Fourth and Forever

Josh fell in love with Kathy on the first day of sixth grade in Valley Head, Alabama. Eleven years later they graduated from high school, Josh received his draft notice, and they were married. Eighteen years later, Josh was winding up his Army career. Bobby, their only child was about to graduate from high school, and Kathy died unexpectedly - no accident - no long sickness - she was just gone. Josh and Bobby were devastated. Finally Josh realized they had to go on with their lives regardless of the pain. After many late night discussions, that usually ended with both of them crying, they decided to leave Fort Rucker, Alabama and find a school far away from anything that would remind them of their loss. A few weeks later they enrolled at the University of Montana in Missoula. Bobby tried out for the football team and thanks to the skills he had acquired in long practice sessions with Josh, made it as a wide receiver. The Grizzlies coach, Brent Jenkins, had seen Josh working out with Bobby and asked if he would work with the team's punter, explaining that their field goal kicker had just dropped out of school for personal reasons. The punter had no desire to kick extra points and field goals. Josh explained that to Brent and before he realized what was happening, Brent convinced him to be the kicker. A week later the coach talked Josh into becoming the backup quarterback, after assuring him that the Grizzlies starting quarterback, Jeff Samuelson, had never been injured. Samuelson's three-year injury-free streak ended in the third quarter of the Grizzlies first game. Seconds after the starter went down with a broken collarbone, Josh found himself, at age 44, the quarterback of a college football team. A Reader Said "This story is riveting from the beginning to the end. My husband was in the pre-Vietnam era, before it became an official war. Many of the boys he taught as an Air Force instructor went into that war. I've recommended this book to him as he has friends who were called up and who never talk about what happened there. The writing is superb. I felt like I was on the sidelines of the football field, in the cockpit of the Bluebird or on the steps during the Vietnam Conversations. An excellent, excellent book." Another Reader Said "Underlying the actual narrative is the unresolved issue of the Vietnam War, which comes across to a foreigner like me as an issue closed away and unexamined by most folk who were not there. In the book, the lead character, Josh Edwards, sets out to open the door and reconcile the feelings of veterans to their experiences. At the same time he enlightens those who would seek to know but have found themselves locked out by their loved ones and also by the social climate of denial. There are many words written about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In Fourth and Forever, the author gives you a layman's guide in a couple of paragraphs using the psychology of Sport. Personally I found this profoundly educational. The style of the prose is clear and unadorned. This is an unashamedly Feel Good book about success and winning by virtue of personal effort. We all know that our lives offer no such guarantee. In these times of jangling dissent, isolation and uncertainty, Fourth and Forever puts a team around you. I would read this writer again."

In late November, 1986, I was in Missoula, Montana, for a speaking engagement.  Early Sunday morning I left the downtown Red Lion Inn to go for a run.  I crossed the footbridge over the Clark Fork River and ran through the sleeping campus.  When I got to the Grizzlies practice football field it began to snow.  I stopped on the edge of the field and watched for a moment.  As I stood there an idea came for a book: a career Army officer, less than three months from retirement, decides to go to college with his son.  Both make the football team - the son, Bobby Edwards, as starting wide receiver and the father, Josh Edwards, as the kicker and backup quarterback.  
Writing when I could find a few minutes, I finished the story in a couple of months.  It was too short to be a novel and too long to be a short story so I filed it away.  Seven years later Desert Shield became Desert Storm and all of the Vietnam issues I thought I had handled came up.  I ran a short ad in the Times-Journal, Fort Payne, Alabama's daily newspaper that read something like this - "I'm a Vietnam Vet and I need to talk to people who understand what that is.  If you served in Vietnam and feel the same way, meet me at The Best Western for a cup of coffee..."  I gave an time and a day the following week.
I arrived at the restaurant thirty minutes early and found 27 guys already there.  They were the only ones there since they had intimidated all the restaurant's regulars.  One of them shouted when I walked in: "Hey, are you Carson?"  I said that I was and he shouted back, "Carson, you're late!"  I said that I was thirty minutes early.  He called out, "NO! I mean you're twenty-five years late in calling this meeting."  The place erupted in laughter.  That was the beginning of Vietnam Veterans Southern Command and the source of more than enough material for me to turn Fourth and Forever into a full length novel.