The Unconventional Life of Alex Sokol

Photo by Chuck St. JohnWRITER’S NOTE: I did not know Alex Sokol. This essay has been constructed piecemeal, from the remembrances of those who perhaps knew Alex best. And even though I may not have known him, the way he is described through personal testimonies and anecdotes, I understand him. I get him. Because when life told him to choose between mediocrity and All In, he chose All In. Forever is serious business. Alex Sokol believed that.For most of his life, Alex felt an ache from the deep places of his soul to do something of substance. With that came great pressure, and Alex felt it as he gave the proverbial stiff-arm to mediocrity. But beneath the rubble and the detritus of the April 27, 2011 tornadoes, Alex discovered what he felt called to do.Alex was born to Bruce Sokol and Bobbi May and grew up in Mountain Brook. His early years were embossed with sports and WWF wrestling, which he acted out with his brother—a heroes/foils affair—in the bedrooms and living rooms of his youth.“I was Jimmy ‘Superfly’ Snuka,” says his brother Adam, seven years his senior. “I’d jump off something and land square on him. Or I’d be Ric Flair and put him in a figure-four leg lock. We were huge professional wrestling fans. I’d suplex him all the time. We’d be tearin’ up the house, just havin’ a ball!”Somehow, Alex procured a wrestling mask that he would wear around the house. That fascination continued “until it got embarrassing to be a wrestling fan,” Adam admits.Around that time, Alex also befriended a young athlete named Chris Nix. “Our dads were doing business together and they’d put us out on the basketball court or baseball field,” Nix says. “They basically said, ‘Go be friends.’” A lifelong friendship was forged.Alex went through the Mountain Brook system and graduated in 1995. He went to the University of Alabama and pledged Phi Gam fraternity. Nix and Alex grew closer. “He was broad,” Nix describes. “Alex was ready for fraternity life and I wasn’t when I got to Alabama. He helped me transition into that life and environment. He had more friends than anyone I knew. People gravitated to him.”Nix, describing his friend as a “free spirit,” says that their bond intensified by attending various sporting events at the Capstone. Alex was the quintessential homer Alabama fan, often viewing the world with a crimson-hued lens.Alex’s sister, Jenny Shulman, relates a story of Alex’s obsession. “We always bonded through Alabama sports,” she says. “He had a hatred toward Auburn, and sometimes that would come out in a bad way. One year, we went to the Southern Miss game when Brett Favre was the quarterback. My boyfriend at the time was an Auburn fan. Well, Alabama lost the game and on the ride home, Alex kept screaming at me, saying ‘Make him stop smiling! Make him stop smiling!’ The kid had passion.”But mostly, Alex could channel that passion in the right way. He reveled in clicking friends together, and would often introduce so-and-so to so-and-so, step back, and let the friendship materialize naturally.“He was the connector,” says Nix.Alex used his quick-wit and a bit of light needling to stitch tighter the threads between friends. He loved getting close to athletes (making him feel like he was part of the program), and befriended several of the Tide studs, a paradigm that continued for the rest of his life.“When we were kids, we used to stalk players for autographs,” recalls Jenny.“Some people called him a cleat-chaser,” laughs Nix.“We joked that he was a professional Alabama football fan,” says Adam.His junior year, Alex spent a semester—light on books, heavy on wine—abroad at the University of Florence (Italy). An avid music enthusiast, Alex also enjoyed going to Phish shows throughout college. He graduated in 1999 with a degree in business and good grades.But like many who graduate college, Alex struggled mightily with finding his place in working society, and the transition between “college” and “real life” for Alex was not porous. A cloud arises with family and friends who are asked to grocery list the jobs Alex anchored from the edge of the millennium to 2004.A steel company?Working for Edgar Welden at a hotel?Enterprise Rent-a-Car?Hazy.“He wasn’t going to be the guy making $15,000 a year, because he wanted to be the boss, the one who could make a difference,” says Adam. “He marched to the beat of his own drum. He wasn’t conventional.”The problem wasn’t that Alex was lazy. The problem was that Alex wanted to do something terrific. So terrific that he was never fully content with anything that he deemed unworthy of his significant attention.“Before the tornadoes, he would always say, ‘I wanna do something that’s mine,” recalls Jenny. “I said, ‘Alex, why don’t you go into real estate?’ Nothing. He couldn’t find his thing until the day of the tornadoes.”While the pressure mounted, Alex did establish some consistency when he began working at The Pants Store in Crestline Village. “He was good at that and took the job seriously,” says Nix. “Everyone who shopped there, which was mostly twentysomething and thirtysomething girls and their moms, he knew their name.”Nix remembers a prank Alex pulled on The Pants Store owner and longtime friend, John Gee. “This was back when Facebook got popular,” says Nix. “A girl ran into John in the Piggly Wiggly. She said, ‘John, you’ve been real active on Facebook lately.’”Befuddled at the comment, John later found out that Alex and Connor Liles had crafted a fake Facebook profile for him and been commenting on posts relentlessly.“Alex would put you in positions when he was being funny, and there was nothing you could do but laugh,” says Nix.Alex seemed to always be good at getting folks out of their comfort zones. Nix says that Alex often motivated him to do things he didn’t want to do.Simply put, Alex Sokol made people better and challenged others to be better.While Alex emptied himself into the lives of others, he had trouble filling that gap with a career that gave him true fulfillment. His seeming inertia was understandably aggravating to his parents, but sometimes (parents, make note) you have to try a lot of keys before the right one fits in the door.And isn’t it ironic that the most tumultuous day in the history of the state of Alabama was the place where Alex found rest?Here’s how it all happened:Conner Liles’ mother-in-law was living in Tuscaloosa, so Conner and Alex loaded up to see the damage. When they got there, they discovered trees on top of the house, a cleanup situation “that would involve a chainsaw”—a machine, Liles assures, Alex couldn’t operate.