It was Monday morning, March 28, 2005. Three Japanese men showed up at Corey Campbell's apartment.
They entered in silence and sat on Campbell’s living room floor seiza style — picture kneeling with the tops of your feet flat on the floor and your heels touching your buttocks. They remained like this for hours.
Campbell barely knew the three men — they were from his place of employment. He was still processing the news that his brother Micah was dead.
Eversince receiving the phone call from his dad, the morning had been a blur. Campbell still isn't certain how these threehad heard about his brother.
Yet here they were paying him respect and being present with him as he began the long mourning process, despite the fact that he was a stranger in a strange land.
Campbell was so many time zones away from his home that while it was Monday morning in his part of the world, Japan's Akita Prefecture, it was still Easter Sunday where his family was grieving.
Campbell was halfway around the world because he’d taken a leap. He’d begun taking risks for things he believed in as a 12-year-old. Back when the entire world was about basketball. He was a talented young player with supportive coaches looking to give him his best shot to play at a high level, and that desire led him from schools in Fishersville to Charlottesvile to New Jersey.
What he learned changed his worldview and his life, and was eventually about far more than basketball.
Hoops connections
Along with his family, Campbell moved from Oregon to Virginia when he was 13. The family first relocated to Staunton, then to Fishersville. He attended Shelburne Middle School as a seventh-grader and then spent eighth grade at Stuarts Draft Middle.
With so many school changes, Campbell used basketball as a way to find friends. He played on a Staunton AAU team in early 1990s, meeting Ben Halterman and Philip Saunders at the first tryout. The three almost immediately became best friends.
“He has a magnetic personality that anyone would be attracted to,” Halterman said.
O.J. Matthews coached that AAU team. During tryouts, the final cut came down to Campbell and one other player. Matthews wanted to cut Campbell. He didn’t need an extra guard. The team’s other coach, Tracy Toye, disagreed, so they arranged to have one more workout to make the final choice.
“Corey’s work ethic in practice that day was unbelievable,” Matthews said. “He was focused. He wanted it more than probably anybody who was in practice that day. I remember Tracy saying, ‘I told you, I told you.’ And I just knew that he was going to be something special from that point forward.”
Campbell was supposed to go to Wilson Memorial, where his two older brothers went. He could have been a star there.
“I almost would say I’d guarantee that he would have been,” said Saunders.
Although it never came to fruition, Saunders, Halterman and Campbell often had conversations about finding a way for the three to play together in high school. Saunders was headed for Lee High, while Halterman was a Fort Defiance kid.
Matthews got a job as an assistant coach at St. Anne’s-Belfield (STAB), a private boarding school in Charlottesville, and convinced Campbell’s parents to let him bring along their son. Saunders said there were talks between his family and STAB officials about him joining Campbell in Charlottesville, but it never got past the initial discussion phase.
Campbell was surprised by just how difficult STAB was academically. It took him a little bit to adjust, but not long. He was named the school’s boarding student of the year both of his years there. Things were going very well both in the classroom and on the basketball court.
And then he left.
A big move
Matthews was convinced, and he had Campbell convinced, that staying in Charlottesville wouldn’t get him any attention from Division I colleges. So he got Campbell a workout with Kevin Boyle, the coach at St. Patrick High School. Matthews had met Boyle during the AAU season.
St. Patrick wasthe oldest parochial high school in New Jersey. The student population was about 61 percent black and 35 percent Latino.
Boyle had been the coach at St. Patrick since 1988. Before it closed in 2012, the school won 12 state championships and was consistently one of the top-ranked national programs. And make no mistake, basketball was the most important thing at the school. The school’s Wikipedia page names 13 basketball players in a list of 17 notable alumni. Included in the list are NBA players Kyrie Irving, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Al Harrington.
In 1995, Boyle was just starting to build the national powerhouse that the Celtics would eventually become. And he was building it with Shaheen Holloway, a three-time Parade All-American who would go on to be a star at Seton Hall. Holloway wasa senior inthe 1995-96 school year.
Matthews took Campbell to New Jersey for three days to showcase his skills.
“It was probably the best three days of basketball in my life,” Campbell said. “I was on fire. I couldn’t miss.”
Boyle invited him to join the team. Campbell remembers his parents, who still live in Fishersville, weren’t overly thrilled with the move.
