Former BYU basketball coach opens up while recuperating from golf cart accident at an American Fork recovery center
The accident occurred near the No. 6 hole. His wife Diane, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, was driving the cart, but was unaware of what was happening when she pressed her foot on the accelerator and took to the wheel, circling the green before the cart came at her husband.
“I thought I could stop it and worried she would fall out,” said Roger. “The cart was going full speed. The next thing I knew I was on the ground, the cart was on top of me, my face was in a sand trap and the cart wheels were spinning. I could see the legs of people. They got the cart off me. I remember an ambulance and a helicopter and that’s it.”
Roger said his wife is unaware of what happened. He regularly took her golfing and out of the house as her primary provider during her struggles with Alzheimer’s. She is now in a memory help center in Payson, away from her husband for the first time in their lives.
For almost half a decade, Roger has been her care provider, a love story that has taken a tragic twist.
Reid has been buoyed up by visits from friends and family. A train of former players, including Shawn Bradley, now in Dallas, Michael Smith, and others have come by to see him or call.
“That means a lot to me,” said Reid.
At present, his existence is dependent on others. He can move his left hand but is restricted in motion. His right arm is restricted to just a few degrees of lift. He can’t answer his phone so he has to just let it ring.
It’s humbling for a 78-year-old man used to being active and independent his entire life.
But he’s a fighter. Maybe the toughest fighter you’ll ever meet.
As the NCAA Final Four unfolded last weekend, the former coach watched with the eyes of a trained professional. He marvels at what the game has become.
One can only imagine what goes through his mind when he sees NIL money buying players and teams. He sees his former program, BYU, obtain the No. 1 high school recruit in the country. Think of how this plays in his mind when he remembers as a BYU coach back in the day building his teams.
Roger took teams to NCAA Tournaments and both won and lost games.
“We had a pretty good team that year we took on Shaq.”
He remembers when the selection committee sent his team to Spokane to play LSU and the monstrous Shaquille O’Neal. He put 6-foot-8 Jared Miller from Fielding, Utah, a former missionary to Chile, against Shaq, a 7-2, 320-pound giant with a size 22 shoe.
Of course, Miller fouled out quickly in the loss. Miller was known for his fouls.
“I remember getting mad after LSU scored on us consecutive times down the court,” said Reid. “I called timeout and was going to let the guys have it. Tony Ingle came over and said, “Coach, you have to see this.’ I said I couldn’t, I was getting prepared to talk to the guys. He came back and said I just had to look, it was something one of us had never seen before.”
Begrudgingly, Roger peeked over where Ingle was pointing at the LSU bench.
“Look,” said Ingle, “all the players are sipping on squeeze bottles with straws but one, and he’s drinking from a trough.”
The day I visited him, his sisters-in-law, Mary Ellen Reid, wife of the late Marv Reid, and Joan Reid, the widow of Duke Reid, were there with him.
In one of the saddest tales one could imagine, Mary Ellen and Joan both lost their husbands in traffic accidents and they almost lost Roger in what could be described as a vehicular mishap.
Marv was killed coming home from his cabin in Midway when, some believe, he may have suffered a physical issue following a stroke.
Duke was crossing State Street in Springville to see a play when he was struck by a car and killed. Roger witnessed the accident that day.
Joan and Mary Ellen, sitting side-by-side near Roger’s bed that day, know as assuredly as anyone that their brother-in-law Roger is fortunate to be alive. The line between life and death is a fragile one, so very thin at times. Things can change in seconds.
As Easter approaches, they know and believe the words of a converted Saul of Tarsus in Biblical Corinthians 15:55, “Oh death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
Joan and Mary Ellen have witnessed how Roger has spent his time serving and loving his wife Diane, as life has taken her from being master school teacher, mother, grandmother and wife, to someone whose body and mind battle dementia.
At a time Diane and Roger could be traveling and enjoying the fruits of their life of work, they have been bound together in a different struggle. That’s why it is so admirable that on the day of this accident, Roger was doing what he loved to do, with his wife in the fresh outdoors and golfing.
“I was having the round of my life,” said Roger.
View Comments
Joan and Mary Ellen know firsthand how their brother-in-law has chosen to treat their sister-in-law when other choices were available. In March, that choice was taken from him.
As Norman Cousins once wrote, “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”
Roger’s love for Diane was fully on display that day on a golf course in Nephi.
And in his recovery bed, a state he will remain in for weeks if not months, it is evident the things he cares about are not lost while he lives.
