Please allow me to take literary license and write about Lee Edward Evans again this week.
On Tuesday, May 17, some 15 minutes to midnight, the man died.
It must never be said that one of the greatest athletes in the history of sports in the world died and bells were not rung to make the announcement.

This is my humble announcement,  a recall of my experiences of the man outside of sports during a period that he finally found peace with his restless spirit.

Lee loved his grandson in America with a passion. He always talked about him with pride. He believed the young lad would be a supreme athlete, a gift to the world of sports who would replace him one day on the tracks. Lee Evans’s dream was to watch Keith’s son, his grandson, race at the Olympics.

He also talked often about his mother and her overwhelming influence on his life: how she made him love gardening, and to know a lot about plants and their uses,  and how she developed his social character.

He often spoke fondly about his siblings and their growing up years in California.
Through all these, he loved that I would sit and listen to him in the evenings, outdoors in the front yard with glittering stars above our heads. We were mesmerised by his stories, his infectious laughter echoing in the still night, infecting all of us in the small, daily assembly of 2 or 3 of my friends that became his own friends, at our communion of grills – corn, prawns, guinea fowl, fish or chicken, yam, potatoes, everything ‘grillable’, downed with chilled drinks.