Jan 22, 2005 : 12:04 am ET 

DURHAM -- Understandably, N.C. Central's first-year basketball coach Henry Dickerson looks forward to more than coaching the Eagles. At least twice a week, he places a telephone call to his 83-year-old father, Henry Wilson Dickerson, in Beckley, W.Va. 

The words are few. The message always is the same -- stay strong, stay alert and if you win, fine, and if you lose, there's always another day. 

"My father spent his entire life in the West Virginia coal mines," Dickerson said while sitting in his tiny office at McLendon-McDougald Gymnasium on a frigid Wednesday morning. "He had the biggest influence on my life and never pushed me into sports. He'd get me to practice, pick me up and never did he tell me I had to do this." 

Henry Wilson Dickerson hasn't been to an Eagles game and might not. Time is precious. His lungs aren't good and his kidneys are failing, the result of a career filled by inhaling the soot and grime that follows every miner through a rigorous life. 

"You name it, he's got it," Dickerson said. "My dad said he began as a miner when he was 15, but he was really 13 and he didn't retire until he was somewhere between 65 or 70 years old." 

To hear Dickerson tell it, it was like getting inside a time machine and taking a history lesson. 

"The roads were small, narrow-like winding around hillsides and the winters were rough, but Dad never complained," Dickerson said. "He'd drive sometimes an hour to get to the mines. When he'd get home, he'd have soot all over him. His clothes were filthy, but he'd be carrying his lunch pail and you know what I remember most? He'd sometimes have a piece of pound cake for me, and he was always whistling." 

Eight-hour days, Dickerson said, were short ones. 

"Dad would get up at 3 a.m., have to be there at 4 a.m.," Dickerson said. "There were no interstates." 

Dickerson smiles, a priceless expression that seemed drowned only by the empty candy dish on his desk. There are no secretaries outside his office, just a long, usually empty corridor on the upper concourse of the building. 

Henry Wilson Dickerson was born on the Fourth of July, 1921. His father Frank, Dickerson's grandfather, lived to be 93 and was a coal miner who could not read or write. 

"I remember one day taking him to the bank so he could cash a paycheck, and he'd put an 'X' on the back of it," Dickerson said. 

Times were different, and they were hard. So when Dickerson looks at his NCCU players, who have won nine times and lost five and are unbeaten at home, he has a simple message for them. 

"My slogan is 'Don't worry about the horse being blind, just load the wagon,' " Dickerson said. "My dad did that. His dad did that. We did that and went about our business." 

Dickerson officially replaced Phil Spence as the Eagles' coach on April 28, 2004. The job is not easy -- the budgets are nowhere near Dickerson's nearby rivals in the ACC. 

But there is something the coach quickly has learned. 

"The CIAA is a well-kept secret, and there are some pretty good players in this league and some darn good coaches," Dickerson said. "I appreciate the coaches at this level. You are more than just a basketball coach. There are other things you must participate in. 

"You don't have all the secretaries or administrators you need. You have to change something as simple as ink cartridges or if anything breaks down, answering phones, taking messages, placing a call -- there's no secretary to do it for you." 

For five years, Dickerson saw it differently when he was head coach at Tennessee-Chattanooga, where he guided the Mocs to a couple of Southern Conference South Division championships. When the victories weren't as plentiful, Dickerson found out what most in his profession discover -- you're out. 

"You want to win; I love to coach, but any coach in this position tries to prepare young men for life after they leave here," Dickerson said. "Right now, we're kind of in a box and this is what we see." 

Dickerson said he inherited some good players, but the consistency hasn't always been there. 

"We're not as good a scoring team as I'd like, and I dispute that theory that teams don't play defense in the CIAA because they do," Dickerson said. 

Lots of things were on Dickerson's agenda -- practice, messages on his answering machine. 

And yes, that dial to a certain other Dickerson in Beckley, W.Va.