They celebrated the life of a notable person in Bibb County two weeks ago Saturday.

It was Charles Cleveland Day in Centreville and Brent, Alabama, on April 22, 2023. There was a joint proclamation by the two neighboring towns. Old friends got together and shared stories. Laughs and smiles filled an open-air pavilion. Commemorative Charles Cleveland Day T-shirts marked the occasion.

Cleveland is an Alabama basketball legend and starred for the Crimson Tide for three seasons beginning in 1972. He needs no great introduction here for those distinguished enough to remember the burning disco days of the 1970s. For everyone else, Cleveland was a rangy 6-5 guard who was tough to stop back in the day but would have been a perfect fit for the modern NBA. Fifty years ago, Cleveland was one of five teammates at Alabama who became the first starting lineup of all Blacks players in SEC history.

Charles Cleveland lived a good life and he made a lot of people happy. He unfortunately died too young, 61 years old on December 22, 2012. That was more than 10 years ago. Why was Charles Cleveland Day in Bibb County on April 22, 2023? How that came to be is a beautiful story about the love shared between two brothers and how a surviving brother chose to share that love in his heart with the people around him.

Charles’ younger brother is Ray Cleveland. Ray spent more than a year organizing, planning and paying for the event to honor Charles’ life. He thought of everything, too. There were even programs printed for the occasion. Charles Cleveland was a trailblazer and, as the program points out, a “three sports legend.” He deserves special recognition for his accomplishments not only in is hometown of Brent, but statewide in the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. Maybe this renewed attention can help with that. That’s not why they celebrated Charles Cleveland last month, though.

Why was there a Charles Cleveland Day in Bibb County? Because of Ray, and because Ray misses his brother.

“He used to call me Charles Junior,” Ray said to me over the phone.

RELATED: Alabama football, men’s basketball top SEC in academic progress rate

RELATED: How the Eagles came to love Alabama and Georgia

GOODMAN: Seeing signs of progress through the lens of the NFL Draft

GOODMAN: Alabama quarterback dynasty cemented Saban’s greatness

They were so close, and that’s because that’s how Charles wanted it to be. Charles made his little brother feel like the most important person in the world and that’s how Ray always viewed his brother, too. They were two of six children of their loving mom, Everlina Cleveland, and they lived together in close quarters. How close? Charles and Ray shared a bed long enough for Ray to still remember falling asleep next to his big brother.

Ray is retired these days. He moved back to Bibb County a couple years ago. So many years later, because he loves the memory of his brother so much, Ray sometimes introduces himself to people as Ray Charles Cleveland. It’s just a little tribute to the brother he misses every day.

This column is for Ray and for people who miss the people they love. When you miss someone you love, every day that goes by is another check on the calendar filled with cherished memories. Ray wanted to share a special day for his brother, though, and so he put time and energy and money into making it happen so that the love in his heart could radiate out into the world.

April 22, 2023, was the day that Ray Charles Cleveland put Charles Cleveland Day on the official calendar of forever love.

“It still gets to me that he’s gone,” Ray said to me over the phone leading up to the event. “Sometimes it just hits me.”

I’m right there with you, Ray, and a lot of people appreciate what that means. Sometimes we can think about someone we love so much and it just stops us cold in our tracks. The person can still be alive. The person can be alive only in our memories. Love is so powerful that sometimes it can hurt. When that happens, that’s when we need each other the most.

Like his big brother during his playing day, Ray Charles Cleveland can make people around him happy thanks to his enormous personality. One of those people is Carrie Switzer. Who is Switzer? Carrie is Ray’s friend at Huddle House in Centreville, Alabama.

There’s a relatively new Huddle House there on Birmingham Road in Bibb County, and Carrie moved to the area to be the manager. Everyone loves breakfast at Huddle House and Carrie has done a great job of making that restaurant part of the community. One of Carrie’s first ideas was to dedicate a wall in her Huddle House for photos honoring people who make a difference in Bibb County. Ray and Carrie became unlikely friends about a year ago, and one of the first things Ray told Carrie was that he was planning a Charles Cleveland Day.

Charles needed to be on the wall at Huddle House, Ray said, and after Ray explained it all, Carrie agreed. Ray gave Carrie some of her brother’s memorabilia from his playing days, and Carrie then made a shadow box for the wall. For months, the shadow box advertised Charles Cleveland Day. When April 22, 2023, arrived, Carrie’s Huddle House provided some food for the event.

“He is a very adamant man, very persistent,” Carrie said.

