The old dirt-and-grass field would be replaced with a real practice field, plus circular walkways, additional shelters and a farmers market pavilion. Tarkington Park, which sits in the shadows of the Martin Luther King Community Center on the city's near northside, was finally going to be refreshed. The team's coach, Richard Donnell Hamilton, would be buried the next day. Who killed Coach Nell? What happened on that rainy evening? How did a man who spent a lifetime building immunity to gun violence fall victim to this most American contagion? As much as anything else, I want to know why.Īrtificial flowers and candles sit on the edge of Tarkington Park, where the Indy Steelers practice, on Jan. Who could replace him?Īnd in my heart, I want to know the thing that even police seemingly do not. Who will carry the ball for Coach Nell? The staff of the program was solid, but this was not a coalition, it was the force of personality of one man. How will they live without this man, their teacher, mentor, confidant, big brother, uncle, father and friend? Some who I met when they were that young now tower over me. How will these boys survive without this man? Many of them are as young as 7. I am here for Coach Nell’s funeral, but really, I am here – in this city and with the team whose stories long ago crawled up to live inside my heart – to look for answers. He was 43.Īnd so I am back in Indiana, in the raw cold of winter.
He had just secured a promise of a new practice field for the Indy Steelers. His own children were grown and gone to college. Police believe he was the victim of a road-rage shooting – one of more than 60 that now happen every year on interstates in central Indiana alone.Ĭoach Nell was at the age when he looked forward to a life spent watching football. It was a foggy, rainy evening, and he was the passenger in a white cargo van.
He was not in Butler-Tarkington, the city neighborhood where he and his boys grew up on a knife’s edge, but in Greenwood, the suburb 14 miles away where I used to go to the mall. Indy Steelers coach Richard 'Coach Nell' Hamilton.
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