After tragedy, Cole Callaway finds healing and hope with Johnson & Wales hoops
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Callaway joins Johnston & Wales, living at home after family tragedy.
- Coach Marc Slade recruited Callaway after he entered the transfer portal.
- Callaway is a key scorer and finds support in basketball while healing.
Just when Cole Callaway thought his life was finally settling down, everything got turned upside down all over again.
In November 2024, Cole was a redshirt freshman basketball player at the University of Lynchburg, Virginia. He was in his room one Friday night when his mother, Cassie, called him sounding frantic. She was trying to share the kind of news that no parent, brother or child would ever want to hear.
Fighting back tears, Cassie told her youngest son that his big brother, his best friend, Chris Callaway Jr., had been found dead in Midwest City, Oklahoma .
Chris was 34.
“It was definitely hard,” said Cole, now 22. “My mom told me and I really couldn’t believe it at first. It was just shock. It was unbelievable. We were super close. That was my big brother.”
Not sure what to do, Cole did what he always does: He kept playing. He practiced and went with the team on a road game at Pfeiffer five days later.
He played 16 minutes, somehow, and scored three points.
“We had practice Saturday,” Cole said. “I went and told coach (Hillary) Scott after practice and they were super supportive. And after that (Pfeiffer game), (my family and I) flew to Oklahoma.”
It would the beginning of a long journey for Cole — for the second time in as many years.
A tough rookie start
In the 2022-23 school year, Cole was a star for Lake Norman High School, averaging 14.6 points and five rebounds on a 19-8 second round playoff team.
After graduation, he enrolled at NCAA Division II Newberry (SC) with a plan to be an immediate contributor on the Wolves’ basketball team.
Only, during preseason workouts, Cole woke up one day and didn’t feel good at all.
“I was super sick,” he said.
It was so bad that Cole came home. Nurses at the school that he may’ve had COVID-19. His local doctor diagnosed with mononucleosis.
And it was bad.
“He lost 11 pounds. He had tonsillitis. You name it,” said Cole’s father, also named Chris. “He missed about three months. He just couldn’t move. I mean, he was so tired and exhausted.”
Because he missed so much time, Cole ultimately red-shirted and eventually made the decision to transfer, choosing to leave for Division III Lynchburg and a fresh start.
Then his brother died.
‘Trying to connect the dots’
Chris Callaway Jr. was born in August 1990. He got a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the American Military University and served six years in the Air Force after that.
Before his death, he was working as a private contractor with Air Force contracts.
Married with kids, Chris was active in a local church and loved working out, building Legos and anything to do with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a passion he shared with his father.
The day he died, Callaway Jr. was planning to go with some of friends to eat lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings and when Chris. didn’t show, someone went to check on him. They were planning to go the gun range after eating.
“They kept calling and calling and calling,” his father said. “He wouldn’t answer, and he’s never late.”
At the restaurant, one of Chris’ friends called his wife, since they lived just a few doors down. The friend’s wife confirmed his truck was at the house.
She went to check on him.
Chris was in his bedroom.
He was gone.
“When the detectives came,” his father said, choking back tears, “they found his phone and he dialed 911. After the gun went off, he just panicked. He dialed 9-1-1-1. He hit ‘one’ three times and the call didn’t go through.”
The Callaways don’t know if their son, their brother, died from an accident or took his own life.
The gun went off in his stomach and the bullet also hit him in his chest.
“We have really tried to figure all that out,” his father said. “And it’s just so, so hard to connect all the dots, and we’ve never really been able to.”
Leaning on basketball to cope, and coming home
The Callaways buried Chris and Cole went back to college in Virginia. He finished the 2024-25 season, playing in all 27 games and was third on the team in made 3-point shots.
His father marvels at his strength.
“I didn’t want to just come home,” Cole said. “I wanted to finish out the whole year. I lived with a good group of guys and they helped me and they were there for me. But it was always in the back of my head. It was definitely hard and that’s why I felt it was best to come home.”
