This summer, Nikhil Lawry walked into a small high school gym in Chicago to work another day as a counselor at a basketball camp. Inside, he spotted a kid wearing a Brixton Topcats T-shirt.
Lawry, who had played for youth club in England, couldn't believe it. He did a double take. He took a picture and posted it to social media, where it navigated its way back to me.
That's because the kid wearing the T-shirt was my son.
I came to the gym the next day because I wanted to meet Lawry and explain why my son owned the T-shirt. But Lawry wasn't working that day.
Instead, we met by phone last week when Jimmy Rogers died.
The same Jimmy Rogers who influenced several generations of British youth with his indefatigable spirit and generosity. The same Jimmy Rogers whose impact on NBA All-Star Luol Deng's life is unquantifiable. The same Jimmy Rogers who, following the 2012 London Olympics, mailed that T-shirt to my son.
Lawry, Deng and countless others spent their formative years hearing the booming voice and experiencing the force of nature that was Rogers. I spent just one day with him, reporting a story on Deng's roots while covering the 2012 Olympics.
And yet, his personality proved so palpable, his presence so powerful, I felt compelled to try to meet Lawry this summer _ when I didn't even know Rogers was losing a battle with cancer. And Rogers' unforgettable charm is why, when I heard that he had died Monday at 78, I tracked down Lawry's number last week to call him in London as a stranger.
"Hi, I'm the dad of the kid who wore that Brixton Topcats T-shirt to your camp this summer ... "
Having spoken to Deng several times over the years about Rogers' influence, I wanted to hear it from others, to compare notes about what it meant to land in Rogers' orbit _ even if only for one day.
"My mom and dad stopped dropping me off to basketball practice 20 years ago," Lawry, 37, said. "But occasionally over the years, my mom would randomly say, 'Oh, have you seen Jimmy? How's Jimmy?' That's the kind of impact he had. Everyone loved Jimmy."
