According to Ron Bishop, Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari arrived in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, last week with enough athletic shoes for 600 orphans.
"He'd already raised more than a million dollars for the earthquake relief back in January," said Bishop, the longtime president of the Chattanooga-based SCORE International ministry. "He didn't have to be there. But to see Coach Cal hugging those kids, giving them not just a pair of shoes but love and hope, was priceless."
The cost to rebuild Haiti might become priceless, given that the Jan. 12 earthquake basically laid flat an already impoverished nation.
As Bishop said of his visit there last week, "You can't drive two blocks from the airport without seeing tent cities everywhere. When you're not even rebuilding the presidential palace six months after the earthquake, that tells you something."
But Coach Bish and Coach Cal becoming allies in the fight to rescue Haiti also tells you something about the danger of judging any book by its cover only.
Bishop has spent most of his life serving others as a minister, nationally respected basketball coach at faith-based Tennessee Temple University and founder of SCORE, which spreads the word of the Lord through athletics.
Calipari, on the other hand, has the reputation of being as slick as his hair gel. He's spent most of his high-profile coaching career living on the ethical edge. Though not entirely his fault, both Massachusetts and Memphis have vacated Final Four appearances under his watch.
Coincidentally or not, UK also is now on the periphery of an investigation into former guard Eric Bledsoe's high school academics before Cal signed him to play for the Wildcats last season.
But Calipari also was the first college coach to stage a wildly successful telethon for Haiti following the quake, and his was the only program to raise not only $1.5 million but as much as $200,000.
Asked if he was shocked that no other school attempted to challenge UK's philanthropy, Bishop said, "It was both surprising and disappointing. I thought Kentucky could become an example of what could be done. We even went to the American Basketball Coaches Association to try to tie a fundraiser to the NCAA tourney or conference tournaments. We got nowhere."
But there stood Calipari a week ago today, handing out shoes to orphans, when suddenly someone asked who was going to wash these children's feet before they slipped on new footwear.
"Cal spoke right up," Bishop said. "'I'll wash them,' he said. And he did. It was such a neat thing to see."
There are times these days when it seems that we see everything but remember nothing, the unintended consequence of the 24-hour news cycle. Yesterday's disaster is today's distant memory. Haiti's earthquake was replaced by Chile's earthquake; then Nashville under water; now our entire Gulf Coast threatened with ecological and economic extinction due to the earth's largest oil leak.
"The media has pulled out" of Haiti, Bishop said, "but the misery and hopelessness are still there."
Yet Coach Bish will also tell you that the Haitians have, in a good way, moved on as well.
"I saw cars with flags for Brazil and Argentina, so they're keeping up with the World Cup," he said.
"I also saw a 10-year-old girl in a school uniform, just standing by the road, her smile so big. She's probably lost everything but that smile, but she gave you the impression that everything's going to be all right. They're living in tents, happy as they can be if they can just get one meal a day of beans and rice, but they're moving on with their lives as best they can."
Still, the rainy season in Haiti is less than three months away for a nation of tent dwellers.
"When the rains come, there will be so much death and disease," said Bishop, who first visited Haiti in 1963. "You can't imagine how bad it is."
Calipari can do more than imagine. He can describe it all in four words, as he did Monday when he said of Haiti, "It's a total mess."
It was and is a total disaster. But thanks to Calipari and Bishop and so many others who haven't pulled out, at least 600 orphans have shoes to aid their journey to a better place.