Remembering my friend Craig Leighton

When I asked Craig Leighton to join us at FriarBasketball.com in the waning days of the summer of 2012, his response was so typically Craig.

“I’d love to, but I’m not a writer at all,” he said.

“We’ll figure that part out later,” I told him.

I didn’t care that he didn’t consider himself a writer, nor did I have a specific idea of the role I was hoping he’d take. I knew he was obsessed with recruiting and I loved his historical knowledge of the program, but more than anything there was just something about Craig Leighton as a person that I valued.

I can’t remember specifically when I met Craig, a Providence native. It is probably a safe bet that it came during the Providence Jamfest in 2008 or so, or maybe it was a year later at the National Prep School Invitational, which took place at the University of Rhode Island back then. Go to these events frequently enough, and there are some people that you just know.

We got to know each other at these recruiting events, bonded for life over our undying love of Providence College basketball, and became all but family over the past few years. He was there to celebrate life’s highs with me, talked me through the annoyances that felt more significant at the moment, and I hope we were able to pick each other up during the genuinely tough times.

I’ll never meet a kinder human being than Craig Leighton. I just know it.

I’ll also never meet anyone so committed to the Friars, who cared about them the way he did, who genuinely invested in the people who made up the program — the players, the coaches, the administrators. The first few years he wrote for the site, I gently suggested he inject a bit more objectivity in his writing, but it was a lost cause. “We’re FRIAR Basketball.com, Kevin,” he used to tell me.

Fair enough, Craig.

I wasn’t looking for an objective Craig Leighton when I asked him to partner with us, and we got his best work when he wrote from the perspective of his fandom. So many of our long-time readers loved his stuff — his “Closer Look” articles digging into potential future Friars, his creation of the “Friar Starting Five” with every PC-related story or video imaginable to kick off your morning, his “Here and There in Friartown” articles covering all things Friars, and my favorite — his historical deep dives into the program.

To ask Craig to write as anything but a fan would have been such a disservice — to him and to you.

He grew up on the great Jimmy Walker, and as a high school student in the early-1970s his father bought him a single season ticket at the new Providence Civic Center to see those amazing Friar teams of the time.

God, I loved the stories about Ernie D and Marvin. Of Stacom and Hassett and Soup. But just as much, I appreciated his articles on players like Dwight Williams (The Saga of Dwight Williams), or the memories of his father picking him up after a game and their conversations about what he had just seen.

Craig and I talked all the time on the phone about the Friars, and I always remember thinking that I wish we had been recording because these conversations would have been an amazing podcast. Amazing all thanks to him. I asked him a question on the past and just sat back and enjoyed. Conversations about the current group inevitably turned into a history lesson.

A talk that started off on Nate Watson would somehow dovetail into the largest human being Craig had ever seen in person. It was either Artis Gilmore, or the time that Andre the Giant came to the Civic Center in the ’70s.

I learned about how Ernie D. came back to Providence as a member of the Buffalo Braves to take on the Celtics in the Civic Center, and the crowd went so wild for Ernie that it infuriated Red Auberbach to no end. Of course I heard about the Blizzard of ’78 game against Carolina and how the win over #1 Michigan was the best game Craig had seen at the Civic Center, but I loved the anecdotes like how when Rick Pitino was hired he went to local high schools to meet with fans and talked about what he was going to accomplish at PC.

Craig went home after listening to the young Pitino and told his father that the Friars would reach the Final Four under him. PC was really struggling in those days, and his dad thought he was crazy.

The times were so different and the stories always fascinated me.

Unsurprisingly, Craig went to Providence as an undergrad. An only child, he had the great misfortune of losing his mother just as he enrolled. He lasted about a month at school before deciding to head home and start again at PC the following year.

Craig stayed close to home after graduating in 1979. He went to URI to get his MBA (a fact I still can’t believe). His father wasn’t in great health, and Craig took care of him until his passing. I never asked, but always wondered how hard it must have been losing both parents at a young age, especially without siblings to lean on.

Craig in his PC yearbook

Craig later had a long career as an accountant, but make no mistake, his passion was the Friars.

He would often tell me, even a decade into it, that sitting at press row at the Dunk and going to postgame press conferences was a dream for him. His mind was blown early on when he took a PC-sponsored bus to a game in Brooklyn and fellow Friar fans knew his writing and praised him for it. If that blew his mind, his head nearly exploded when he sat next to Ernie D, his childhood hero, at a game and talked hoops with him. Craig had an easy-going, welcoming way, and an aura of kindness that allowed him to talk to anyone — college kids or basketball royalty — about the game. I have always been more guarded and wished some of that would rub off on me.

We had a running gag about how every time he would ask a question at a press conference Ed Cooley would reply, “That’s a great question.”

I used to tell him he could have asked Cooley who they played that night and he would have received a “That’s a great question.” There was one time in which Craig didn’t get a “great question” and we both looked at each other befuddled.

Craig in the maroon shirt, and me to his right at the Dunk in 2014

Craig wasn’t in great health the past couple of years, and Cooley was always kind and encouraging. At one media session, Cooley had to have made the attending reporters wait a good 15 minutes as he talked through different diet plans and shared what had worked for him in the past after Craig mentioned in passing that he was trying to get into better shape.

With his unassuming manner, Craig could always find a way to make the players crack a smile at those media sessions. I think he got Kalif Young three different times in this one:

Craig just always bounced back from health scares.

But this winter was different. Craig was diagnosed with cancer during the season. He hadn’t been healthy enough to make a game since before the pandemic, and seemed pretty certain this year would be his long-awaited return. I almost felt bad telling him how electric the 2021-22 season had been, but he wanted to hear every word of it. I’d call him after most games and we’d break down what was ahead during my 45-minute ride home. Craig always had us going undefeated the upcoming week.

Two Fridays ago, Craig called to let me know his cancer was terminal. It was a quick conversation. He wasn’t up for talking, told me he’d give me a call on Saturday, and shared that he didn’t know much about a timeline but would have more information the following Monday.

Maybe I was naive, perhaps it was denial, and I know part of it was due to his history of fighting, but I figured we at least had a few months.

I didn’t hear from him that Saturday. I gave it a few days thinking he might need space. He didn’t pick up on the following Thursday when I called. As awkward as it was going to be, I planned during our next conversation to ask who could let me know if his health started to deteriorate. He never married and maybe mentioned cousins in the past, but I knew next to nothing of them.

He passed away on June 16, and I found out because someone from the Providence athletic department heard and reached out.

I’ll forever regret worrying about bothering him in those final weeks when I wondered what the doctors told him. I’ll forever regret assuming we had more time. I should have let him send me to voicemail every day.

If there’s a heaven Craig Leighton went straight there. And if Craig has any say in what heaven looks like for him, he’s watching Marvin control the boards and the Walk regale the crowd. He’s checking out his contemporary, and one of his favorites, Soup Campbell, with pride. Maybe there will be a press conference afterwards and Coach Gavitt will give him a “That’s a great question.”

He always believed Providence would return to the glory days of his youth. Hopefully, now he’s seeing it all play out again in front of him.

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Here are just a few of my favorite articles Craig wrote:

Reflections of a Lifelong Friar Fan: the 1960s

Reflections of a Lifelong Friar Fan: the early 1970s

Reflections of a Lifelong Friar Fan: the Magical 1972-73 Season

Reflections of a Lifelong Friar Fan: The Terrific 1974 Friars

Reflections of a Lifelong Friar Fan: The Dream Continues

Remembering Bruce “Soup” Campbell

Craig’s interview with Michael Smith