Article by Jeff Hartzell of the Post and Courier
The picture above is of The Citadel’s Logan Billings with his late grandparents, Ronnie and Mahala Lambert. Logan will be wearing No. 23 this season.
Grammy picked him up from school each day, because she didn’t want him to have to ride the bus.
Poppy took him fishing, Lake Greenwood and Lake Bowen their favorite spots.
Neither missed a game or a ceremony or an event for Logan, or his older brother Lucas, as the boys grew up. Both grandparents were fixtures in the stands at Johnson Hagood Stadium to watch Logan Billings play football, sometimes wearing matching Citadel t-shirts or sweatshirts, depending on the weather.
“The boys were their heart and soul,” said the boys’ mother, Missi Billings.
Those hearts gave out a year ago this week, when Mahala and Ronnie Lambert died three days apart in August 2020, both stricken by COVID-19. Mahala, 70, went first; Ronnie, 74, passed away just three days later.
“I think he died of a broken heart,” Missi Billings said of her father.
Logan Billings, a sophomore fullback for the Bulldogs’ football team, also had a broken heart.
After switching from linebacker during his freshman year in 2019, the 6-0, 200-pounder from Boiling Springs showed promise at B-back in the Bulldogs’ triple-option offense, running 13 times for 51 yards in a win over VMI and eight times for 30 yards against Wofford. He’d be in the fight for a starting job heading into the 2020 season.
But after the death of his grandparents, Logan opted out of the 2020-21 fall and spring seasons, taking his Citadel classes on-line and giving up football for a year.
“I needed to take some time for myself and for my family,” Billings said. “My grandparents were pretty much like my second parents. I was really close with them.
“It was a really important process I had to go through, grieving like that,” he said. “I’d never really lost anybody until that happened, and it was like a shock wave kind of ripped up my whole life. The things God puts us through makes us stronger people, and I feel like since that happened I’ve become a better person.”
Logan’s father, Michael, is in the Navy reserves and was often deployed as Logan was growing up, increasing the role of his grandparents in his life.
“They meant everything to me, and they are really my motivation for everything I do,” Logan said. “And they still are.”
‘A blessing’
A year ago, of course, there was no vaccine available for COVID-19, as there is now. Missi Billings said her parents were in good health and took precautions such as wearing masks and social distancing in public as the pandemic surged last summer.
“Neither one of them had any co-morbidities,” Missi said. “My dad played golf twice a week, and the week before he got sick had been shoveling gravel. They both had no underlying conditions, and my dad wasn’t on a single medication.”
Despite their precautions, Missi and her parents all came down with COVID at the same time.
“We all got sick on the same day, and we all had different symptoms,” she said. “It was weird because they didn’t go anywhere, they stayed home and wore masks. The only thing I could think of is that the week before, he had bought a truck, and I went with him to pick it up.
“That’s the only place I can think of where we may have gotten it.”
The Lamberts dealt with their symptoms at home for two weeks as Missi monitored their oxygen levels. Finally, she had to call EMS to take her mom to the hospital while Missi drove her father. Mahala Lambert was on a ventilator for 11 days before she died.
When his grandparents took ill, Logan was at The Citadel, preparing for the season and the school year.
“It was hard for him, because he had a decision to make,” Missi said. “Do I come home, or do I stay?”
Logan came home, even though he could not visit in person with his grandparents. But when the time came to take Mahala off her ventilator, Ronnie had tested negative after 14 days in the hospital. That meant his family could visit, but by then the virus had left him with pneumonia, blood clots and an infection that he could not overcome.
“So that meant Logan got to spend some time with his Poppy before he passed,” Missi
‘Much stronger’
After her family’s experience with COVID, Missi Billings said she got vaccinated this year, even though she’d already had the virus.
“Seeing what my parents went through, it was worth the risk for me to get the vaccine,” she said, “to take any chance I could to keep anybody else from going through that.
“We’re free humans and we live in the United States and should be able to make our own choices, absolutely. But if wearing a mask keeps one person from getting sick and going through what we went through, it’s worth it.”
As for Logan, he’s back with his Citadel teammates and competing for a starting job at B-back, a position that was painfully thin last fall and spring.
“It was hard, watching my teammates play without me,” he said. “But I needed that time for myself, and I’m coming back that much stronger.
“I’m feeling hungry and ready to get after it and make my grandparents proud.”
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