“I think they were pretty … I don’t want to say upset because I think they always supported me, but I don’t think they were too happy about the decision. But O.J. was just such an amazing push.”
Matthews remembers the same thing. It stood to reason. Their son, a rising junior in high school, had finally adjusted to his new school and now he was moving almost 400 miles away solely because of basketball.
“Absolutely,” Patti Campbell said when asked if she was worried about her son moving to New Jersey. “100 percent. Worried. Concerned.”
It didn’t ease their concerns that, during the three day workout, Matthews and Campbell got to see the reality of life in Elizabeth. Matthews remembers a gang member coming in the gym and telling the coach that there may be a drive-by shooting that day and he should probably keep his players in the gym. That kind of shook up Matthews, but he said it didn’t rattle Campbell at all.
His parents eventually agreed to the transfer because they believed in their son and they trusted Matthews.
Growing up in Oregon, Campbellremembers one black student in his school. There were a few more black students once he arrived in Virginia with his family, but he was always in the majority.
That changed when he showed up at St. Patrick for his junior year of high school.
“Everyone should be forced to be a minority at some point,” he said.
When he walked in school that first day, it felt to him like every student turned to stare.
“That’s a really weird experience where you’re already assuming this person across from you doesn’t like you,” Campbell said. “I don’t think as white people we can really understand that because we never really experience it.”
One of the other players heard some of the students giving Campbell a rough time. He just told them, ’Yo, he balls.’ Campbell said thathelped. From then on, he felt he was more accepted. Basketball had that power at St. Patrick.
There were times Campbell and his teammates went to aconvenience storenear the school. The store owner followed his teammates around. Campbell was never followed. The teammates were all black. Campbell wasn't.
“There is no way in my mind that a white person can understand what that feeling is like,” Campbell said.
Outside of school, Campbell lived with assistant coach Rae Miller in Newark, about 20 minutes from the school. He lived in the coach’s attic, sleeping ona mattress.
The coach told him it wasn’t safe for him to walk outside alone. This wasn't Fishersville.
Miller’s mom also lived in the house. Campbell recalls her walking around the house “shouting Jamaican.” He could never understand a word she said and the coach told him just to ignore her.
It’s interesting, the things you remember. The things you’d probably like to forget.
For Campbell it’s the roaches. Growing up in Oregon, living in Fishersville and going to private school in Charlottesville, he never worried about waking up to a house full of roaches. Then he moved to Newark.
Roaches were everywhere. Campbell walked into the kitchen once and saw the dog’s food bowl covered with the insects. Miller just picked up the bowl, banged it against the sink to free it of roaches, and placed it back on the floor.
“The roaches have a place here too,” the coach said.
The academics weren’t nearly as difficult as they had been in Charlottesville. There was a math class Campbell took as a junior. He had already covered all the material as a freshman, but a lot of the other students were struggling. It didn’t help that the teacher was from India and the students couldn’t understand her accent. She would often get Campbell to come to the front of the class to explain the material.
“It’s really helped me perceive the world differently when we talk about bias in life,” Campbell said. “Even cultural bias on the SATs and stuff. It’s true, the way you get taught and the lessons you learn are entirely differently.”
A basketball life
Basketball was an adjustment for Campbell also. He went from being one of the better players at his school to a bench player who didn’t see a great deal of court time.
Besides Holloway, St. Patrick’s other star during Campbell’s time there was Harrington, a 6-foot-9 sophom*ore in 1995. Eventually he went straight from high school to the NBA, where, in 1998, he was drafted by the Indiana Pacers in the first round.
There were at least four otherplayers on that team who gotD1 scholarships.
Campbell was a 5-foot-8 point guard, but his first year he had Holloway, a senior at the time, in front of him at the position. He thought playing against Holloway all season in practice would help him become the starter the next year. And he played well in the summer before his senior year.
But then Jerome Holman was named the starting point guard that winter. Campbell was used mostly as a backup.His senior year he saw the floor 10 to 15 minutes a game. His confidence was shot.
“I never had any outstanding moments,” Campbell said “My best moments were games where I hit nine, maybe 12 points, mostly 3s that Shaheen or Jerome had kicked out.”
Still he loved the experience. St. Patrick had an intense rivalry with St. Anthony, coached by Bob Hurley, Sr. He said the atmosphere in the gym during those games was “insane.”
