Stop the Presses | In your prayers

I just found out this morning that a good friend, Tim Baker, is scheduled to undergo surgery to remove a brain tumor tomorrow.

Talk about sudden – Tim and I play on a rec-league basketball team together, and our last game was two weeks ago.

According to his Facebook Wall, he found out about the tumor three days after our last game.

The doctors, he said, believe the tumor is what has been causing his dizziness and nausea, which I remember Tim mentioning once or twice in the season, but not what I’d call in a complaining mood.

Our team was always light on numbers, and we rarely had a sixth player to give us a sub, meaning we had to go all 40 minutes.

Tim played every game, two nights a week.

Sometimes his children, Owen, 4, and Ben, 1, were along for the fun.

Like me, Tim is a Wilson Memorial High School alum. Also like me, he’s volunteered his time with Big Brothers Big Sisters over the years. That’s how I first remember meeting Tim several years ago, in the course of doing for the News Virginian on BBBS volunteers.

Tim is a Virginia Tech alum, and a rabid Hokie at that, to the point of working to figure out a way to update his Facebook profile so that it no longer appears that he’s posting from Charlottesville, because, you know, that’s where ‘Hoos roam.

(It’s a wonder he let me on his rec-league team. Well, we run a good give-and-go.)

Tim is also among the most faithful and spiritual people that I know.

That faith will be a rock for him as he faces what he faces tomorrow.

Please do me a favor. Help make that rock a boulder.

Take some time out of your busy day tomorrow and say a prayer for Tim Baker.

　

– Column by Chris Graham