Eric Montross was once a hero to a dying teen. He taught UNC player the word’s true meaning

In November of 1993, Eric Montross was the big man on campus at North Carolina, literally and figuratively. He was the Tar Heels’ 7-foot center, the leader of the team that, earlier that year, delivered Dean Smith his final national championship. Montross was everybody’s All-American, as recognizable for his flat top as his soft-touch hook shot. He was a national college basketball star.

Jason Clark, meanwhile, was a student at Jordan High in Durham, but too sick to attend. He was undergoing treatment for stomach cancer at UNC’s Memorial Hospital. Like a lot of 15-year-olds, Jason was an avid sports fan, and he especially loved his Tar Heels. UNC basketball players were something like heroes to him.

And then one day that November, here was one of his heroes.

Here was Montross, walking into Jason’s hospital room. Montross brought “some shoes and odds and ends,” he said at the time, according to a 1994 story in The News & Observer, but this was not a one-off visit, this meeting between one of the most recognizable college athletes in the country and a teenager in need of some hope.

It was, instead, the start of a close friendship.

“The camaraderie between the two was just amazing,” Jason’s mom, Lindy, said in a story the Greensboro News & Record published in 1997.

Soon enough, Montross was visiting Jason every two or three days. Sometimes they’d talk basketball, with Jason offering scouting reports on the Tar Heels’ opponents early in the 1993-94 season. Sometimes they’d play video games. To Jason, Montross was a hero because of what he could do on the court. Montross, though, quickly learned a truer meaning of the word.

“Many people who mean very well call me a hero because God blessed me with skills to play college basketball,” he wrote in an editorial in The Daily Tar Heel, UNC’s student newspaper, in February 1994. “But I am not a hero in the true sense in which Jason is.

“My battle is for points and rebounds and for the success of the team. Jason’s is a fight for survival. It has taught me what is important and what is (really) important.”

An enduring friendship

Montross never forgot what was important. He died on Sunday, at 52, after his own fight against cancer, almost 30 years after forging a brief but lasting friendship that helped to inspire a lifetime of service; a friendship that set Montross on a path to raise millions for UNC Children’s Hospital.

Upon the news on Monday of Montross’ death, a lot of memories focused on basketball. He arrived in Chapel Hill in 1990 as a heralded prospect from Indianapolis and left school four years later, on his way to an eight-year NBA career, as one of the most beloved UNC players of his time. His No. 00 jersey is among those honored in the Smith Center rafters.

Undoubtedly, any UNC fan older than about 40 can remember witnessing some of Montross’ signature moments. They can see him muscling and maneuvering in the paint against Michigan in the 1993 national championship game. They can see the trickle of red streaking down his cheek during a 75-73 victory against Duke in 1992 in what became known as the Bloody Montross game.

A lot of Montross’ most powerful moments, though, came out of view of cameras or admiring spectators. They included moments like the ones he shared with Jason Clark, who died Feb. 21, 1994, days after he’d turned 16. In his final months, the cancer spread to his brain.

Montross wore the initials “J.C.” on his shoes, in honor of his friend. Death brought relief, Montross said at the time.

“You never want to say that, you never want to see someone die,” he said after he scored 23 points in UNC’s victory against Notre Dame on Feb. 23, 1994. “It’s sad to say that, but it’s true. The hardest thing was watching him suffer. You know what the outcome will be, and the way you have to look at it is that he’s a lot better off. No one knows the pain and suffering he went through.

“It’s really a sad thing. Cancer is something no one should ever have to go through.

“It’s terrible ... what it does to people.”

Personified the Dean Smith player

There’s a cruel irony to the words, almost 30 years later. Montross announced his cancer diagnosis nine months ago, in March. Before the start of another UNC basketball season came the news that he wouldn’t be a part of the Tar Heels’ radio broadcast team, where he’d served as a color analyst for the past 18 years, first alongside Woody Durham and then next to Jones Angell.

On the radio, Montross wasn’t afraid to tell it like it was during moments of the Tar Heels’ struggles, nor was he reluctant to express joy during moments of triumph. One such moment came in Houston in 2016. When Marcus Paige made his improbable, off-balance 3-pointer to tie Villanova in the final seconds of the national championship game, Montross unleashed an ecstatic, guttural scream.

On the court, Montross came to personify the ideal Dean Smith player: team-first and tough, smart and selfless; a humble leader who let his play do the talking. Off the court, he embodied one of Smith’s mantras: that people shouldn’t be proud of doing the right thing — they should just do it, without a need for recognition.

“He’s the epitome of that quote,” said Tyler Zeller who, like Montross, is a former UNC center from Indiana. During his time as a player at UNC, from 2008 through 2012, Zeller first came to know Montross while working as a counselor at Montross’ annual Father’s Day basketball camp. Montross started the camp in the summer of 1994, in part to honor Jason Clark.

After Jason died, Montross remained close with his family. Days after the Tar Heels won the 1994 ACC tournament — with Jason’s initials still on his shoes — Montross checked in with Jason’s mom.

“Eric has been a total tower of strength for us,” Lindy told The N&O then. “He’s hung in with us.”

Before he died, Jason wrote three pages of ideas to improve the experience of teenagers like him, those hospitalized with the most daunting and dire of challenges. Jason wrote it all by hand and Montross began his basketball camp with the hope that the proceeds from it could help make Jason’s wishes a reality, in time.

Almost 30 years later, the camp has raised “several million” dollars for UNC Children’s Hospital, Dr. Stephanie Davis, the hospital’s chief pediatrician, said on Monday.

Among everything made possible through Montross and his wife, Laura: a pediatric infusion suite, where kids and teens can be more comfortable while receiving chemotherapy and other treatment; a pediatric short stay unit; a pediatric dialysis center; expanded mental healthcare resources for children in crisis.

And perhaps the most significant contribution of all: the Jason Clark Teen Room.

It’s up on the seventh floor of the UNC Children’s Hospital, with a basketball hoop and video games and plenty of space for hospitalized teens to “socialize and feel normal,” Davis said. And the idea all started with Jason Clark’s handwritten vision and Montross’ drive, behind the scenes, to make it reality.

This past summer, Montross’ camp was “different,” as Zeller put it. Montross, months after going public with his diagnosis, couldn’t be there. He called some of his old teammates, members of the ‘93 national championship team, to come to Chapel Hill and help run things in his absence.

“They were willing to drop everything and come for the weekend,” said Zeller, who developed a close friendship with Montross over the past several years. As always, the camp was much less about hardcore drills or X’s and O’s than it was about promoting bonds among fathers and their children.

“Less about basketball,” Zeller said, “and more about the time” together.

Monday was a somber day at UNC Children’s Hospital, Davis said. A lot of texts and emails were going around about Montross’ legacy and everything he’d given. There were physical reminders all around, including up on the seventh floor, and the room named after Jason.

It was a somber day, too, for the many who counted Montross as a friend. And yet, Zeller said, “I was telling my wife earlier today — I think that’s what we all strive for in life, is to have that kind of reflection when we pass. Everybody loves him. Everybody has something positive to say.”

And the basketball, it turned out, was only a small part of it all. Only a piece of a much broader legacy.

Many years ago, Montross walked into Jason’s hospital room and began an unlikely connection. A real friendship grew between the All-American college basketball player and the 15-year-old boy with only a few months to live. Their bond outlived their brief time together.

They both taught each other what it really meant to be a hero.