“Uncle Scott? It’s Zoryleen.”
She sounded muffled, distant.
“Zoryleen! Hey what’s up?”, I said.
“I’m so sorry I have to tell you this. Gene passed away last night.”
“What?!? No No No! No, Zoryleen. Oh my God…what happened?”
“He went to sleep last night and didn’t wake up. I don’t know…”
I’ve always dreaded someone in my family passing away while I was traveling abroad, especially my parents. Starting with my first trip abroad – to Nepal in 2000 – the feeling has followed me on my journeys to more than a dozen countries. No one ever wants to get that devastating call especially so far from home.
During that three-month volunteering trip to Nepal, I often took solo late night walks. I had trouble falling asleep, and often woke in the middle of the night, worrying about my parents back home. If, God forbid, one of them became deathly ill, would I make it home in time to see them one last time?
The thought spooked me, 7,500 miles from home in that rural village. Prayer helped me deal with it. But also regular late night walks on the village’s narrow dirt roads, in near total blackness, no street lights or lights on in the farm houses, just the sound of my feet and a random goat or buffalo. It was months of worry and prayer and insomnia. But it worked – everyone was safe when I returned to the US.
My good fortune lasted two decades after that Nepal trip, as I traveled to more than a dozen countries in Asia, Africa and Central and South America through the nonprofit I founded. It ended in 2021 with that call from Zorlyeen during my month-long trip to Costa Rica. A family member had passed while I was away.
Zoryleen’s call came on August 5th at 6:21 AM Costa Rica time (8:21 AM in the US). I was already wide awake at my Airbnb in the coastal city of Limón in Costa Rica. I had come by myself to this Caribbean coastal town for the first time ever. I wanted to do a quick 24 hour stay, just to have a look around and take notes for the benefit of my future tourism clients. I had already been up for an hour when I picked up the call, having already had a coffee, a quick yoga routine, and a shower. I sat there alone in my living room, listening to Zoryleen’s tears and anguish. I noticed how quiet my apartment was, not even any traffic outside.
I kept saying to her, “No, no, no…I can’t believe it.” Tears were streaming down my face onto the linoleum floor, as I leaned forward on the living room couch. My head started pounding. My face was on fire. How could Gene be gone? We’re both only 52 years old!
“Gene” was Eugene Ellis Smith Sr. My best friend for more than 40 years. Zoryleen’s husband for the past 30. The Lord had finally called Gene home after more than a decade of debilitating ill health.
Gene had suffered terribly with Lupus for years. His illness forced him to retire at around age 40. He lost both kidneys along the way, leading to years of dialysis. But he kept his suffering to himself. That was his way. Zoryleen kept me and my parents and siblings informed along the way – about dialysis schedules, organ donor lists, and the frequent hospital stays. She made the profound and loving decision to donate one of her own kidneys to Gene, giving him many more years on this earth.
Gene was not just a friend to me. He was a brother. He and Zoryleen and their wonderful children Kiara and Eugene Jr. will always be family. My parents and siblings all feel the same. I feel pride and love whenever Zoryleen and her kids call me “Uncle.”
Gene and I grew up together in Philadelphia in the Roxborough-Manayunk neighborhood. We were born in 1969 a few weeks apart. We lived just four blocks from each other but our lives were worlds apart. Gene was African-American. I was white. He was an only child raised by his grandmother. I had both my parents and five siblings (our own Brady Bunch). He had no money. We owned a vacation house at the beach. Later in life he became a corrections officer. I went the college route and ended up in the corporate world.
Gene lived in a tiny part of our neighborhood that old-timers still refer to as “Little Africa,” because back in the day most residents there were African-American. In the 1970’s, teens from Little Africa and from my side of the neighborhood would sometimes have race brawls (“rumbles”) that took place in the huge public alley behind our house. Those fights were one of the few times when whites and blacks mixed.
Gene and I were different though. We were either too young or too dumb to get involved in any of that racial strife. Basketball was our thing instead. The sport was my first love. It brought Gene and me together at age eight, where we met for the first time playing basketball at Kendrick Recreation Center in Roxborough. Kendrick was known as The REC (rhymes with “wreck”) – and it still is The REC to us old-timers.
