Rick Reed isn’t someone who seeks attention. But in Knoxville, attention finds him anyway.

You see it in the way students light up when they spot him walking into the dugout. You hear it in the stories former athletes tell about their coach. And you feel it in the reverent tone people use when they talk about the guy who mowed the fields, swept the halls, fixed what needed fixing, and—without ever being asked—helped hold the whole place together.

Rick grew up in East Galesburg, just outside of Knoxville, and aside from two years spent in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, he’s been part of this district his entire life. A former student. A graduate. A coach. A custodian. A facilities guy. A grandfather. A mentor. A friend.

But last October, everything changed.

He was in Dubuque with his wife celebrating their anniversary—a tradition they'd kept since their honeymoon—when pain in his chest sent him to the emergency room. What he thought was a pulled muscle turned out to be something much heavier: stage four renal carcinoma.

“It just hit us,” Rick says. “You never expect that kind of news. But there it was.”

Since then, Rick has been undergoing immunotherapy treatments. The prognosis is uncertain. The cancer has slowed in soft tissue but remains stubborn in his bones. His doctors are realistic. So is Rick.

“They told me, ‘You might live a year. You might live twenty.’ You just don’t know,” he says. “But I’ve always tried to live every day like it mattered—and now I really do.”

That perspective runs through everything he says.

When he talks about coaching—13 years as Knoxville’s head baseball coach and several more on the girls basketball bench—his memories are full of joy, not stats.

“I didn’t know much about basketball at first,” he laughs. “Matt Gibson just needed someone loyal. So I said yes. And it turned into one of the best things I’ve ever done.”

When he talks about mowing the fields or plowing county roads during his time at the Knox County Highway Department, there’s pride—not in recognition, but in routine.

“I’m just a simple guy,” he says. “I like things clean. I like them done right.”

And when he talks about the diagnosis, he doesn’t sugarcoat it—but he doesn’t surrender to it either.

“Yeah, cancer sucks,” he says. “But just because I have cancer doesn’t mean I’m gonna die before you. None of us knows what’s coming.”

It’s that clarity that’s made his story resonate so deeply in Knoxville. In the months since his diagnosis, the community has wrapped around him—texting, checking in, stopping by, making sure Rick knows that for everything he’s poured into this place, it’s being poured back.

And through it all, he’s still showing up.

Sometimes it’s just sitting in the dugout, being present with the team at Carl Sandburg College, where he’s an assistant baseball coach. Sometimes it’s rolling through town in his car, just to stay connected. Sometimes it’s choosing to leave Dubuque early—not because he felt unwell, but because his grandson had a football game, and he wasn’t going to miss it.

“You live like every moment might be the last one,” he says. “Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays—you make them count.”

It’s a mindset he’s carried most of his life, even before cancer gave it sharper edges. And it’s a legacy he’s still building—through his grandkids, through the players he’s coached, through every field he’s helped prepare, and every person who’s ever watched him quietly do the work that matters.

Rick Reed doesn’t need a title. He doesn’t want a spotlight.

But he’s got something better: a community that knows who he is.

And a life that keeps proving—over and over—that the best among us don’t have to be loud to be legendary.