Portsmouth Clay's Former Coach Arch Justus died last Friday 2-3-1012.

I'm back.  My young guru, Shawn Baird, came over and got me back onto my SamKat  www.skegley.blogspot.com  blog last night.I dumbly had signed onto Google Apps when I didn't need to and the business site gmail address was messing me up.  I hope somebody missed my posts.  I certainly did.  Isn't it terrible to be an egotist?  (Hopefully, I am not, but I did miss posting on the blog.)

Anyway, Clay Vice had told us about Arch Justus being sick Friday.  We didn't hear here in Columbus, but, sadly, Coach Arch died Friday night at Riverside Hospital here in Columbus.  Unknowingly, I called Columbus lawyer, Steve Fitch, and he met me at Riverside at 1:30 PM Sunday.  Arch was not shown as a patient. Hospitals don't share such sad news with visitors other than close family. After spending a few minutes with Steve and giving him the two extra "Acquaintances With Integrity II" books he ordered for his sons, we departed.  I called Clay and received the sad news that the coach had died Friday evening.  Clay had sent Facebook notices out, but I don't get on facebook regularly.

I called Steve with the sad news.

I had called Arch a few times to interview him as one of the outstanding athletes or coaches of the Portsmouth area.  There was always some sad health news going on in his family and we never got together for the interview.  Clay told me Friday afternoon that he lost his mother and his wife within the last year and Arch had liver cancer, although his son, John, told Clay that the doctors expected him to survive.   

Steve Fitch was on Arch's Clay High School basketball teams as a junior and senior but hardly saw action according to Steve.  As a testament to good coaching, Steve walked on the next season at Ohio State and was the very last cut after a few weeks of tryouts.  When he next saw Coach Justus, the coach was happily surprised for Steve.  Steve told him  that the fundamentals stressed at Ohio State were the same ones Coach Justus had used at Clay.

God bless the Justus family and one of Portsmouth's best coaches and the guy Clay tells me that Clay's former baseball coach Kenny Long told Clay that Arch Justus  could have made the baseball major leagues if he didn't have bad knees.  The witnesses said that Arch Justus could hit a baseball farther than any others of the very outstanding Ramey's Feed or Deemer's teams of bygone Portsmouth days.

In reality, we will all certainly die unless we remain on earth when Christ returns.