Don Kelly Douglas, the man who lent me his name and gave me so much more, died this week, unexpectedly. He was seven weeks short of 84 years old, and he did his time on Earth very well, shaking from it all he could and leaving very little on the table.

I will miss Uncle Don a bunch. He knew how to party – and I always thought our relationship was special.

I do not know why I remember this, but I do. It was in the mid-1960s, and my family was in Greensboro, visiting my dad’s mother and stepfather, my grandparents. A child’s first best friends are his cousins, and I as an 8-year-old had been hanging with Kelly and Kim, Don’s two daughters, and I was in a car with him driving. I said, “So Uncle Don, I hear you are a better golfer than my father.” His response: “Yes, but your father is better at all the things that matter.”

My father, then in his early 30s, was a physician, just out of the Navy, and had a young family, continuing a straight-and-narrow course he charted early. Don, just out of the Coast Guard, was still trying to find his land legs and his course was more zig and zag. I suppose it was not easy being the younger brother of my father, who was and still is, as Uncle Don noted, good at all the things that matter.

But Don was a late bloomer. He proved himself adept at much more than golf, and that is saying a lot because at one time I believe he was one of the top amateur golfers in the state. Golfers around here probably remember he and my father teaming twice to win the Kiwanis All-American Golf Tournament.

Don got the marriage thing right on his second try, he worked for decades for Martin Marietta, making a lot of money and even more friends, and he built a life in the Sedgefield Country Club community in Greensboro, where he would skin his buddies on the golf course and in the card room, doing so while sticking the needle in deep.

He once told me after I left an 8-foot birdie putt short and low: “Donnie, I thought you had a chance until you hit it.”

Don loved competing in golf, playing cards, a libation or more, and UNC athletics, especially football. He always had a fresh joke that was not for everyone, and was a great storyteller, a larger-than-life fellow who could captivate an audience. More stubborn than a car with a dead battery, he had an opinion on everything, and he did not mind sharing it.

A man’s man.

That should be plenty enough clues to figure out why we got along well.

I have many stories about Don, but one I remember is from the early 1970s, when he and Marie showed up at our home at 3504 Rowland Ave. so he could be my dad’s partner in the member-guest at Pinecrest Country Club. As I remember, they announced they had gotten married on the way down so that they could share a bed at our home, where there were four children being told that sex was for after marriage.

The move was impetuous, but Don got this marriage right. It thrived until the end.

Don’s favorite place was Kenan Stadium on Saturday afternoons, and he had a stretch of about 50 years during which he only missed one home game, and it took a hurricane to keep him away that day. Don, who never thought he would miss a golf shot, did not have that same optimism when it came to UNC football, which is what a lifetime of watching UNC football will do.

Don was convinced that the powers that be in Chapel Hill did not want a football program on the same level as the basketball program. He argued they believed doing so would mean taking shortcuts on the academic side and getting in the mud on the recruiting side. Increasingly I became convinced he was right, but only after more than one shouting match.

I remember once, around 2004, when UNC was putting an abysmal product on the field and I was trying to provide comfort for Don, insisting we would turn the corner soon. He said, “But Donnie, you don’t understand, I am running out of time.”

Time expired on Tuesday and once again, optimism is high in Chapel Hill. A person of faith, Don can now watch our Tar Heels from above.

Don was in good health up until a couple of weeks ago when he began suffering from an illness, which remains a bit of a mystery. I called to check on him and although he was weak and in bed, we spoke for several minutes, and he sounded strong and like his old self when we said goodbye.

My last words to him were: “I love you.” And those were his to me.

That is today’s lesson.

His death Tuesday came after news on Monday that he was in the hospital, but things were looking better, so I was not prepared. But I could have never been prepared for that news.

Don did not want a funeral, and he once again will get his way. Instead, there will be a Celebration of Life in August.

That will be the perfect period for a life well-lived.

Contact Donnie Douglas at [email protected]