Honoring Coach Kitchen: He's still winning

I stood in line at Christ Church of the Heartland on Friday for well over an hour in the crowd wrapping around the inside of the church. We were there to honor the life of Terry Kitchen, affectionately known to all as "Coach." This larger than life man, taken from us too soon, has touched more lives than most people dream. The next day, a sea of orange and black, symbolic of Coach's commitment to the Cape Girardeau Public School District, filled the church again as we gathered once more to pay our respects.

Coach was an icon in the Cape Girardeau community and beyond. There is no way I can recap all that he has meant -- the lives he touched as a teacher, a coach, an athletic director. As I stood in line Friday, I overheard conversations about him -- from people he coached, played sports with, taught driver's ed. As I sat waiting for his funeral to start on Saturday, I heard more conversations about his influence.

As great as he was in the professional and athletic roles in which he excelled -- proven by the plethora of awards and honors he earned -- he outdid those as he lived out his roles as husband, father, brother, friend and more.

I met Coach only five years ago when I moved to Missouri and began attending Christ Church of the Heartland. He was no less a motivator in church than he was in the gym or on the field. Pastor Zack Strong would call on him to get the church rocking. Coach would march to the front, mount the stairs to the platform, grab the microphone and lead us into praise! He knew what to say and how to say it -- and if you weren't inspired after he got going, you were incapable of being inspired; you needed your pulse checked to see if you had one!

It wasn't an act. Everyone knew Coach knew the God he worshiped and praised. He would jump up and down and lift his voice and honor his God. In the time he has been away from us as he battled cancer, I have missed his fervor. As a former coach myself, I felt a certain connection to him, and you always miss a connection when it gets unplugged.

I admit I have struggled. I prayed for Coach nearly every day, asking God to heal him. I've seen miracle upon miracle. I know people healed of cancer, raised from the dead, allowed to birth children after being barren. All I know is faith -- faith that God can do anything, so I believed Coach would be healed also. I cannot yet process his transition from here to Heaven because I don't understand why Heaven would need him. It's obvious why earth needs him, but Heaven? I don't get it. But here's the thing: I don't have to get it. I trust the God that Coach Kitchen trusted/trusts. I know He's God, and I know Coach is with Him now. I know he wanted to be healed on this side. But that was then. Now, in the presence of the Lord, he wouldn't choose to return. Instead, I'm quite sure Coach has Heaven rocking. I don't know if the Lord was a Cape Tigers fan all along. But I know He is now -- because 5 minutes of hearing Coach talk about that Tiger spirit would make even the impartial Holy Spirit stand up and root for Cape Central!

No doubt, Coach Kitchen was aware of Coach Jim Valvano and the words he spoke less than two months before he passed away from cancer in 1993. During his ESPY Awards acceptance speech, Jimmy V, as he is universally known, declared, "[Cancer] cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever. I thank you and God bless you all."

Earlier, I mentioned being unplugged from Coach, but that's not accurate. We will forever be connected -- not just because he was an athlete, as I was; that he was a coach, as I was; or that he was a teacher, as I was. It's that as excited as he was about all of those things, he was even more excited that he was a child of God, as I am -- as he still is. I'll see him again, and in the meantime, I get to see those whose lives he impacted, and that impact remains. Cancer cannot defeat that. Coach Kitchen's winning record continues.

Adrienne Ross is owner of Adrienne Ross Communications and a former Southeast Missourian editorial board member. Contact her at aross@semissourian.com.