Claremore Daily Progress

Sports Columnists

June 27, 2009

Terrell Lester on Father's Day

TERRELL LESTER Column



This was not the Father's Day Ray Bingham had anticipated.

Six days ago, he buried his 43-year-old son, Todd.

Today will be just another day for Ray Bingham. Another day like the last five. Another day of grieving.

It will not be a day of celebrating a father's love, a father's influence, a father's inspiration.

Rather, it will be, for Ray Bingham, a day of sadness, of sorrow, of searching the shadows for a flicker, any flicker, of hope.

But weep not for Ray Bingham. The shackles of grief will not bind him, will not immobilize him.

Ray Bingham, whose calling card is any Western swing tune, is a man of resilience, a man of buoyancy

His personality is larger than life. His laughter is celebrated. His compassion is genuine. His friends are many.

Those friends, high-profile and powerful, average and invisible, stood by his side, hand in hand, as Ray bid farewell to a son whose life, apparently, was ended by his own hand.

Todd had inherited his father's passion for baseball, for country music. He walked in his father's footsteps. Like his father, the son promoted musical headliners and coached baseball adolescents.

Monday’s memorial service embraced each of those passions.

Claremore's Legion Field, where Todd Bingham coached and where Ray Bingham watched, barely contained an overflow crowd of some 600. Even the two dugouts were full.

Organized by Todd's cousin, Brett Bingham, the service followed the format of a nine-inning baseball game.

Each inning brought to bat a song and a tribute from a former player or friend.

During the seventh-inning stretch, boxes of Cracker Jack were distributed to those in attendance. Their voices joined as one in an emotional rendering of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

Entertainer Billy Parker eulogized his lifelong friend in the bottom of the first inning.

Country music icon Red Steagall remembered Todd Bingham in the home half of the fourth.

Steagall returned to deliver the closing prayer, in the bottom of the ninth.

The outfield scoreboard tracked each inning. Zeroes were inserted after each half-inning. Steagall's prayer was the single, most decisive hit. His prayer drove home a message, drove home a run, the only run, for the home team on the scoreboard.

The American flag had been lowered to half-mast in center field.

One of Todd's former players, David Chester, flew in from North Carolina where his team was playing.

One of Todd's former coaches, Gene Shell, was in attendance.

So was country hitmaker Leroy Van Dyke.

Arrangements of flowers stretched from home plate up both foul lines. The floral tributes arrived from Nashville, from California, from country music legends, from forgotten baseball heroes.

Father’s Day is a special day, a day for remembering.

Monday provided Ray Bingham with a roster full of memories.

Those memories will have to sustain him today.

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