What does Carrie think of Ray?

“His friendship is more like a love,” she said.

I felt that energy, too. When I spoke to Ray over the phone, he signed off from our conversation by telling me that he loved me. Who says that to a random reporter? It was a first for me. Let’s just say that I don’t expect Ray Charles Cleveland’s gesture to start a new trend.

“There’s just so much ugly everywhere,” Carrie said. “It’s just really refreshing to love each other.”

So through Ray Cleveland’s loving spirit, that’s exactly what Charles Cleveland Day came to represent for everyone involved. Ray spent over a year working out all the details. He asked for help and people helped. Because of Ray’s hard work, Alabama basketball legends Leon Douglas and Wendell Hudson attended the event and talked about Charles’ career. Former coaches and teachers came, too. I was honored to be invited, but couldn’t be in two places at one time. April 22 was the same day as Alabama’s A-Day football game.

Where was Charles born, I asked Ray over the phone.

“Out in the woods,” he said.

Where out in the woods, I followed up.

“Up in the hills,” Ray said.

It was at that point that I knew it was going to be a fun conversation.

Out in the woods, how did Charles practice basketball?

“We nailed a dog-on tricycle rim to a tree and he used to tell me to go over there and stand under that rim,” Ray said. “We didn’t have a backboard. I would stand under the rim and catch the shots and pass them back. He used to shoot sitting down, and then he would start shooting with his right hand and then change over to his left.”

Charles Cleveland practiced basketball on dirt as a kid with anything he could find to be a ball. Think about how good he could have been playing year-round the way young players do today.

Let me just get this out of the way because I know that’s what the organizer of Charles Cleveland Day down in Bibb County would want most of all. Charles Cleveland is not in the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, but he should be. Cleveland was a civil rights trailblazer whose struggle and success helped change the state through athletics. He was also an enormous talent.

There are some things that people will always remember, and then there are other things that people should never forget. The story of sports in Alabama is actually part of a larger story about American civil rights. Cleveland played an important role before he even arrived at the University of Alabama in 1972.

Cleveland attended segregated schools for Black students until his junior year of high school. In 1970, he was part of the first integrated class of Bibb County High. How did that go? A few months later, like some kind of Bibb County basketball version of the movie “Remember the Titans,” Cleveland and his newly integrated basketball team won Bibb County’s first-ever basketball state championship.

Ray was three grades below his big brother. He remembers it all perfectly because he was the biggest fan of Charles Cleveland in the entire county.

“When you’re winning, it brings people together for that season,” Ray said. “You got to understand something about the South back then. Early on, it was separate, but eventually, after a few games, the gym got packed. Everyone was together. Concessions, everything.”

These 50-odd years later, Ray wants the symbol of that state championship to become a permanent unifier in his hometown. Printed on front of the programs for Charles Cleveland Day is a quote attributed to Charles that embodies that idea. “We may have come from different places, we may not look the same, but we will practice together, we will play together and win together,” it reads.

Charles Cleveland was a three-sport star for Bibb County. The Cincinnati Reds wanted him to play baseball out of high school. He went to Alabama instead, and he forever loved the Crimson Tide.

At Alabama, Cleveland was the first Black baseball player in the history of the university (1973) and that designation came a couple months after Cleveland and four of his basketball teammates became the first starting five of all Black players in SEC history. The day was December 28, 1973. The opponent was Louisville. Alabama’s starters were Cleveland, Douglas, Charles “Boonie” Russell, T.R. Dunn and Ray Odums.

Texas Western famously started five Black players against all-white Kentucky in the 1966 NCAA Tournament. Integration happened slowly in the SEC after that. In the early days of integration in the SEC, there was an unspoken rule among basketball coaches that only a couple Black players could be on the court at the same time. Alabama coach C.M. Newton said to heck with that rule and then won SEC regular-season championships in 1974, 1975 and 1976.

Without a three-point line, Cleveland averaged 17.1 points per game as a junior and then 15.6 ppg as a senior. Freshman couldn’t play on the varsity back then, but everyone knew Cleveland was going to be great when dropped over 30 points on Kentucky’s freshman squad. He went on to be a first-team SEC selection three years in a row, and helped put Alabama into the NCAA Tournament for the first time.

“Bear Bryant said he was the best athlete on campus,” Ray bragged to me over the phone.

Charles Cleveland was great at sports, but I think we now know that he was even better at being a big brother.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We Want Bama”, a book about togetherness, hope and rum. You can find him on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.