‘They were just living’: Indianapolis family reels after 9 die in duck boat sinking
Right now he just wants to surround himself with the boy-size jerseys and football helmets he needs to sort through in time for sign-ups for the M.G. Dad's Club Red Dogs, a youth football league that aims to teach kids life skills through sport.
But his phone won't stop dinging.
Twenty-five years ago, King was a 9-year-old kid in awe of the stern but kind
In the years after King graduated from the
Last night, when the barrage of messages from journalists across the country and friends throughout
On Thursday night, Coleman died on a family vacation after the duck boat he was riding in swiftly sank after stormy weather struck
Accompanying Coleman, 70, was his entire immediate family: wife
Ervin, Belinda, Angela and her son, Max, 2, and Glenn and his children, Reece, 9, Evan, 7, and Arya, 1, were also killed.
Glenn's wife,
Now King feels like he's navigating a surreal hellscape, as if he has lost his own parent. But he also feels like he owes it to his mentor to tell Coleman's story.
So he turns his phone back on. And he patiently fields a FaceTime call from a television network from his dining room table. And he talks about the man who was not just a "business colleague" or a "board member" but also his "buddy."
King said he felt an "automatic level of respect" for Coleman from the first day he met him as a kid in the youth league. Coleman coached him at quarterback when he aged up to Coleman's team, and the two had a chemistry that kept them close long after King stopped playing football.
A retired
Coleman had been a volunteer coach for the program for decades and only recently had started spending more time as a board member. Each year he threw a
He helped host "Stop the Violence" tournaments to bring awareness to gun violence in
Coleman was the person King went to for advice, whether it be about career, kids or a relationship.
"That's your partner. I know you want to keep that stress, but you have to tell her," Coleman told King three years ago when King was struggling to tell his wife that he and other coaches had been let go from a job.
Coleman's relationship with his wife, Belinda, was also something King said he admired.
"Behind every great man there's got to be a better woman," King said of
The family still attends and operates the Christ Church Holiness.
"She was definitely one of the best Christians I ever met," Johnson said. "And a mother figure to any child."
King called Butch and
"I think she knew how to balance him, and he needed a little balancing," King said with a laugh. Sometimes, King said, Coleman needed to be saved from the "tough man" role he liked to play.
He was the kind of guy who would shake his head at kids for bouncing basketballs when they signed up for the football league at the park, who would rib you for getting stranded if you called for a ride but also rib you if you called anyone else, King said.
As the couple grew older, Johnson said, she also noticed the beautiful friendship that was the core of their marriage. The love extended to their children.
They were a tightknit family and took a family vacation every summer. Last year, the family traveled to
Johnson said if you knew the
"To them, it was probably just another adventure. They always traveled as a family," Johnson said. "They were just living."
Johnson said her cousin, Glenn, also had coached for the
"He was a proud, proud father and family man," Johnson said. "It meant something to him to take care of his family."
His son, Evan, 7, enjoyed school, Johnson said. At a press conference Saturday,
She called Reese, a 9-year-old with autism, "the happiest, sweetest boy," who loved the water. And though daughter Arya, a "Daddy's girl," had just turned 1, she liked to dance and take turns in a pink tutu, Johnson said.
But it's the loss of
As children, the cousins' families would take turns taking care of each other's kids as her parents' generation pursued careers, Johnson said. Johnson and
The friendship carried into adulthood. The pair traded goofy texts, talked on the phone and laughed loud enough that it sometimes woke up their kids.
The cousins took their children to the movies and they planned their own outings. When the blockbuster "Black Panther" was about to be released earlier this year, they planned their outfits and joked about how "extra" they were going to be.
They bought dresses and looked for head wraps for the occasion.
"Let me find a place renting zebras,"
Johnson joked that she would arrive to the movie in a helicopter.
She worked for a health insurance provider but had a "side hustle" or two. She sold her own handmade jewelry through a company called
"My love for food comes from a being raised in a family of cooks and bakers, a short stint in culinary school," she wrote. "I have a deep love of trying something new. I'm a simple home cook who loves food and hanging out with people who love to eat!"
Johnson said a family member had picked up Donovan from
She also told family members that the last thing she heard Angela say was "Grab the baby."
"From being with each other, nine-day church revivals traveling down to
She said the family was meeting Saturday night. They had been planning a large reunion later in the summer. Now, they are discussing how to help pay for funeral costs. A
The last time King spoke to
Neither Coleman nor King carried credit cards, so King directed him to someone else who could help.
It was a normal conversation. And when it was finished,
"Sometimes," King said. "You don't understand what someone meant to you until they're gone."
Related coverage from The Star:
17 dead, nine from one family:
A former pastor. A happy couple. A large family. Here are the 17 duck boat victims
Federal agency warned about danger of duck boat canopies before Table Rock tragedy
The Star's complete coverage of the
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