When Kentucky’s coach, Basketball Hall of Fame member John Calipari, saw a photo of the miner at the game it struck a deep emotional chord. “My family’s American dream started in a Clarksburg, WV coal mine, so this picture hits home,” he tweeted, adding that he wants to locate the family to give them “VIP” treatment at Kentucky's Rupp Arena when the regular season starts.
Word got to Mollie who responded to Calipari’s tweet.
Calipari called Molly and they talked for a half hour. "I was stunned," Mollie told ESPN. The coach shared that his grandfather was a coal miner and how their ethics taught Calipari a valuable lesson about teamwork. “We go in together, we come out together. No one left behind, because we’re one crew,” he told Mollie. “That’s what I teach my team—that we’re one team and we can only do it together.”
The funny thing was Michael had no idea that the photo had gone viral because when it happened, he was working deep in the mine where there is no cell reception. He found out what happened when he was approached by his co-workers at the end of his shift.
“Shew, it caught me off guard big-time,” McGuire told The Athletic. “Everybody was saying, ‘There comes the celebrity! There comes the famous guy!’ I had no clue what was going on.”
Calipari told the family to pick a Kentucky home game at Rupp Arena where they will get to have dinner with him, hang out at the pregame shootaround and enjoy the action from courtside seats.
All of the attention is a great reminder for Michael of how he's appreciated by his family and community.
"It's not just his immediate family that appreciate him. It's everyone," Mollie told USA Today. "It's all of eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee. Everyone. He is appreciated. And I'm hoping that he feels that appreciation and that love once he realizes, you know, everything that's happened."
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Photo courtesy of Albertsons
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