Reuben Gant

My friend Reuben Gant, football hero and community leader, was inducted this week into the Tulsa Hall of Fame. The ceremony was organized by the Museum of Tulsa History which annually chooses a handful of citizens to be honored at a gala event. The banquet took place on Monday of this week and Reuben asked if I would be his official presenter. I’m happy to share the words I spoke about his life.

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Very few people know about my career in football. Those crisp fall days on the OSU campus. The roar of the crowd after that thing in the stadium where somebody hits the ball and all the runners come home. I loved those games, and I love my brother Reuben Gant. We were both recruited at the very same time and it was a toss-up who would play for the Buffalo Bills and who would become a rabbi in Tulsa. The only difference between us was that my prayer shawl was bigger.

But that didn’t keep Reuben from being a hometown hero. One of my sorrows about this moment in our history is the narrow definition of who gets to be a champion. Some people would tell us that it can’t be an immigrant. Some people would tell us that he has to be white, that he has to have stepped onto the shore at Plymouth Rock. That’s what it means to be a “heritage” American.

I say it’s someone like Reuben Gant. His mother arrived here in the decade after the Greenwood Race Massacre and came to raise a son who scooped up honors by the handful. He pulled himself into the orbit of mentors who fortified him for the challenges of poverty and racism. He peaked in football and then peaked again. Driven by a combination of smarts and intuition, he entered the world of cable networking on the cusp of its dominance, its remaking of America, and then closed his tenure when it reached the top of its trajectory. That, in itself, is part of the American genius for sensing that something has run its course.

The blessing in all of this is that Reuben came back to us. Not to work in the conventional way, to drop into the groove of business or the professions, but to take up the task of change and transformation. The project called Greenwood remains a work in progress, the place where this community works out its drama of atonement, of justice, repentance, and reconciliation. Many people have given it their best, but even in this company of visionaries and dreamers, Reuben Gant has done more than most. He’s a diplomat, a persuader, a builder of consensus. He brings together position and credentials with the softer power of his calm and character. When Reuben Gant calls you to the table of his commitments, no one says that they have something else to do.

I wish that all of us had more time this evening, to spin out our stories, to address the lives of our heroes. I want to tell you how Reuben crosses borders, how he recruits allies and supporters with the rich language of his ideals. But I hope that this is enough to mark the importance of this moment. I bless you, Reuben Gant, now and always, and I present you to this company for words of your own.