Minium: After Tragedy, Life is Good Again For ODU Football Assistant Tony Lucas

By Harry Minium

NORFOLK, Va. – When Tony Lucas walks into his Ocean View home after a long day, and his wife, Natasha, and 5-year-old daughter, Sage, rush to greet him, he often says a silent prayer of thanks.

Life is good for Tony, Old Dominion’s running backs and assistant head football coach, and for the longest time, he wondered whether he would feel anything more than grief and pain.

“I love my wife so much,” he said. “My life changed so much when she came back into my life."

“My daughter," he added. "She finds new ways to surprise me every day.”

“Sometimes when I watch Sage running around, playing with other kids, it’s so surreal.”

It would be for you too if you had experienced what Tony went through 11 years ago.

He was then an assistant football coach at the University of Delaware. His then wife, Sarita Wright Lucas, was a prosecutor in the Delaware Attorney General’s office.

They met as freshmen in college and were instantly smitten. Their relationship survived and grew closer even though through most of their time together, he coached football several states away from her while she went to law school and then began to practice law.

They finally moved in together in Newark, Delaware in 2013. A little more than a year later, on Sunday, Sept. 14, 2014, he came home out of concern – Sarita wasn’t returning his text messages.

He opened the door and called out her name and she did not answer. Seconds later, he found her lifeless on the floor. She was six months pregnant with their daughter, Claire Lucas.

Crying and praying at the same time, he desperately did CPR on his wife to no avail. Paramedics later told him that she and his daughter were already dead when he got home.

Sarita perished from a rare disease called eclampsia, a condition that raises the blood pressure of pregnant women, even those who don’t have high blood pressure.

Her death at the tender age of 33 was a major news story in Delaware. She was an up-and-coming prosecutor whose passion was putting murderers, rapists and other violent criminals behind bars.

For Tony, it was a nightmare from which he says he will never quite recover.

Natasha was then at West Virginia University, where she worked as a physician.

She and Tony had been close, though platonic, friends in college. They talked often about their dating lives, personal problems and their goals in life. They were best friends.

“At the time, I told Natsha that there are only two women in the world I would ever consider marrying,” Tony said. “That was Sarita and her.”

They remained close friends until they graduated from college. “I thought at the time that it was best for us to have some distance,” Natasha said. “I thought maybe we were too close and that my focus should be on Sarita.”

So, they fell out of contact, with the exception of a phone call or two every year.

When she heard of Sarita’s death, Natasha immediately reached out to Tony.

“I had been a physician for a while and had seen what people go through when they lose someone,” Natasha said. She knew that a month or so down the road, most of his friends who were doting on him would go back to their normal lives and that he would essentially be alone with his grief.

“I knew he was going to need someone to talk to,” she said.  

Just like she’d predicted, Tony’s friends had largely drifted back to their lives when she called a month after Sarita’s death. Tony quickly remembered how much he enjoyed talking to her and realized that he needed her counsel.

“She was my voice of reason all through college,” he said. "She was so much help when I was knee deep in grief."

They talked weekly at first, and then they began to speak daily. After a few months, he visited her in Morgantown, West Virginia, and although their relationship remained platonic, they made an instant connection after so many years apart.

They remained just friends longer than they wanted to for obvious reasons – Tony was in a vulnerable place, still processing his grief, and needed time to heal.

They finally began to see each other a year after Sarita’s death.

“Once we decided to date, and realized we were in a relationship, I think we knew immediately that it was leading toward marriage,” Natasha said.

They were married on March 3, 2018, but their relationship remained long-distance. Tony continued to coach, bouncing from Delaware to Temple, Elon and then ODU in 2019. Natasha remained at WVU.

By 2020, they’d had enough of living apart and Natasha quit her job and moved to Norfolk.

The decision to have a baby was difficult. Both were then in their late 30s and for Tony, “The thought was there, ‘What if we go down this path and it happens again?’ I was on pins and needles throughout the pregnancy.”

Sage was born on May 15, 2020, at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital and at seven pounds and two ounces, she was healthy and energetic from the start.