Starting in 1977, both of us eight years old, Gene and I spent five years as fierce competitors in the organized winter basketball league at The REC. I played on the Panthers team and Gene was on the Arrows team. Gene and I were both the stars of our teams and seemed to annually find ourselves opposite in championship games. We were great competition for each other. I remember a lot of the teens trying to make a racial thing out of our rivalry. They seemed disappointed when they saw nothing of the sort.
The real fun though for Gene and me wasn’t in that basketball league though. No, the time where our friendship really developed came in summertime, at the informal “pickup” games at The REC’s outdoor courts. Gene and I played seven days a week, in blazing afternoon heat, with and against whoever showed up. On any given day there were constant pickup games – five-on-five, three-on-three or sometimes just Gene and I playing one-on-one full-court (where did we get the energy??). Then, after running back to our houses to wolf down some dinner, we returned to the courts to play some more under the lights.
The toughest, most fun games came against the older guys. The regular “old” guys were the teenagers. Most had nothing better to do all summer than spend their days at The REC, doing things like smoking pot, throwing glass bottles at walls, lighting things on fire, and playing pickup basketball.
One of the teens named “Mike” who only played basketball occasionally, was known for bringing unusual things to The REC. My two favorites were the six-foot long snakes and the test tubes of liquid mercury. Mike described the snake’s diet in great detail (mostly rodents). He had us pet the snake, with some brave souls (not me) letting him drape it around their necks. We also let him pour the liquid mercury onto our palms (We weren’t the brightest bulbs). We were all fascinated that the mercury didn’t wet our hands (none of us knew the word “viscosity” yet but that Mercury taught us the concept). It was white-trash show-and-tell at The REC!
The other group of old guys at the pickup basketball games at The REC were the “dinosaurs.” These were the guys aged 20+ who could only come in the evenings because they had jobs. They were mostly white, but there was one black guy named T.J. who played ball almost every night. I never knew if T.J was a nickname or his real name. He was known for his head-to-toe basketball outfit, complete with 1970’s era headband, elbow pads, knee pads, knee-high white socks, and high-top white sneakers. He didn’t have much game, but he loved playing ball and hustled and sweated more than anyone. He was also known for having a white girlfriend, absolutely scandalous back in the day. My Dad and I still talk about what a great guy he was.
So many of those playground players in Roxborough had legendary nicknames. There was Alaska, Eddie Boopner, Fear, the Hen, the Head, the Nurse, the Worm, and Gaga (Lady Gaga was late to the party with her stage name).
The Worm? Yep. I gave that nickname to Ronnie in our 20’s, stolen from the Detroit Piston’s forward Dennis Rodman. The “Nurse” was a girl our age named Debbie. She kicked all our butts and was so good that she ended up getting a college scholarship for basketball. Her nickname was an homage to the Philadelphia 76ers player “Doctor J”.
At a happy hour in the summer of 2022, just a couple of blocks from The REC, a bunch of us now-old-heads reminisced about playing basketball at The REC. Those nicknames came up, bringing smiles and laughter all around. Forty years later and those playground legends live on.
Gene and I always tried to make sure we were on the same team at the REC’s pickup games. The old guys had size and strength over us, but we had better skills – like shooting, dribbling and passing. Even as little boys we had some polish to our games. It wasn’t unusual for us to win. We loved sticking it to them. We relished the sport and the competition.
And, as difficult as it might be for his grandkids to imagine, my now-81 year old father would sometimes play too. He was around 40 back then, usually the oldest player. But he ran up and down the court without a break, and had no problem using a sharp elbow (on kids too!) to grab a loose ball. I would jump for joy when I would spot Dad coming up the sidewalk from home to play ball with us. Even when Dad couldn’t make the games on a particular night, those pickup games remain some of the most fun times I’ve ever had.
(Zoryleen has told me what a role model my dad was for Gene in so many ways. I gotta think that Gene’s seeing my Dad on the court at The REC Gene at least partly inspired him to be so so involved with his children over the years, especially with sports.)
Gene and I ended up on an all-star travel team at around age 13 (the first time together on an organized team). We laughed about how we were gonna run other teams out of the gym. Then we ran up against a kid named Sam Cassell at a tournament (in New Jersey I believe). He blew us out all by himself, abusing us for 40+ points in an era with no 3-point shot and only 28 minutes a game.
I swear he could have played in the NBA at age 13. He did end up playing in that league for 15 years, winning three NBA championships and making an All-Star team. Gene and I got a large slice of humble pie and a life lesson that day: Don’t get too full of yourself, because there’s always somebody out there better than you.
Gene at Community College of Philadelphia
Off the basketball court, Gene and I became close friends from jump street. Gene started coming over to our house all the time to hang out in between our time spent at the basketball court. My parents told him and his mom and grandmother that Gene (and the whole family) had an open invite to our house. Gene took my parents up on it, to all of our delight.
We watched a lot of TV – like sitcoms, sports and movies – in the basement bedroom I shared with my two brothers. Gene and my neighbor friend Billy and I would watch kung-fu movies together on Saturdays, especially those starring Bruce Lee. We would then practice martial arts moves on each other in my bedroom, including fighting with nunchucks and throwing real metal Chinese stars at each other.
My family often took Gene to our summer home, a barn-shaped house at 5308 Haven Avenue in Ocean City, New Jersey, just a few blocks from the beach. Back then, you were as likely to see a space alien than a black kid on the beach. But Gene was family so he went with us. People stared. Gene noticed it much more than we did, he would tell me sometimes. My parents told me much later in life that they noticed it too, but they always said that was other people’s problem.
Gene and I played baseball together too. My Dad coached us as 14 year olds on the Ivy Ridge Panthers baseball team in Roxborough, Philadelphia. I played shortstop and Gene played centerfield. We talked with each other constantly in the field. Dad would get mad and yell out at us, “Pay attention! Keep your head in the game. Where are you throwing the ball if it’s hit to you?!”. Then even more yelling if we didn’t have the right answer. But Gene and I had each other’s back in the field.
Gene and I dabbled in tennis too. One summer we went to a week-long tennis camp at The REC run by the National Junior Tennis League. Gene’s older cousin was the lead coach. Gene drove her nuts. We both did. We goofed off all the time. We would play one-on-one baseball games with our tennis rackets, rocketing homerun tennis balls over the fences and into the busy traffic at the hospital on Ridge Avenue. His cousin got so mad one day that she chased Gene around the courts trying to decapitate him with her racket. He had too many moves though. She fell down and gashed her knee wide open. Tennis ended early that day.
As we got into our late teens and twenties, Gene and I did lose touch a bit. He got busy raising a family; dealing with prison inmates on his job as a corrections office; driving his daughter up and down the east coast to tennis tournaments; being a great father; and serving as a leader and role model in the community.
I worked a bunch of information technology jobs in Philadelphia in my twenties and thirties. On the side I started my own nonprofit that took me to places like India, Africa, Vietnam and Central and South America. I had a brief marriage and divorce to a woman from Nepal, without having kids. All while managing rental properties in the ‘hood.
Gene came to love the game of golf later in life, both watching and playing, inspired by Tiger Woods. One of my favorite photos with Gene was taken around 2014, when he and his son and I golfed at John Byrne Golf Course in Philadelphia. Despite being so ill at the time, Gene had somehow found the strength to be out there for 18 holes. I am so glad I convinced him to pause before one of our next tee ball bombs so his son could snap a photo of us:
Me and Gene golfing in 2014
The last time I talked to Gene was three days before flying to Costa Rica in July of 2021. It was at my niece Lauren’s high school graduation party. Even well before COVID, we tried not to be around Gene too much because of his compromised immune system.
So when he and Zoryleen walked into that party, the whole place lit up. We spent the afternoon and evening talking, eating, laughing, watching all the kids swim, and playing cornhole and volleyball. My parents and siblings and I couldn’t say it enough to each other, “Isn’t it great to see Gene!”.
It sure was. I wish I could see him again now. Hard to believe I’ll never again see Gene’s million dollar smile or debate sports with him or talk about the old days with him again on this earth. I know Gene’s loss goes way beyond me. Starting of course with Zoryleen and the kids. They’ve lost a beloved spouse, parent, provider, and rock.