Campbell also got to play in tournaments throughout the country. He played against Kobe Bryant and Lamar Odom.
“I remember I’d always get called ‘white boy’ during those trips by random people," Campbell said. "And I always took it as a compliment, meaning the white boy that could play on the St. Pat’s team.”
There was another player on his team named Corey White. Campbell said the players referred to the two of them as Corey White and White Corey.
During the time at St Patrick. his mom would send him newspaper clippings of Halterman’s games with Fort Defiance and Saunders at Lee. Readingthose may have been the only time he regretted leaving the Shenandoah Valley.
He knows that if he had played at Wilson, or even stayed at STAB, things would have been different. For one, he wouldn’t be relegated to the bench behind a starting lineup of major college talent.
“I don’t think high school for me was extremely fun,” Campbell said. “St. Anne’s was really, really tough academically so I felt like I spent all my free time studying. And then St. Pats was just all basketball … that’s all we did.”
Campbell graduated from St. Patrick as the school’s valedictorian, but the plan to use St. Patrick to get looks from major college basketball programsnever panned out. He got several letters from Division III schools interested in him playing and an invitation to tryout as a walk-on player at Seton Hall, but not a single scholarship offer from a Division I college.
"But by that point, I was kind of burned out of basketball," Campbell said. "I think at that stage I started shifting into my next phase."
He chose to go to Virginia Tech. He may not have been entirely over basketball because he inquired with the Tech coaching staff about walking on, but was told there were no roster spots.
"That was kind of the end of the end for me," Campbell said.
But kind of the beginning also.
Campbell spent his sophom*ore year studying at the University of Hawaii as part of an exchange program. He fell in love with the island, but returned for his final two years in Blacksburg. He even spent time as the Hokie Bird, Virginia Tech’s mascot.
He was at Tech the same time Michael Vick was quarterbacking the Hokies to national prominence.
After graduating from Tech, Campbell moved to Hawaii — he knows his parents were not happy about the decision — where he lived in a hostel while trying to find a job. He said natives of the state don’t trust those without a permanent address. Too many people move to Hawaii on a whim and don’t end up staying. That made his job search that much more difficult.
His oldest brother Toby was an oncologist in Madison, Wisconsin, following dad John, an ER doctor, into the medical field. Micah, the middle brother, was an executive in Northern Virginia with Enterprise. Patti, his mom, was a teacher.
“Corey chose to go another route,” Patti said. “A tougher route.”
Through a connection, Campbell eventually landed a job with Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. Two private high schools and a college degree in psychology had led him to a job as a bartender.
“Disappointed, that would be fair to say,” Patti said of her feelings at the time.
While working as a bartender, Campbell found out about a chance to teach English in Japan through the JET Program. It sounded like an adventure so, in August 2003, two years after finishing college, he applied and was accepted.
He relocated to Akita Prefecture, in Northern Japan, where he taught in junior high schools.
Much like his time at St. Patrick. Campbell was in a situation that was outside of his comfort zone.
“There was nothing but rice fields and stuff,” Campbell said. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, what am I doing here?”
He ended up loving the area, the people and the job. Each contract is a year long, but Campbell signed on two more times for a three-year stay, moving into more of an advisory role his final year there. He would often reflect back on his stay in New Jersey, saying he’s not sure if he could have made it through the early days in Japan without having gone through the St. Patrick experience.
But his stay didn’t go without some personal challenges. Nineteen months after arriving in Japan, Campbell had another life-changing event.
Micah
Campbell is foggy on a lot of the details from that day. He knows it began with him being late for work. The phone rang, but he didn’t have time to answer so he just let the machine pick up.
He heard his dad’s voice, asking Campbell to sit down. After a pause, his dad just said, “Micah is dead.”
He doesn't remember much else, with the exception of theJapanese co-workers kneeling on his floor.
“This is one of the craziest and coolest cultural moments," Campbell said, "and also worst.”
Micah had been diabetic since he was 4. Corey is 20 months younger, so he never remembers his brother without the disease.
Micah was always Corey’s biggest fan, offering support for his brother’s life choices that followed a less-trodden path.
Corey wasn’t always happy with Micah’s choices though. Micah didn’t manage his diabetes well. Corey said he wouldn’t check his blood glucose levels, instead believing that he would just know when his levels were too high or low.
