His shoulders were as broad as a bear, radiating strength through his hands and legs — and yet Calvin Wainright stood even taller in the breach of the resilient Kansas City communities he served.

The lives he touched, like the pictures of players, teams and coaches he taped to the walls of his LINC office, spanned beyond the visible horizon like a glassy sea.

Wainright, a LINC Caring Communities coordinator, coach, organizer, life mentor, pastor and neighborhood leader, died Oct. 31 at the age of 68.

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Boys and girls, teenagers and young adults — it didn’t matter where they came from — wanted to be in his gyms.

Many came from the inner city housing that Wainright’s programs served at the Don Bosco Centers and King Middle School — coming from Wayne Miner Court, Hilltop, Theron B. Watkins and others.

For many, that meant changing behavior and attitudes to rise to the demands of Wainright’s expectations, said LINC Caring Communities Coordinator Jason Ervin, a longtime partner with Wainright in basketball and neighborhood programs.

“Calvin was fearless,” Ervin said. “He didn’t [care] what your vice was. He knew how to get kids to buy into what he was selling.”

Wainright had come through his own hardships growing up in Kansas City, shaken by the city’s riots after the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination when he was 15, rising up and building an inner city basketball program at Don Bosco in the early 1990s when crack gangs tore away at the lives of youth and men.

He didn’t look for pity or excuses from himself or anybody, said LINC Caring Communities Coordinator Darryl Bush, who first knew Wainright as a teenager when Bush was 8, growing up in the same neighborhood and then collaborating as an adult in the community work.

They grew up in low-income neighborhoods, Bush said, but “he didn’t say we’re poor. Poor is a mentality, a state of mind. He said we’re broke, and that’s a temporary condition. With that mindset he learned to nurture and develop relationships.”

He could strike an intimidating pose if he wanted, but Wainright won people’s loyalty through his heart.

“People don’t care how much you know or who you know until they know you care about them,” Bush said. “Everybody knew that Calvin cared about them.”

His “big heart for children” was matched by “the respect he showed” to parents and grandparents, said Sean Akridge, LINC Caring Communities Administrator, who also first worked with Wainright in community basketball programs at LINC’s Woodland Caring Communities.

Wainright was a great athlete. He starred on Kansas City’s Manual High School basketball team that won the Missouri state title in 1971. He helped raise strong children. One of his sons — Ish Wainright — plays for the NBA’s Phoenix Suns.

But the power of his life went far beyond the basketball court. He understood the importance of sports and what it could do in shaping the character of boys and girls, but he took his stature into the neighborhoods he served, determined to help build community, even going to divinity school to be ordained as a pastor.

“He was poised,” said LINC Executive Vice President Janet Miles-Bartee. “He was a man of character. Trustworthy and honest. People listened when Calvin talked. He poured his heart into all he served.”

The pictures Wainright collected and posted provided a glimpse into the way he lived — as if every child was one of his own, making every acquaintance, colleague or companion a lifelong friend.

“He would encourage his kids (in his basketball programs) by going to their schools and checking on them,” said LINC Caring Communities Coordinator Brenda Newsome. He’d go to their games and events. He’d cheer them in their schooling. He’d follow them through their college careers and their adulthood, Newsome said.

He also knew when they were hurting.

The nature of his work — the challenges he took on — inevitably would connect him to youth who fell into crime and violence.

He’d know where they were, whether in detention as youths or in prison, Ervin said. “And he’d know when they were getting out.”

He’d speak on their behalf in court hearings. He believed in second chances.

“He knew what you’d been through,” Ervin said.

Several times now, some of the now-grown men who knew Wainright are making sure the second generation of youth is getting the same kind of character-building experiences with a second generation of basketball coaches and life mentors, like Ervin, created and inspired by Wainright.

Pierre DeClue is one of those young leaders grown from Wainright’s tree.

DeClue, who began playing for Wainright when he was 10, went on to his own pro basketball career overseas before returning to Kansas City, where he has now stepped into the LINC Caring Communities Coordinator role at Melcher Elementary School that Wainright had to leave when his health began to weaken.

“He was practically my father,” DeClue said. At first, DeClue emulated Wainright the ballplayer, shaping himself as “the spitting image” of a wily point guard. But he also saw how Wainright saw “things in life that were bigger than him, and how he gave up his time to help kids.”

That’s the Wainright he emulates now.

“I’ve always tried to be an extension of Calvin Wainright,” he said.

After Wainright’s death, similar tributes poured out in the pages of social media as one person after another shared the impact Wainright had on their lives. Many talked of how his influence has crossed over generations. Many shared their life pledges, like DeClue, to pass on his model of mentoring and caring.

More than one said that Calvin Wainright “saved my life.”

And yet, Wainright’s humble nature showed when, after years of running influential sports programming and community organizing, he took on the new role of a LINC Caring Communities coordinator knowing he had a lot to learn.

Some of his LINC colleagues, who had always seen Wainright as their mentor, found him graciously seeking their advice, Ervin said. He always thought he could grow and learn more.

And of course he excelled.

Too soon, his physical strength began to weaken, but he continued to rally his community, Newsome said.

Wainright was at the frontline of an effort in 2020 to register new voters, and he “just kept pushing.”

He continued to help with the basketball coaching, Bush said. And he would join the regular Calvary Community Outreach Network’s food distribution efforts that he and his wife, Rev. Cassandra Wainright, led during and after the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“He was not a complainer,” Bush said. “He was a man of action.”

To the end, Newsome said, “he wanted his community to be successful, he wanted it to be right.”

“He was a great, great man,” she said.

Now he rests, and the ripple effect of his life spreads outward through the work of the people behind many of the faces he taped to his walls — his sea of love and grace.

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer