, dustpans and garbage cans,
and then you think about NBA stars who moan about having to fly commercial, or
having to actually, gulp, go to practice, and you are convinced, more than
ever, that the role models for our kids are not on TV but right there, just
around the corner.
Some of them are swinging mops.
"I tell my kids, look at me, I got a lucky break."
Other way around, Willie.
Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or albom@freepress.com. Catch "Albom in
the Afternoon" 3-6 p.m. weekdays on WJR-AM (760) and simulcast on MSNBC 3-5
p.m.
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