He seemed pretty famous and definitely not like anyone who would be friends with my dad. Like a good millennial, I googled Charles Barkley.

The first time my dad told the story, I didn’t pretend to know who this person was. Whenever we attended dinner parties, my dad would talk about his friend Charles Barkley.

For many years, he was the number two guy, right after Michael Jordan.” “He’s a top-50 player in the history of the NBA. “You know, has a big personality,” he told me. My dad, Lin Wang, knew about Barkley long before he met him. I said, ‘That’s my boy Lin.’ They’re like, ‘How do you know him?’ I said, ‘It’s a long story.’” Everybody’s like, ‘Who’s the Asian dude over there?’ I just started laughing. “It was obviously a very difficult time,” Barkley told me recently regarding his mother’s death. Yet, as West graduate Shirley Wang ’14 discovered, there are more similarities between a sports legend and everyone’s suburban dad than meets the eye. In short, he was everyone’s suburban dad. Residing thousands of miles apart, Lin Wang and Charles Barkley had over a foot in height difference and led strikingly different lifestyles. He worked as a cat-litter scientist in Muscatine, Iowa. Here’s what I can tell you about him: He often wore striped polo shirts tucked into khaki shorts, and he got really excited about two-for-one deals. He wasn’t a basketball player, he wasn’t a sports figure, and he wasn’t from Barkley’s hometown. But there was also an unexpected guest.īarkley’s friends couldn’t quite place him. WHEN CHARLES BARKLEY’S MOTHER, Charcey Glenn, passed away in June 2015, the former basketball star’s hometown of Leeds, Alabama, came to the funeral to pay respects. “My Pal Charles” Reader's Digest US | December 2019 - January 2020 An NBA star, an immigrant scientist, and a friendship no one believed - By Shirley Wang

Lin wangs daughter charles barkley