And now Micah was dead from the disease.
He traveled home to be with his family. It was a strange situation. He was happy to be home, to see people he hadn’t seen in the time he was overseas. But it wasn’t a happy time for his family.
“I didn’t know how to be sad in that moment,” he said. “It was kind of like my heart and brain were torn.”
He feels now that he never dealt with his emotions in a healthy way. He couldn’t even bring himself to spend time looking at his brother’s body at the funeral home. He walked in, looked at the bloated face, which looked nothing like Micah, and walked right back out of the room.
“I kind of wish I had spent more time in that room and kind of just let it soak and maybe say what I wanted to say,” Campbell said.
He loved his brother. He was angry with his brother for not managing his diabetes better. He missed his brother. He buried all of those emotions deep and then carried them with him when he returned to Japan.
Campbell said he couldn’t talk with anyone about Micah for three years. But Micah’s death had changed him. He became more introverted, which was not at all like him. He was less of a daredevil. He had never contemplated that life could end, but he saw what Micah’s death did to his parents. He thinks he became more mature.
“I can’t be really stupid about what I do in life because if my parents were to lose another kid I don’t know what that would do to them,” he said.
It’s something he had never considered before.
He also wanted to do more with his own life. His brother had a house, a good job, a steady girlfriend who he’s sure would have married Micah. Campbell felt like maybe it should have been him, the brother who had kind of floated through life, who was dead.
In 2007, he returned to Hawaii. He considered going to medical school and becoming a psychiatrist. That was his plan from his days in college,but by now it seemed like a long road to travel.
He then ran into an old friend who was working in human resources with the Sheraton Waikiki. Campbell began working as a guest services manager for the resort hotel, and from there moved up through the hotel’s ranks. He was an assistant manager of a hotel restaurant and then moved into training and development and eventually became director of training.
But throughout his move upward in the hotel industry, he still had emotions about his brother that he hadn’t dealt with. And then, in 2008, he was talking with one of his mentors.
The two were sitting on a balcony of the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani in Honolulu. The other man had just been through the death of his grandmother.
Theywere drinking and talking. And then — and Campbell realizes this is kind of strange — the wind started blowing and two airplanes came soaring through the sky. It felt like maybe their deceased loved ones were present at that moment. The two decided that was the time to say everything they wanted, they needed, to say.
“It was tearful. I was drunk,” Campbell said. “I just told (Micah) everything. That I was upset with him, that he didn’t take better care of that when he was alive. That I missed him and I loved him and all of these things. That was, honestly, the moment that I think I healed.”
More changes
Campbell loved the hotel business, but he had a calling. So he took another leap of faith by beginning his own business, Akamai Training and Consulting, in 2015.
He often uses stories from his days at St. Patrick in his training. He said Hawaii can be a little sheltered. There are very few black people on the island.
“That was always my angle on things,” he said. “To help people see life a little bit brighter than they do. It’s not that bad. You’ve got food, you’ve got a job. Not everybody has that.”
He's learned through his journey that everyone has a backstory. In his training sessions he explains that you can’t always judge what a co-worker does or doesn’t do without knowing that story.
The job of teaching others how to lead seems like the perfect fit for Campbell. Even his old friends realized that at an early age.
Ben Halterman still lives in Mount Sidney, He and Philip Saunders still get together with Campbell when he returns to Virginia.
“He’s an energy giver,” Halterman said. “He’s a guy, when you’re around him you feel a little bit lighter. Almost makes you feel like no dream is too far gone to be had or out of your grasp."
It’s funny then that Campbell’s original dream to play basketball in college and the NBA was never realized. But by pursuingthat dream, he found other dreams he wanted to chase.
He still wonders what would have happened if he had stayed in Fishersville, gone to Wilson. Or if he had just remained at STAB for all four years. But right next to those thoughts is the one saying he wouldn’t be the person he is today if he had. And he likes the person heis today.
Surrounding yourself with others who look or think like you is perfectly natural. But to Campbell, doing that only narrows your scope of learning. Interacting with someone who doesn't lookor actor talklike you makes many people uncomfortable. Campbell understands that reaction.
"That's the moment you have to say, let me pause my thought and let me spend some time with this person and get to know them," he said. "That's the only way we really learn."