“Once she started walking, it was like she never stopped,” Tony said.

It was moments after ODU defeated Coastal Carolina, 47-7, earlier this month and the scene in the north end zone was one of pure joy.

The wives, girlfriends and children of ODU’s coaches were all in the end zone and the kids were running and playing. Wearing a blue ODU shirt, Sage was chasing after the children of Blake Seiler, ODU’s defensive coordinator, laughing the entire time.

She leapt into her father’s arms when he came out of the locker room and then Tony kissed his wife.

“Sage has enriched our lives in so many ways,” Natasha said. “We were happy before, but she felt like the piece that completed our family. She’s just a joy to be around for everyone who encounters her.”

She’s in kindergarten at Little Creek Elementary School, where she often wears ODU gear.

“She loves all things ODU,” Tony said. She especially loves when Ice Cream and Cake, the iconic and offbeat song that ODU fans, and especially students, dance to at football and men’s and women’s basketball games.

She does gymnastics and has a white belt in Tae Kwon Do. She’s always on the move and her laughter is a constant source of joy for her parents.

And she's become an avid ODU women's basketball fan. 

Tony grew up in Connecticut and was a fan of UConn women’s basketball, so they began to take Sage to ODU women’s basketball games. They are now season ticket holders.

“We really enjoy their games,” Natasha said. “Sage, she identifies with the players.”

Tony said it will be a few years before they tell her about the tragedy he experienced.

“She’s obviously not ready yet to be told,” he said. “She wouldn’t understand. But we’ll tell her when the time is right.”

Tony acknowledges he will never completely recover from Sarita’s death.

“The moment I say I’ve gotten over it, it also means that that part of my life was less significant," he said. 

"Birthdays, anniversaries, you know, different things sometimes trigger memories. When the Red Sox play the Braves. I'm a Braves fan. Sarita was a Sox fan. I might see a Facebook memory from 20 years ago today. So it kind of comes and goes.

“I thank God that Natasha is the woman she is and is understanding and gives me the space to be in my feelings and have those moments when I need it. She understands that it’s not like she’s in competition with another woman.”

Shortly after her death, Sarita’s family started the Sarita and Claire Wright Lucas Foundation, which raises money to help young law students who want to become prosecutors with their college expenses. Tony is a part of the foundation, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, and is still in touch with Sarita’s family.

“When you get together with an older person, well, everyone has a history, and a lot of times that is with a former spouse,” Natasha said. “It’s different when that person has passed away. You know there’s a part of him that will always love that person.

“You have to accept that. If he loved that person that much, it shows he can love someone else just as much.”

“Tony is doing pretty well,” she added. “He made sure he did the work to process his grief. But it will always be a part of him.”

Natasha went back to work a few years ago for Sentara Healthcare, where she practices family health.

Tony says she’s a great doctor not just because she’s smart but because she has such much compassion.

“Natasha, being the person she is, it was not out of character for her to reach out to me and make sure I was OK,” he said.

“She is a provider. She is a counselor. She is sympathetic and empathetic. That’s why she’s such a good physician, because she leads with her heart.

“With Natasha, it’s all about other people. Sometimes I want to fight with her because it’s always about other people. She doesn’t always take the time to look after herself. She doesn’t put herself first.

“She’s been so good to me and so good for me.”

Without Natasha and Sage, and his Christian faith, he said he’d be lost.

“I don’t know that I would have been able to manage and navigate my feelings, all of the emotions I went through, were it not for my strong faith,” he said.  

“It’s funny, in conversations I’ve had with some of our players, I tell them that some of us only want to believe in God when good things happen. We have to understand that we have to take the good with the bad because both are a part of life. It’s not like we won last week because God was on our side, and we lost this week because God wasn’t on our side. That’s not how it works.

“I think the person you become in your faith walk comes from the lessons learned and the strength you gain by accepting the bad for what it is.

“And then, that makes you appreciate the good so much more.”

And for Tony and his family, life is now very good.

Minium is ODU's Senior Executive Writer for Athletics. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram