Re http://www.thefrontpageonline.com/new/articles1-12651/JerryChabolaTalksAboutHisFieldofDreams
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Jerry and Janet Chabola
Jerry Chabola Stadium.
For as long as there is a Culver City High School, the name of the revered and retired teacher, coach and athletic director will be mentioned whenever parents, students and plain fans troop to events at the just-upgraded football and track layout.
Nothing tenuous about this.
He can feel it, touch it, see it every day.
A year and a half after leaving the campus he came to love – and that came to authentically love him –
The best part of the School Board’s formal proclaiming of a new title for the venerable field at last evening’s meeting is that the popular Mr. Chabola is here to drink deeply from the cup of love extended to him by the community.
On the sunny side of 65, he probably still is in the late morning of his immensely busy, overspilling life.
By today’s health standards, that means he should be welcoming fans and friends to his stadium for, oh, say, 30 more years minimally.
His genes say so, too. Mr. Chabola’s parents not only are vigorous as they march toward their own century marks, they have lived long enough to witness – from an upright position – one of the quintessential honors that can be accorded to a living person, their own boy.
Cemeteries full of dead people have their names plastered on buildings from unpainted shanties to glistening skyscrapers – and they never will know about it.
No one had to ask, “Who is that man?” as he smilingly strode down the middle aisle at Council Chambers after about 1½ tons of encomiums had been poured from the hearts of parents, colleagues, former students who praised his work ethic, his commitment to his students, his loyalty to colleagues.
Outfitted in one of his several hundred favorite vests over a short-sleeved sportshirt, he could have been identified by Ray Charles in pitch black overcrowded room.
As is his custom, Mr. Chabola, who suspected that his son Casey was responsible for what culminated in the moment of a lifetime, brought his soulmate to the podium to share his date with glory.
Jerry and Janet are married 43 years, and walks there a friend who doesn’t think that they are magically matched. Not only are they the same height, they resemble each other enough to be related.
He puts his right arm around her shoulder, as he has done from the time they met in grammar school.
As the two former kids walk up the aisle, locked together, it provided the ideal denouement to an evening that never can be repeated.
