As former athletes and athletic directors, a teacher, a neighbor, family members and friends offered touching and sometimes funny remembrances; the Rev. Norman Bradfield mixed in bible verse and heavenly magniloquence; and Regina Frost Martin — once a Colonel White basketball player and now part of the long-performing gospel group Heavens Unlimited — sat at a key board and belted out “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior” and “I’m Free,” Andre Owings lay in a champagne-colored casket topped by a big spread of yellow carnations at the front of the House of Wheat chapel.
Two dozen mourners sat on the padded benches of the West Dayton funeral home Monday and took part in the “Sunrise-Sunset” celebration for Andre, who died Aug. 8.
He was 67 and was survived by his older brother Richard and Richard’s wife Vernelle; his sister Sarah; two nephews, a niece and other family members.
He was specially styled for the occasion and, then again, he was not.
While he wore a nice dark suit, a white shirt, perfectly knotted tie and had a white boutonniere in his lapel, he was out of unform.
In times past, when he’s been center stage, he really dressed for success:
Sometimes that meant a Dayton Flyers football jersey. At other times it was a Colonel White shirt in the former high school’s green and gold colors. He often wore a ballcap turned backwards, a headband, sweatpants and sometimes knee pads, or black, half-finger weightlifting gloves.
When the occasion called for it, he might add a blue towel he turned into a Superman cape, pompoms for when he joined the cheerleaders, or a homemade parachute he’d fashioned from panels of an old Delta Airlines umbrella.
“There’s no way you could grow up in the Dayton Public schools and go to sporting events or even University of Dayton games at Welcome Stadium, and not know who Ande Owings was,” Rev. Bradfield told the small, but rapt crowd.
“He was a fan of young people across the city.”
Andre was also a regular at adult softball games.
More impressive than where he showed up was how he got there.
“His mode of transportation was his own two feet,” said his sister-in-law, the Reverend Vernelle Owings.
That’s right — except on the few occasions he caught a city bus or got a ride home from someone he trusted — he walked while carrying a backpack that held his props.
From his home on Everett Drive to Welcome Stadium, it was just over 3.5 miles.
The trek to Delco Park was nearly nine miles.
I can’t recall anyone here embracing the games, teams and area athletes as fully and fervently as did Andre.
Back in 2000, I spent a Saturday afternoon with him on the Welcome Stadium sidelines as the Dayton Flyers — then coached by Mike Kelly —routed visiting St. Joseph’s.
As Kelly drew up the plays, Andre — wearing a red No. 59 Flyers’ football jersey and a blue UD cap — acted them out.
Before the game, when quarterback Kelly Spiker loosened up his throwing arm in wind-mill fashion, Andre did the same a few feet away.
As Jesse Obert lined up to kick the Flyers’ first extra point, Andre stepped off his own kicking angle just beyond the sideline and soon booted a left-footed point-after through an imaginary goalpost.
A little later, Dayton fullback Dave George found himself in a bookend conference near the bench. On one side was Flyers offensive coordinator Dave Whilding, on the other was Andre.
In the third quarter, junior defensive back Justin Sullivan intercepted a St. Joe’s pass and ran it back 81 yards for the score. Andre matched him stride for stride on the sidelines and had the better finish.
As he ended his run, he let loose that small parachute.
“He uses that parachute to slow himself down, the way an airplane or the space shuttle does,” a smiling Jim Wheeler, who ran the Welcome Stadium concessions for 40 years, once told me.
That day, Dayton athletics director Ted Kissel said as far as everyone at UD was concerned, Andre was “a true Flyer.”
During Monday’s service, former Colonel White athletics director Carolyn Woodley called Andre: “The No. 1 Son of Colonel White.”
Although he was a familiar face at all DPS sporting events, he was partial to Colonel White,
That’s where Richard had been a stellar football player and where he had graduated from, as well.
Before Cougars basketball games and again at halftime, he’d grab a super-sized dust mop and clean the court.
“When we’d go to opponents’ gyms, if the floor was dusty, he’d go, ‘Where’s your mop?’ and then he’d mop the floor, so we could go out there and dust them, too,” laughed Derrick Malone Sr., who was a teacher and a coach at Colonel White.
“Andre was the school’s real mascot. People came to see him more than the guy in the Cougar suit.”
Not only did they like seeing him, but they came to hear him too.
He had that deep Barry White voice and former Colonel White athletics director and coach, Neal Huysman, got him to be the PA announcer at the Cougars girls basketball games. Sometimes he did halftime commentary at boys’ games, too.
“One time we were playing Sidney,” Huysman said. “At halftime he’s on the microphone and with a grin, he said, ‘And I’d also like to wish a very special Happy Birthday…’
“He then paused for effect before saying, ‘…to me, Andre Owings!’
“The crowd went wild!”
“I remember another time we were playing Dunbar. We always had a great crowd, so we could make a little money. But then someone came out from the concession stand before halftime and said the popcorn machine went out.
“Andre dug in his bag for some tools and then told me to take over the mic. He went out and fixed the machine before halftime ended. We kept selling popcorn the whole time.”
Just like Superman, Andre Owings had saved the day.
‘He was good to so many people’
Several years ago, I talked to Andre’s mother Octavia, who’s since passed away. Andre was the youngest of her three sons and lived with her.
“When he was little, he just wouldn’t talk to people and finally I took him to Children’s (Medical Center),” she said. “They did tests and said there’d been some brain damage at birth. But as it’s turned out, for anything where he’s a little slow, there’s something else where he’s real smart.
