Be Like Mark

In August 1991, Gatorade launched its successful “Be Like Mike” ad campaign. The Mike in question was Michael Jordan, whose Chicago Bulls had just won their first NBA Championship and would go on to win five more. Within a year, being like Mike was associated not just with drinking Gatorade but with being a winner.

A decade after that campaign ended, I found myself wanting to be like Mark.

My friend Mark Erwin.

I met Mark at a tennis club in west Akron, just down the street from where I worked. He and I quickly discovered that, on the tennis court, we were evenly matched. So we started playing against each other. A lot. This continued for almost 20 years.

Mark used to joke that he kept a log of every match that he and I played. “We’ve played 800 times,” he’d say, “and I’ve won 401 of them.”

I wanted to be like Mark on the tennis court, because he was a much better shotmaker than I. His serve was sharper and had more variety. He had a terrific topspin forehand, whereas mine was flat and fairly predictable. He had great hands at the net; I couldn’t volley to save my life.

The only way I could beat him was to grind it out from the baseline: run everything down, get everything back, and try to force him to make a mistake. Our typical match went to a third set and lasted over two hours.

It was competitive. It was exhausting. It was heaven. And it happened nearly every week.

Initially, our post-match conversations were limited to tennis. I knew that Mark was a Christian, and I desperately needed solid Christian men in my life.

I had next to none.

Christian men intimidated me. They all seemed to have their act together. I did not. Not even close. I was prideful. Self-centered. And my personal life was a shambles. So I put on the smiling face on Sunday mornings at church and kept Christian men at arm’s length the rest of the week. Rinse and repeat.

Mark found his way around my defenses. He didn’t push or pry. Instead, he mentioned some of the challenges that he faced in his life. And he made it clear that, if I wanted to share anything, he would listen without judgment.

Then Mark went through a painful divorce. I tried to be there for him, but I didn’t know what to say. Tennis seemed to help, so we kept playing.

Slowly, I began to open up to Mark about my life. That’s when I noticed something remarkable.

Even when there seemed to be nothing positive going on in Mark’s life, he stayed positive. Even when Mark had every right to cry on my shoulder, he asked me how I was doing.

It was never an empty question. When I answered it, I had his undivided attention. Regardless of what he was going through, Mark genuinely cared about me and cared for me.

He modeled Christlike love, every time we spoke.

I wish I could say that Mark’s life took a dramatic upswing shortly after the divorce, but it didn’t.

He had his own company, but it was in a declining industry: church photography services. Mark spent most weeks on the road, putting 75,000 or more miles on his car every year. A big competitor bought its way into the market and then decided to get more market share by bankrupting Mark’s company with frivolous lawsuits, so Mark had to go to work for someone else in the same industry.

He never complained. And when I had success in business, Mark told me I deserved it. I knew he meant it.

Mark really wanted to share his life with a good woman, but being on the road all the time made that difficult. He thought he had found the right one, but the marriage ended in divorce a few years later.

And then my marriage ended the same way. True to form, Mark was there for me, even if I wasn’t there for him.

Tennis matches between Mark and me began to wane over the next few years, mostly because Mark was rarely in Ohio. But each of our personal lives got better.

I found and married a wonderful woman who lived in Florida. She and I became snowbirds.

Mark found and married a wonderful woman. too. He and Kim bought a home in Florida, about an hour from ours. Mark was rarely there, of course, because of his job, but the end of the road was in sight, just a few years away. He was making plans to retire in the Sunshine State.

In late July, Mark told me that he could be in northeast Ohio over the weekend if I had time to meet him. My tennis team was in a playoff match on Saturday, so I asked Mark to come watch. I ended up not playing, so he and I watched the match together.

The next day, I met him for lunch. As we left the restaurant, we planned to get together again in a few weeks, when he was back in Ohio on business.

Three weeks later, Mark was killed in a head-on collision.

He fought the good fight. He finished the race. He kept the faith. I know where he is now.

And I know that, for the rest of my life, I’ll strive to be a man like him.

I want to be like Mark.

Chris Bolinger is the author of Daily Strength for Men and 52 Weeks of Strength for Men.