Losing Gene has also been so painful to those who turned up in droves at his memorial service. So many people, from so many backgrounds: White, Black, Latino, blue collar, corporate guys, young, and old. His coach from that Arrows basketball team in the 1970’s came up to me, saying how well he remembered those championship battles back in the day. Even a former prison inmate paid his respects, telling us how Gene used to sneak him sandwiches. (Gene was tough too though, taking on the hardest assignments like his job at the infamous Holmesburg Prison.)
Getting getting a work commendation from Philadelphia’s Mayor
I felt so sorry for Zoryleen that she had to make that painful call to me in Costa Rica. It could not have been easy dialing my phone, knowing she was about to break my heart. After we hung up, I sat dead still in my Airbnb’s living room in Limón for at least an hour, just stunned, looking at the walls and crying. The only sounds were my sniffles and my pounding head.
(I did not call anyone back home until the next day. Zoryleen had told me she would ask my older brother Tom to break the news to the rest of our family, especially my parents.)
I sat on the couch hating that I was alone after getting such horrible news. I thought, I shouldn’t have to process a brother’s sudden passing without a soul to talk to. Not even the landlord of my Airbnb was around. The nearest people who even knew me were in another town in Costa Rica – like my host family grandmother Ines and my dentist Dr. Pereira. But even they were far away, back in the town of Heredia, a long and windy four-hour bus ride from Limón.
After a while though on that couch in Limón, I realized that my grief over Gene would have to wait. I forced myself to calm down and get myself together for the day’s journey back to Heredia. I still had lots to do in the next four days before I flew back to the US, including another root canal and crown and to visit the host family I stayed with in 2018, the Hidalgo’s.
I packed up my backpack and left the Airbnb. I tried to hire an Uber to get to the bus terminal, but driver after driver canceled on me. So I said the heck with it and walked the two miles to the bus terminal in the humidity of Limón. I offered the sweaty walk up to Gene. I prayed he was finally free of suffering and was now with God for eternity.
About a week later, back home in Philadelphia, I believe I got a sign that my prayers were answered. I was hiking in the woods on the “Forbidden Drive” trail in Wissahickon Park on a hot and sunny afternoon. I stopped to do some standing push ups against a log fence.
As I put my hands on the top log, a butterfly landed on the back of my sweaty left hand. The butterfly was so beautiful, bursting with colors, so delicate. Even for someone color-blind like me, I could see what I guessed to be red, white, black and maybe some brown colors from the butterfly’s body. I stayed as still as one of the hundreds of surrounding trees, not wanting to scare the butterfly off.
After a minute or so, I stood up and moved away from the fence. The butterfly stayed on my hand. I moved my hand closer to my eyes. The butterfly appeared to be licking my sweat. Later I looked up online that butterflies do indeed do this, using a body part called the Proboscis. When the butterfly started flapping its wings once or twice, I thought it might be taking off. But it stayed, even when I accidentally moved my hand, which was holding my noisy car keys. I was mesmerized by the butterfly.
Hikers and bicyclists passed by, probably wondering what I was doing with my hand in the air like that. One woman figured it out. She stopped and chatted for a bit, marveling at the butterfly’s beauty and my good fortune at having this unique experience. After the woman left, the butterfly stayed on my hand for a while longer. Then I wished the butterfly good luck and a safe journey (yep, out loud), then gently shook my hand to send it on its way. The butterfly’s visit with me lasted about ten minutes.
My butterfly visitation
As I walked back to my car, I felt something so powerful inside me. A feeling of peace. Of oneness with the universe. Of love. All because of that brief but unique connection with one of God’s creatures. Even as a kid, with all those summer days spent playing outside especially in the woods, I can never recall having a butterfly land on me. How could this have been an accident? A random event? I got my answer when I started reading about butterflies when I got home.
I had no idea that butterflies represent the human soul in many cultures (Psyche, the Greek goddess of the soul, is even depicted with wings); that a butterfly visitation soon after the death of a loved one is a direct sign and communication from them. Their message? As one Medium has written:
“Seeing a butterfly is one thing, but to have one land on you… That’s a sure sign it’s a message from the heavenly realm. Most of the time the message from your deceased loved one is very simple: ‘I am alive and well and have not forgotten you. I love you.’ ”
Rest In Peace, Gene. Love you, man.