Oscar Wilson may be 74 years old, but he was about to learn what every American teenager finds out too late. That Life360 tracking app your family had you download? It shows your top speed. Every time you drive.
Wilson has served as Longview High School’s running backs coach for 47 seasons. In that time, he’s made the drive down I-20 West to Dallas more times than the Lobos have beaten their arch-rival Marshall (Longview notched its 68th win over the Mavericks in Week 2). His daughter, grandkids, and ex-son-in-law, South Oak Cliff head coach Jason Todd, all live there. Wilson makes the two-hour trek on Saturday mornings, cuts his daughter’s grass, then heads back like he’s just going around the corner.
But on this particular day, he was on his way to visit his best friend, Wayne Ingram Sr. The pair were Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity brothers at East Texas State. They are godfathers to each other’s kids and took family vacations together every summer. Ingram has battled cancer the couple of years and underwent an extended hospital stay after a major incident in March. Every day after Longview’s spring practice, Wilson called his godson, South Oak Cliff assistant coach Wayne Ingram Jr, with the same question: “How’s my boy doing?”
The sense of urgency to see his friend, combined with his comfort on I-20 West, must’ve caused the pedal to inch toward the medal. No sooner had he parked at the hospital than he got a call from his grandchild.
“Paw-Paw, what are you doing going 93 miles an hour to Dallas?”
In both his professional and personal life, Oscar Wilson speeds to the people who need him most. Plenty of those people, like Todd, Ingram Jr, and his 15-year-old grandson will be on the opposing sideline when Longview makes the oh-so-familiar trip to Dallas for a game against South Oak Cliff on Friday. The scoreboard at Kincaide Stadium will say which team won that night, but Todd knows there’s a more important, albeit unofficial scoreboard on how we live our lives. He strives every day to keep the score close to Oscar’s.
“If I can be half of him, I’ll be alright,” Todd said. “Sometimes, I’ll be like, ‘Man, I know you can’t always be perfect.’”
Truth is, Oscar hasn't been. No one is. But high school athletics gave him the tools to become the man he is today, and he’s dedicated his entire life to giving back through high school athletics.
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