Wiedmer: Javon Craddock's smile could have lit the world if given time

Tyner's Javon Craddock passes past East Hamilton's Cameron Montgomery, left, in a high school basketball game this past January. Craddock collapsed and died after playing a pickup game last week.
Tyner's Javon Craddock passes past East Hamilton's Cameron Montgomery, left, in a high school basketball game this past January. Craddock collapsed and died after playing a pickup game last week.

They call it Twin Day. It's on the calendar every autumn during Tyner Academy's homecoming week. The students all pick someone to partner with, usually wearing matching outfits.

This past fall, Javon Craddock asked his geometry teacher, Rachel Cherry, if she would agree to be his twin.

"I've got Thing One and Thing Two T-shirts," he said. "I'll bring you one."

Cherry said she would do it, never believing Craddock would follow through. But there he was the next day with her shirt.

"In many ways he was just a normal teenage boy," Cherry said this week. "But there was something special about him, too. You never saw him not smiling."

Last week, that smile became a heartbroken, trembling frown for everyone who ever met the ebullient Craddock during his 16 years on this planet. Stopping for a quick drink of water during a pickup basketball game at the Boys & Girls Club, the sophomore collapsed and died on May 16, the exact cause of death still unknown.

Thursday afternoon at Olivet Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Boulevard, a standing-room-only crowd of 700 or more gathered to honor and remember him.

"I think Javon could have played mid-major college basketball," said Tyner coach E'Jay Ward, who watched Craddock average 15 points a game this past season, many of those coming from long range.

Or as Ward once said this past season of his deep threat: "Your shooter can shoot, but mine can make it."

But it was how Craddock came to hit so many shots that most impressed Ward and so many others.

"Javon learned at an early age to work hard," Ward told various media outlets. "If he wasn't in school he was practicing basketball. If he wasn't practicing basketball, he was in school."

Or he was in Christ Hope Missionary Baptist Church, which he attended every Sunday.

In what was perhaps the quote of the service, a young woman who went to church with Craddock said, "I didn't see (the athlete side of him). I saw someone who spread happiness."

It could have been anything but a happy life. He grew up like too many kids in urban America, surrounded by crime and poverty, thrown into struggling schools with little hope to get out except for some pretty special athletic genes.

But Craddock also had that smile and that charm.

"That smile was kind of along the lines of Magic Johnson," Ward said while waiting for the service to begin. "It was one of Javon's greatest gifts. That smile touched everybody who saw it."

Amy Ball didn't see enough of that smile when she first came across a 10-year-old Craddock at Orchard Knob Elementary School. His mother, Tometrice Le'Untae Covington Ringer, had hit a rough patch in her life and Ball found him to be "quiet, meek and aloof."

But there was also another side to Craddock that would sometimes shine through that meekness.

"He just had this thing about him that you can't always put into words," she said. "He had that beautiful smile, but there was something else different about him, just this aura around him."

Over time, Ball and her husband Calvin got to know Ringer, who died a couple of years ago. While working on her problems, she granted legal custody to the Balls from the time Craddock was 10 until he turned 13.

Soon enough he was not only becoming a fanatical follower of Calvin's beloved Florida Gators and easily adjusting to new siblings Brock and Tori Ball, but also falling in love with WWE pro wrestling, especially Roman Reigns.

"Calvin would tell him, 'You know that's fake, don't you?'" Amy recalled. "And Javon would always say, 'No, it's real.' He even started using hair gel to slick his hair back like Reigns."

But he ultimately fell hardest for basketball, where he quickly developed a reputation as an extraordinary shooter and leader.

And while he remained humble and hard-working on the outside, Craddock apparently was beginning to embrace the fact that he could become a special player.

"A few days before (he died) we were watching the (Boston) Celtics and (Cleveland) Cavs," older brother Corey Craddock said. "Javon looked at me and said, 'If I was playing for the Celtics, I'd make LeBron James quit.'"

The sweet stories didn't quit coming at Olivet Baptist for almost two hours Thursday afternoon. Brothers. Cousins. Friends. Pastors. At least half the crowd wore T-shirts proclaiming "Forever Javon." Everyone talked about the enormity of this loss for our community.

"He was going places," Ward said.

"I always did the wrong thing," said a close friend. "But Javon always did the right thing and always tried to get me to do the right thing, too."

Discussing Craddock's good looks, pastor Calvin B. White told of a woman in his Christ Hope church in her mid-50s.

"She told him once, 'Just sit next to me every Sunday, and I'll give you my whole disability check!'" White said as the audience laughed.

As Paul "Showtime" Gaffney - the former Harlem Globetrotters showman who worked with Craddock on the youth-league Rail Runners hoops team - was wrapping up his turn as speaker, he said, "(Javon's obit) made USA Today, the New York Times. He touched the world."

But had we not lost him too soon, had that Magic smile and aura brought happiness to far more than Chattanooga, he might have come to own the world, or at least the hearts of most of those living in it.

Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.

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