Lucas: Always There

By Adam Lucas

OMAHA—It's Father's Day weekend and Harvey Forbes is in Omaha.

This is not particularly unusual. He's done this trip nine times now. Twice he and his wife of 63 years, Joan, drove the 18 hours from Sanford to Omaha with one of their grandsons in tow ("You drive to Louisville and spend the night," he says, "and then you get up the next morning and do the rest"). Maybe he is not quite the oracle of Omaha but he can advise you on almost every hotel, restaurant and walking path in the city.

Oh, the walking paths. Harvey has spent a lifetime in real estate and construction and he appreciates the details. "I have walked all over this town," he says with a grin. "They have wonderful walking trails here. One year we stayed out near the mall and those concrete walking trails must have been 8-10 feet wide. It's a wonderful town to visit."

His ninth trip has not included as much walking because he is battling pulmonary fibrosis, and you can hear the underlying frustration in his voice. But it is powerfully overwhelmed by the pride when he talks about the reason he is here: his son, Scott, has coached the Tar Heels all the way to the national championship series, which begins tomorrow against Oklahoma.

Nine times now Harvey and Joan have paused whatever is happening in Sanford and made the journey to Omaha. It's true that life as the head coach's dad is a little easier. You get the room at the team hotel and ticket priority. But Harvey has been making this trip since Scott was a first-year Tar Heel assistant in 2006. He's not here because he wants to grab a little bit of the spotlight. He's here because, well, if one of his three children is doing something, he's going to be there.

"I've always appreciated having him here just because we're so close," Scott says. "But I didn't understand in 2006 like I do now how fast time goes. I cherish any time I can be with him, but I do have a better understanding now of quality time and taking the time to appreciate all the sacrifices he has made all these years to be here and allow me to be where I am as a coach."

That's how Harvey and Joan have created a family that storms Omaha as many as two dozen deep, leading Scott to laughingly refer to his family as "The Griswolds" on multiple occasions. There have been dinners together and ice cream runs and photos by the Road to Omaha statue. And yes, there have also been three victories, but that is not how Harvey measures his trips. In the end, it's about being together.

He built his home in Sanford in 1980 and has hosted Thanksgiving every year since. The event sometimes swells over 40 people.

"We're all different," Harvey says, "but we try to show love for every member of the family. We try not to judge them, and let each one do their individual thing while still trying to support them and love them. We try to teach them to keep Christ in their life and to set a good example. You teach by example much more than with your words."

Scott will tell you being a Christian is a central part of his life, but Harvey told him it was a decision he had to make on his own. "If you don't, it's not real," his father told him.

What was it he said? Love them but let them do their own individual thing? Harvey always guessed that Scott would return to Sanford and work with him in that construction company. They would have had fun together, the two of them. His other children, Stewart and Diane, both work in the Sanford area, and it would have been so easy to have them all close by all the time.

But Scott wanted to try coaching. Mike Fox was offering a volunteer assistant coaching position at North Carolina, with the key word being "volunteer." College baseball was different in 1999. The position didn't come with a courtesy car or a housing allowance. It came with, well, nothing.

It meant chasing his dream for another year instead of making the safe choice and coming home to Sanford to work with his father. Harvey's advice was simple: "I didn't start this business for you to run it."
"If he hadn't told me that, I wouldn't be coaching today," Scott says.

But he is. Harvey dismisses his role and credits two key individuals—Scott's wife, Mandy, and Fox—for his son's success. But he has been there at every step. He and Joan were at just as many games when Scott was a volunteer assistant as they are now that he's the head coach. They've done what they always do—stand in the background and make other people feel important.

Their impact is obvious in the way the baseball community relates to them. After the Tar Heels beat the Trojans in Chapel Hill, Scott was celebrating with his players on the field. Harvey made his way to the UNC dugout, where a steady line of well-wishers formed in front of his wheelchair. Family members, Carolina staff, friends and family of players and coaches…all had been befriended by this Southern gentleman at some point during the season and wanted to spend just a minute with Harvey to tell him congratulations.

That's the fun part when your son is the head coach. The bad part is, well, let Harvey tell you a secret: the bad part is the games.

"I like watching Scott because he enjoys it," Harvey says. "But I get very nervous watching him coach. I never got nervous when he was playing. I coached him when he was 13 or 14 and I never got nervous then. But now, sometimes it's hard to enjoy the game because you get so nervous. You just want your kids to do well. I try to relax and remember the Lord has a plan for everything."

No matter how stressful it might be, both Harvey and Scott know he has to be here. The family will celebrate Father's Day on Sunday. This part will sound familiar—Scott and Mandy have created the kind of family where their daughters, Hannah and Ally, actually want to be near them. When a connecting room to their parents opened at the team hotel, their daughters happily moved immediately, just to get a little bit closer. The days are busy and there is plenty to do on their own, but ultimately, at the end of the night over dinner, they're all together.

Right across the hall from Harvey and Joan, of course. On Thursday night, Scott had charts and scouting reports and depth charts spread out on the table in his room. He's studied them, memorized them, prepared the same way that helped put his team in this lofty position. Forty-eight hours from now he will be in the dugout at the national championship series, exactly where everyone in his profession dreams of being. Right now, though? Right now he is exactly where he wants to be.

He leaves the paperwork on the table and walks across the hall to his parents' room. The family often keeps their doors propped open here so it's easier to find each other. You can hear his big voice booming down the hall.
"Hey!" he says. "How's everybody doing?"

He is enjoying the moments. All of them.

"We are going to play for a national championship and that is a big deal," Scott says, putting quotation marks around the "big deal" part. "But there's nothing better than baseball bringing people together. As you get older, you appreciate even more that everyone is here. I never wanted to be greedy and say I want to go to Omaha for my dad, and I wanted it more for our players. But I did want it.

"Through all this, I've learned that the games are going to fade away really fast. But being together this Father's Day is something we will never forget."

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