“We looked around and Alex had disappeared,” says Liles. “We found him, walking through the streets with his cell phone, taking pics and getting phone numbers. His brain was in motion.”That weekend, Nix was attending a wedding in Selma when the phone rang.“I’ve got an idea,” the voice said. It was Alex.He suggested that the pair get together on Monday for lunch with Ed Welden, a local businessman and friend.“At first, I thought, ‘Is Alex being impulsive?’” Nix says. “But we believed in him and on Monday, Ed and I were where we were supposed to be.”Alex surmised that little towns shellacked by the tornadoes—towns like Cordova and Pratt City—lacked the requisite infrastructure to adequately recover from the devastation. Enter Alabama Forever.“Alex started a supply relief donation drop-off place out of The Pants Store,” Nix says. “The sidewalk could not hold all of the donations.”Within two weeks, Alex negotiated two truckloads of donations to Cullman and two 18-wheelers to Cordova. He also sent the safe boats away by quitting his job.He was All In.The next step was marketing and forming a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. “Alex was going ninety to nothing,” Nix remembers. “By June and July, we had a website, logo, and brand.”There were certain obstacles amid the morass. “One day, Alex pulled a truck up in Cullman, and a group ran him off,” says Nix. “So he just pulled up into another lot and set up his own triage and emptied the truck. He wasn’t going to take, ‘Oh, you can’t be here.’”Soon, Alex and company realized that long-term recovery would necessitate more lasting, generational efforts, so Alabama Forever shifted in the direction of brick-and-mortar fixtures in the affected towns.“Alex began to focus on civic improvements,” says Walker May, Alex’s stepbrother. “He brought small touches to areas, making a quick, discernible, and positive difference and giving those affected perhaps more of a sense of normalcy and a place to gather as a unified community.”Alex realized that he could pair with local nonprofits to have structures built such as playgrounds and baseball fields. So he paired with Paul Kennedy at the Walker Area Community Foundation to help the little ravaged town of Cordova. He hunted down Nick Saban (fitting, right?) and locked arms with Nick’s Kids to assist Alberta City.Money was trickling into Alabama Forever, but typically not in tens of thousands of dollars. “He went six, eight, nine, months without taking a paycheck,” Nix says.But that wasn’t the focus. Alex’s serious-eyed obsession centered on building playgrounds in Phil Campbell and Alberta City, or a gazebo in Pratt City. The good-type mania centered on taking a group of kids from Greensboro for an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington D.C. for a week. The combination of entertainment, recreation, and athletics was the perfect triumvirate for Alex.On March 26, 2015, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for the playground in Alberta City. That day, Alex wore a grey suit and red tie. An indelible image posted on al.com shows Terry Saban hoisting a large pair of shears, a happy follow-through after the ceremonial cut through the crimson ribbon—held by none other than the ‘Bama Don himself.Adam, present for the festivities, describes the unbelievable ether at the dedication:“It was a phenomenally perfect day. Alex was going berserk. He was so keyed up, I thought his head was going to pop off.”It would be Alex’s last public appearance.“Two days later, he was dead,” Adam says.Thirty-eight years old. The pronouncement sent shockwaves through the Mountain Brook community, and far beyond.Three events were held in Alex’s memory, allowing friends and family to grieve and testify to a life. A dichotomous, meaningful life.Jenny was overwhelmed by the many people who came up to her at the memorial service and said, “He was my best friend.”“I didn’t know 95 percent of them,” she says.Which is a testament to how Alex Sokol invested in the lives of others, an effort that is often severely neglected in today’s me-centered universe.For whatever struggles Alex endured, he had all intentions to live life to the fullest. He was forever burdened with a deep-seated desire for his life to matter.Many people live their lives with a daily punch in and a nightly punch out. They slip begrudgingly into the robotic, if-I-can-just-get-through-the-day motions. Not really living at all, willing to sacrifice bliss for security.In review, the thing Alex Sokol feared most was that, in the final analysis, his life wouldn’t mean anything. That terrified him.But with Alabama Forever, it did mean something.Listen to what his friends and family have to say about his legacy:“He would take the clothes off of his back for a kid in Alberta City,” says Adam.“When coincidences happened, he’d say, ‘That’s a God thing,’” says Nix.“People loved him. And I hope the he knew that 50 people called him best friend and loved him,” says Jenny.Alex Sokol lived quite a life. He specialized in the rare art of friendship. He started a nonprofit that will continue to impact generations of Alabamians. He poured his life into the lives of others. He viewed every encounter as having an eternal element.And that—that is unconventional.I did not know Alex Sokol. But I am convinced that he was both tired and satisfied when he left this life unconventionally at the young age of 38. He went out on top, with one final bow, with a full heart.The world will surely miss those who live this way. Those who are patient enough to wait and listen for their calling. Those who bring joy to the rubble, and build something so that others can stand again.And those who dream of heaven as they lie down, forever. 78Cover Photo and photo below by Chuck St. John.All other photos courtesy of Alabama Forever.For more information about Alabama Forever, or to donate, please visit www.alabamaforever.org