20977: (Arthur) Sports in a sad place - Bobby Duval (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tttnhm@aol.com

Sports in a sad place
Bobby Duval does all he can to help children in Haiti play sports
Wednesday February 25, 2004


College athletic scandals. Drug indictments. Hard-to-believe salaries. Rape.
Violence. Sometimes it's simply hard not to despair about sports.

Then there is Bobby Duval. He climbs out of bed this morning in Pétionville
in the hills above Port-au-Prince and drives down to Cité Soleil, which is as
filthy a slum as there is on the face of the earth. If you have never been to
Cité Soleil you might as well skip Dante's Inferno, because you can't
comprehend the one without the other. And now Haiti is in turmoil again, and it can
only grow worse for people who are sick and starving and without hope.

Bobby Duval is Haitian. He can trace his ancestry back to the slave riots of
two centuries ago. He is of the Creole elite, the ones who mostly live
luxuriously behind high walls, with hired gunmen at the gates. He was educated in the
United States and Canada, a bright, handsome man who could live regally.
Instead, Bobby Duval drives down the potted roads to Cité Soleil.

What he does is teach the most hopeless children in the world soccer and
basketball and track. He started doing this a decade ago because he loved his
country so and, not knowing quite what to do, he decided that maybe sport could
help . . . some. He found a field -- well it was a dump -- and convinced the
bottling company to let him borrow it. He cleaned it of the waste and the glass
shards. He began to bring children in -- not only to teach them sports, but to
feed them and pay for their schooling. Now there are 650 children from Cité
Soleil who play there every day -- if they abide by Bobby's rules. Thousands
more dream to get in.

Boys and girls in this sad land can play games, which is what even the
poorest children anywhere should be able to do. And, in one way or another, so many
have been saved. But Duval's staff numbers 40 now. And there is the food and
the maintenance. Every month he must come up with $20,000.  Somehow he finds
it. Because he believes he must.

If sports means anything in this world, you will see it at the Athletics of
Haiti. If Bobby Duval does not redeem sports, then nothing can.

Why is he even still in Haiti? In 1975, Baby Doc Duvalier put him in that
infamous hellhole called Fort Dimanche for speaking out for freedom. He was there
17 months, watching his friends die about him. Duval weighed 190 pounds when
he got in, 90 when he was miraculously released. But he stayed and eventually
decided that if he could not save all Haiti with politics he could at least
save some of its children with sport.

Last week, Duval was driving from Port-au-Prince to the town of Les Ceyes.
There was a roadblock, anxious men with guns and bullets, ready to -- well,
ready to do almost anything that nerves and fervor might trigger. Then one of the
gang shone a flashlight in Duval's face. "That's Bobby," he said. That was
enough. They cheered and passed him through.

President Aristide has closed Athletics of Haiti for the last few days, as he
has shuttered much of the country to try and calm things. He's allowed it to
open again on Wednesday, the start of Lent. Ash Wednesday is a day of
penitence for Christians, but whatever your faith, when you read the sports pages this
week, it is a good time to think of Bobby Duval and his children, just having
fun, playing games in one sad, desperate place.


Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular
contributor to SI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning
Edition. He is a longtime correspondent for HBO's Real Sports and his new
novel, An American Summer (Sourcebooks Trade), is available at bookstores
everywhere.

Find this article at:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/writers/frank_deford/02/25/viewpoint