Remembering Huey, Jeff and Sherman

Every August and September, I remember them.

When it gets really hot as practice starts, I think of Huey. Personal struggles that end in suicide? Jeff. The whole “mysterious ways” thing? Sherman.

Not everybody needs a reminder of the value of human life, but sometimes you get smacked with one anyway.

Sherman Bonier had one of those smiles, the kind of smile you liked seeing, and saw a lot. He was good in football and basketball, so you saw it a fair bit.

He was a two-sporter, helping his Class AAA high school basketball team in Louisiana to a serious statewide run for a few seasons.

At linebacker was where he stood out. Nearly two dozen players on a field, your eyes found him about three steps after the snap.

He was personable, bright, a good kid who was going to make his high school alma mater -- which also produced teammate and long-time major league pitcher Russ Springer -- proud.

Grant High is our version of, say, Twiggs County, just with more students.

So he entered his senior year ready to help the football team approach a little of the basketball team’s success.

Except for that team picnic the second week of the season, at the river.

Bonier could shoot and pass and tackle and run and dunk and all that, but he couldn’t swim, and the second weekend of his senior year, he drowned.

“Mysterious ways” is often a smothering understatement.

Just a few weeks before, our preseason football section had two players on the cover. One was Bonier. The other lived all of a year longer.

Analogy-wise, imagine a less-populated region, but with small towns like Forsyth or Gray nearer a city like Macon.

Think of Mary Persons or Jones County hitting a stretch in baseball where they’ve become a state power, and in football, are region contenders that occasionally knock off some more established programs, backed up superb community support.

And imagine you have the son of the principal, who bats third and plays shortstop on that state title baseball team, plays quarterback and defensive back on the football team, dates a cheerleader and is the oldest son of his high school’s principal.

Swish that around, and add one of those titles as a senior: Mr. ____ High School.

In the middle of this was your friendly neighborhood sports writer, spending plenty of time in that town watching winning teams and becoming familiar with a lot of folks, including Mr. Tioga High.

By the time he was done, he had trophies for state baseball titles, district football championships, assorted MVP plaques, just about as full a high school career as a human could have.

A poster child.

He was a great high school competitor, which doesn’t translate into great potential college athlete. He wanted to go to what’s now Louisiana-Lafayette -- close to that state’s version of Georgia Southern -- and play baseball, but word was there was some heat to try and walk on at LSU.

His body went to Baton Rouge, but perhaps his heart veered to Lafayette.

The bottom line was he came home one weekend early that freshman year, got involved in an altercation connected to his ex-girlfriend.

Next day, he’s at home with his dad, and the phone rings. Seconds later, Jeff put a gun in his mouth.

Now, there’s hardly a soul who is prepared for everything in their late teens and early 20s, and my hand’s certainly up. But every so often

I can tell you, it’s mighty hard to cover a funeral amid hundreds of devastated teenagers and parents when you’re crying. The memory of leaning into the window of one of the big limos for a quick word of condolence to the mother and the ex-girlfriend and just blabbering is one that remains a little too fresh.

You talk about (a) wanting to grab a 19-year-old’s facemask through a casket lid and demand to know what the hell is the deal, and (b) being reminded that one’s outside can cover up the inside with military strength, and we really just don’t have the clue we think we do.

The kid -- one still mutters today -- had what sure looked like pretty close to it all, certainly a cinematic high school life. And yet, not.

Still, people forget: we’re talking about young’ns, and you’re not where you want to be and your girlfriend isn’t your girlfriend anymore and you can’t do one damn thing about either one or imagine things getting better.

None of us has the same eyesight and hindsight as anybody else.

Three years later, head-shaking returned.

For all the grousing in Georgia, the heat is worse -- often just arrogant -- in Louisiana.

But Huey Woodson’s team wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary that August, nothing the 5-foot-10, 230-pound linebacker-running back hadn’t done before.

After all, there was a reason he was high on the list of major college coaches. Woodson and Bonier were different sides of the same coin: good kids, superb football players who just did what it took.

Yet, there Woodson lay on the practice field, having collapsed during a morning sprint. His body temperature reached an astounding 109 degrees. Four days later, he died, a victim of heat stroke.

No matter the progress -- and imagine how much we’ve made medically in the past two or three decades -- the human body will do what it’s going to do, and it rarely hints as to its plans.

And all you can really do is shake your head and pray a little bit. Sometimes, that seems to fall mighty short.

I had less than a decade on all three.

The names and schools are different, but every August and September, on football fields about 650 miles away, I still see Sherman, Huey and Jeff.

And there’s always a little sniffle and a prayer.

Contact Michael A. Lough at mlough@macon.com or 744-4626.

This story was originally published August 28, 2014 at 8:07 PM with the headline "Remembering Huey, Jeff and Sherman ."