“There’s times when other kids can do these kind of children so bad. I remember when Andre was little, there was some who’d throw rocks at him, and he’d come home and those tears would just be a lappin’. But he worked through it.”
At Colonel White, he was befriended by Huysman, who eventually told him he could ride the team bus. “After a while, people from Colonel White would call our house and ask for Coach Owings,” Octavia said with a giggle.
Jim Judge, who got his undergrad and doctorate degrees at the University of Dayton, worked with special needs students at Colonel White and other DPS schools for decades and later taught at UD and Urbana University, knew Andre for 50 years:
“Andre had some limitations, like we all do, but everybody has strengths, too and you have to build on them. Andre was wonderful that way. He was good to so many people.”
Richard — who now lives in Charleston, S.C. — remembered the good deeds Andre did on Everett Drive:
“In the winter, he and Johnny and Gregory Shaw shoveled the sidewalks, porches and sometimes even the backyards of four or five of our elderly neighbors.”
Jim Parsons was a longtime motorcycle instructor for the Dayton Police Department and used to conduct intense two and three-week classes at Welcome Stadium for fellow cops.
“One day Andre shows up and we were talking as I was waving each motorcycle in for a turn at an exercise,” he said. “Pretty soon Andre said, ‘I got that,’ and he began to wave each one in. And that allowed me to set up cones for another exercise.
“It wasn’t long, and he was doing that, too.
“He showed up every day and one day he added a whistle to help him direct.
“For me, this wasn’t charity. I couldn’t have done it without him.” As he thought about Andre, Parson’s eyes began to glisten:
“It was raining one day as I was waving motorcycles in for a braking exercise. And then, all of a sudden, I’m not getting wet.
“Andre had come over…and was holding an umbrella over my head.” Parsons’ voice broke, and tears filled his eyes:
“Holding that umbrella so I stayed dry. Thinking of me first! He was really something special.”
Judge agreed: “At Welcome Stadium, Andre might be out of the field helping direct the band as it played the national anthem. Then he might join the cheerleaders.
“And at the end of the game, he might go up to the press box, take the PA microphone and say, ‘Thank you very much for coming. Make sure you have a safe trip home.’
“How many people would do that? That’s pretty neat.”
‘Rich in life’
Before the funeral service started, Wheeler talked about how Andre helped clean up Welcome Stadium between games and how he once went over to a tractor they couldn’t get running, surveyed the situation and finally said, “bad condenser.”
He was right.
“I’d always make sure we had a few hot dogs and some Polish (sausage) saved for him after the game,” said Wheeler, who was one of the few people from whom Andre would accept a ride home. He was more comfortable walking.
“But late at night, if he was walking, the Dayton police kept an eye on him to make sure he was OK,” said John Sanford, Andre’s neighbor growing up and, for 40 years, an umpire around town, especially at Kettering Field:
“Andre was the Forrest Gump of Dayton, Ohio
“In the movie, Sally Fields, Forrest’s mom, looked out for him. It was the same with Ms. Owings and Andre.
“We all know how Forrest turned out. He became rich.
“Well, Andre became rich, too. He was rich in life. He overcame things. He had confidence and knew who he was. He had friends all over town.”
Wheeler noted that Andre “was a lot sharper than people think.” He told how he read the sports page every day and how, these past few months when Andre was in Siena Woods Skilled Nursing Facility, he’d bring him issues of Sports Illustrated to read.
Wheeler’s favorite story, though, is about a guy who didn’t get Andre at all, a slight that would bring his comeuppance.
“We had a regional track meet at Welcome and the guy who normally did the pole vault couldn’t be there, so this guy from around Piqua came down and he really thought he was something and came in bragging.
“Andre was there, too, and he had a bunch of photographs of different teams and athletes he found in the dumpster of a school photographer. He was showing them to a few of us when the guy came up and tried to take over the conversation.
“Everybody was interested in Andre instead and that’s when the guy made this (rolling) motion with his finger to say, ‘This guy is crazy!’
“We were ready to tell him to hit the road just as Andre began showing photos of the Coldwater winter sports banquet.
“Finally, the guy said, ‘If you’re so smart, where is Coldwater anyway? I bet you don’t even know.’
“Well, Andre bumped me in the ribs and then said, ‘Coldwater is right next to the hot water on the sink! Where’d you think it was?’
“We all started laughing and as the guy slumped off, Andre said ‘Gotcha!’”
As Richard put it, “Once you got to know Andre, you never forgot him.” A while back, after Andre was found collapsed and severely dehydrated in the Everett Drive homeplace where he lived alone, Richard and Vernelle tried to convince him to move in with them in South Carolina.
A man of few words, he simply, but adamantly, said “No!”
“He loved Dayton Ohio,” said Vernelle. ‘He wasn’t leaving.
“That final morning, we were in his room, and we all held hands and every so often he’d squeeze mine. He was saying goodbye, but we didn’t know it.”
Before they left for a quick trip to the store, Richard said he and Andre exchanged a fist bump: “I told him I’d see him later.
“That was 12:15, but at 12:59 they called and said he’d passed.”
Carolyn Woodley had some thoughts about that passage:
“He was kind, and compassionate, that’s why I’m not mournful now. I know where he is.
“If I use some imagination, I believe when Andre got to heaven, God was waiting for him with a mop. And, right now, Andre’s mopping the Halls of Glory, keeping them spotless until the rest of us come.”
In the meantime, if you know how to listen, you might again hear that Barry White voice from the postgame press box giving new meaning to that old directive:
“Make sure you have a safe trip home!”
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