When Melvin Williams learned that Pat Summitt's health had taken a precipitous decline, he just had to share how much help the legendary Tennessee Lady Volunteers coach had given him when he became a women's basketball coach.
And how much she continued to mean to him and his family through the ensuing years.
Pat SummittWilliams, former men's and women's head coach at Chattanooga State and women's coach at Tennessee Temple, also has worked on the staffs of three NCAA Division I women's programs. He finished his time at two of those as interim head coach.
Williams has been back in his native Chattanooga since early April, after a two-month stint as Mississippi Valley State's acting head coach before Furman assistant Jessica Kern was hired to run the program.
"My family and I love Pat," Williams said Monday, recalling that his first conversation with her was when the Southeastern Conference women's tournament returned to Chattanooga in 1999 and she called him about practicing at Chattanooga State, where he became the men's coach after one year as an assistant.
"Her secretary called me, and then Pat got on the phone," Williams said. "The next time I talked to her was when I took over the women's program. I had never dealt with women's basketball, and I hoped she would give me some advice.
"I left a message and she immediately called me back. She was very helpful, and we formed a relationship after that. She sent me a big package of stuff - including her coaching philosophies - and we won the region championship and finished fourth in the national tournament that year."
Williams' first set of Lady Tigers, with one key recruit added to former coach Eddie Bryant's players, went 30-5. But his relationship with Summitt was far from over.
He went to Tennessee State as senior recruiting coordinator for two years, and there he worked with Alysiah Bond - now an assistant at Michigan State - who also had become a friend of Summitt, and those three would meet occasionally at various sites such as AAU tournaments, usually with other coaches such as Carolyn Peck and a former Lady Vols player or two.
When Williams left TSU and was looking for a job again, Bond told Summitt about it. Summitt knew the Tennessee Temple job in Chattanooga was open and called TTU's president on Williams' behalf.
"Pat was always calling to check on me, but I didn't know about that phone call," Williams said. "The president gave me a call and said I had friends in high places supporting me. He told me Pat had called. That's how I got the job."
When one of his players became very ill and was in Parkridge hospital for nearly a month, Summitt called him nearly every day to check on her. And when his wife developed breast cancer in 2009 and Summitt heard about it, she called and "really lifted up" Gale Williams, Coach Williams said. Summitt also hooked his wife up with one of her former stars, Daedra Charles-Furrow, who had her own breast cancer fight.
Melvin Williams coached the Lady Crusaders for two years and then returned to the juco ranks for a year at Georgia Perimeter before returning to Division I at Alabama A&M in 2010.
In another tribute to Summitt, he said there was an occasion when he had arranged to take his daughter, Lauren, to Knoxville for a special autograph signing session but they got caught in traffic and didn't get there until "about an hour after the signing was over." But Summitt made sure Lauren got the signed basketball she wanted and met the stars she most hoped to see.
The last time he talked to her was three days before she made her public announcement about having early-onset dementia, Alzheimer's type.
"I had no idea, but when I heard that it hurt so much," Williams said. "I will never forget what she has meant to me and my family."
Contact Ron Bush at rbush@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6291.