In the game of farming, it all comes down to harvest. And for first-generation farmer Chance McMillan, cotton fields that boast a blanket of white bear the fruits of his labor.
“This is our 12th crop,” says Chance. “God led us in this way to do this. And we believe that this is where He wants us to be.”
Chance farms in Hale County, Texas. Growing up, his dad was an accountant and his mother a school teacher, but Chance was drawn to the farm life after working on a farm in high school.
“I knew that I wanted to be outside,” he says. “I didn’t want to sit behind a desk. I didn’t want to be in a classroom. I love being outside. I love working with my hands.”
Working on a farm part-time when he was younger helped plant a passion for farming, and it was that love for farming that was ultimately passed on to a man everyone around town new as a coach.
“He played baseball at Texas Tech University after high school, and our whole family is a baseball family,” he says. “It’s in our blood.”
But as Chance learned when playing baseball, not everything goes as planned. And earlier the year, after a battle with COVID-19, the first-generation farmer didn’t just lose his dad, but a life-long coach. That’s as the two had plans to finally farm full-time as father and son.
“He just touched everything in a special way,” remembers Chance.
“He was the coach everybody wanted,” says Susan McMillan, who was Tommy’s wife for more than four decades. “They all wanted to be on Tommy’s team, because he treated them with such love and respect. He listened to him.”
“He gave 100% on whatever he did,” says Linda Morris, a family friend who also leads the Chamber of Commerce in Plainview, Texas. “Whether it was flipping pancakes at a pancake sale, or whether it was umpiring a best baseball game, he gave you everything he had, and he made you enjoy it.”
In a town of 23,000, Tommy was a man everyone knew. An accountant for 30 years, the baseball field was a second home to Tommy. A coach by nature, it wasn’t his career until Wayland Baptist University handed him his dream job that he did that full-time.
“He volunteered for about six years at Waylond, and then after Chance graduated, they decided, ‘We really think we need to pay this man.’”
He then retired from being an accountant and started coaching as a career. A life-long coach, his impact wasn’t just felt on the field, but in the lives of those the young men he coached, as Susan says he was a second dad to many. And it was Tommy’s caring heart of which she was reminded at Tommy’s funeral earlier this year after a former player shared a story with her about the impact Tommy had on his life.
“Tommy noticed that his name wasn’t on a roster, ad he went to him and said, ‘You’re going to play baseball, and I’m going to pay for it.’ Well, no one knew it. I never knew it until he passed away. And he did that for three or four years until his parents got their feet under them And no telling how many he did that too.”
A young man who Tommy taught lessons of life, told Susan he now coaches his own children because of how much Tommy meant to him.
“He said, “That’s why I do it. Tommy loved me enough and knew how important it was for me to play because of the values that they learn.’”
An accountant turned college baseball coach, it wasn’t until recently he found a love for farming.
“I always had a passion for being outside, and he always just loved being with me,” says Chance. “I loved being with him. And so it just kind of worked hand in hand.”
Still coaching baseball, Tommy turned into a relief utility player on Chance’s team.
“On the weekends he come out to plow or do anything that I needed,” says Chance.
And when the game of baseball was put on hold during the pandemic, Tommy. Was at the farm field even ore.
“He was out there with me pretty much every day. And we just got to talking and I asked him financially what he needed to retire, and he told me, and I said, ‘Let’s go do it right now.’”
While becoming a coach for Waylond baseball was something Tommy always aspired to do, Tommy’s dream job wasn’t just coaching baseball anymore, something he told his wife in the hospital just before he died.
“His priorities kind of turned there at the very end,” says Susan. “Not everybody gets to actually dream about something, and live another full life, and then come back and actually retire in that job.”
But with plans for Tommy to start farming with Chance full time, after his dad died, his emotions at harvest were heavy this fall.
“That’s been hard, because every farm that I have, he’s imprinted on every inch of that farm,” says Chance.
Harvesting his sorghum field this fall, a crop his dad planted last spring, was something Chance says was bittersweet.
“Not only his dad reaping a harvest in heaven, he’s reaping it here on earth,” he says.
Chance says his dad was his coach even as Chance started farming, and he yearned for the chance to finally farm as father and son.
“That was going to be our time to finally get to do that every day,” says Chance. “God had a bigger plan. I don’t know why, but his is bigger and better than mine.”
A harvest that happened this year without his dad, is one that caused reflection, as well as gratitude. That’s as Plainview remembers a man with a servant’s heart, and a strong love for his own family, which may just be why Tommy’s love for the baseball field rivaled his love for the farm field in his final chapter in life.
