Joe Fonteneaux was a baseball coach at Paul Quinn College in Waco, Texas in the late 1970s. Although he only has three boys of his own, dozens more saw him as Dad. Speaking of the boys he coached, Fonteneaux says, "We really became a family, a really close family." For the past 28 years, he and his team have had a reunion every summer. Most family reunions do not take place with such regularity. The team's shortstop, Kenneth Lee has no idea where his life would have led without coach Fonteneaux. "We are his family," Lee says.
Lee was a good kid but had some pretty bad friends, he admits. Fonteneaux counseled him on his difficulties and convinced him to go to college. Lee now lives in Memphis, Tennessee and is an accountant, while most of his friends ended up in jail. "I didn't know this is the man that was going to save me from incarceration," said Lee. "The one thing that was most important to me was to build them to be good citizens, be good students and to graduate on time to go take care of themselves. So, it wasn't just a baseball thing," said Fonteneaux.
Fonteneaux, who is a diabetic, told his players a few years ago at a reunion that he needed a new kidney. His doctors told him that it might take a few years to find a suitable donor. However, his family let the team know he probably could not wait that long. Lee and fifteen other players were ready to stand by their coach. Lee tested positive as a donor and the surgery was last week. "When the opportunity came and I knew what he needed, ok, put me in coach," said Lee. "I found out that God had set that thing up that it didn't matter what coach's blood type was, I'm a universal donor. We thought this was about baseball, but this was about life.”
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