Alexa Stirling

A L E X A S T I R L I NG | V I

along in an awkward lurching motion. He hired a chauffeur, George Hoyt, to take him to his office each day. George had to lift him out of the car and into a wheelchair for the trip up to the fourth floor office. He was then placed on a pad on his chair. His hands had become clumsy enough that he could only sign letters holding a pen taped to a tennis ball by his secretary. Physically, he was a mere shell of his former magnificent prowess. Essentially, all he had left was his superb intellect, which had been mercifully spared. When she arrived in Atlanta, Alexa had no clue about any of this harsh reality. In fact, Jones courageously told George that he would drive to the station to pick up Alexa by himself. He struggled behind the wheel and girded himself up to endure the awful pain caused by shifting his feet on the pedals and changing the gears of the standard transmission. Through the Atlanta rush hour traffic Jones drove with his pal, Atlanta sportswriter Ed Miles. When they arrived at Atlanta’s Peachtree Station, Miles descended the steps to greet Alexa and escort her to the car. Jones could not make it down the stairs and waited anxiously at the top. His heart was no doubt skipping a few beats in anticipation of this momentous occasion. It was not the scene Alexa expected: Reporters and photographers met me at Atlanta’s Peachtree Station and told me that Bob was waiting at the top of the stairs. This news came as a shock. He really couldn’t walk downstairs! Until this moment, I hadn’t quite believed it. Halfway up the stairs I saw him, and I felt as if a steel band had suddenly clamped around my chest. At the top of the stairs, Alexa looked into the steel-blue eyes of a grey faced man slumped on two canes, and a metal brace on his right leg. He had the crease of a warm smile on his tired-looking face. Reporter Miles described the reunion: The red-haired mother of three and a man still young who walks with a cane Thursday met for the first time in 25 years and kissed like brother and sister. Alexa remembered: He didn’t walk; he dragged his feet along without being able to lift them, his face set against the pain each movement cost him. Over the next few days, Bob and Alexa got reacquainted with each other and shared personal events of that 25 year interlude. Jones had never previously discussed his dire physical circumstances with anyone except sportswriter Al Laney. He told Laney he was never going to get better. He would get worse all the time. And then Jones told Laney never to talk about it again, saying, “You have to play the ball where it lies.” The conversation with Alexa sooner or later got around to the incredibly stoic and graceful manner with which Bob handled his circumstances. Jones laughed whimsically and told Alexa: One morning a few weeks ago, I woke up without remembering my condition, and I stepped out of bed to walk to the bathroom. I fell flat on my face, of course. I lay on that floor and beat it with my fists and cursed at the top of my voice. For ten minutes nobody dared come near me. I would have bitten them. I still can’t accept this thing. I fight it every day. When it first happened to me I was pretty bitter, and there were [ ]

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