When Cole was high school, Marc Slade was an assistant at NCAA Division III Roanoke College. Slade liked Cole a lot and had recruited him before he chose D2 Newberry.
When Cole got into the NCAA transfer portal, leaving Lynchburg, Slade was then head coach at Johnson & Wales in uptown Charlotte.
The coach and player quickly found their bond again. Cole committed in the spring of 2025; he would live at home and drive to school.
“I think God puts people in different positions in different timeframes of life,” Slade said. “When everything happened with his brother, I had heard about it through the grapevine and once he entered the portal, the communication lines opened up a little bit. Cole had some other opportunities further away, but the main goal was being closer to family. So for me it was no-brainer. Once you hear the story and get to the know the kid and family, it’s an easy fit.”
Part of that fit, for Slade, was convincing the Callaways that Johnson & Wales was the school for Cole.
From 1914-now, and about that atmosphere
Johnson & Wales was founded in 1914 by Mary Wales and Gertrude Johnson. It started as a business school in Providence, Rhode Island.
In 1947, as they were aging, Wales and Johnson sold the school, which had 100 students, to Navy buddies and partners Edward Triangeo and Morris Gaebe. Triangeo and Gaebe quickly grew the school and expanded its offerings.
Enrollment jumped from 141 in 1973 to 3,000 in 1983. The school officially became Johnson & Wales University in 1988. It was known for a culinary program that, when introduced, was initially met with skepticism by the JWU board of directors.
In 2004, the Charlotte campus was opened in uptown Charlotte. Today, the school offers nearly a full-suite of sports , including men’s and women’s basketball playing in an impressive sports facility. Trudi Lacey — a N.C. Sports Hall of Famer and former N.C. State and WNBA star — is the school’s athletic director.
“You can feel the atmosphere around campus, of how exciting things are, especially with us being in the heart of uptown Charlotte,” Slade said. “It’s just been a joy to come to work here every day and be around people that care about the right things for us as a program.”
It’s not just ‘The Cooking School’
Slade, 36, who grew up in Winston-Salem, got his first head coaching job at Johnson & Wales three years ago. Before coming to Charlotte, Slade was an assistant at Guilford, Randolph College, Emory & Henry and Roanoke College from 2016-22.
Now, he’s guiding a team that’s had three 20-win seasons in the past 16 years but also three seasons with single digit wins.
JWU moved up to NCAA Division III this season, leaving the United States Collegiate Athletic Association, where the school had won the last two Director’s Cup titles for overall athletic excellence.
The Wildcats are 4-17 this season, playing a much tougher schedule than in years past, but have won two of their past three games, including Saturday’s 99-69 win over Regent College, when Cole led the team with 17 points and six rebounds.
A few games before that, Cole had a career-high 26 points against Brevard.
“This is our first year in Division III, so we’re trying to find our footing,” said Slade, who played college ball at Division III Methodist University in Fayetteville. “But people understand D3. It’s more recognizable. I had a blast playing Division III. I met so many good people. I’ve learned so many life lessons.”
Slade has a young roster — with just one senior and one junior — and potential star in Cole, who is one of four players averaging double figures.
“Even me, being from North Carolina, I didn’t know much about the school,” Slade said. “I thought it was a cooking school. But when I left my interview, I told my wife, ‘That school is literally a hidden gem.’ We’re growing and I want to grow the basketball team, too.”
Taking the next steps and building a winner
Cole said that coming home, and being embraced by the JWU family, has helped him deal with the loss of his brother — and to piece his life and career back together.
He wants to be the star — and the bridge-builder — that helps JWU establish itself as a bona fide basketball brand in Charlotte.
“The distance from home, just being able to live at home my family,” Cole said, “it makes such a difference, especially after a tough year at Lynchburg.”
Cole talks happily about the future at the school, about helping to introduce more new recruits to a campus they may have never heard of or considered.
“I started off slow,” he said, “but I’m getting my groove more and more and making more friends. And I was definitely surprised by this school. I didn’t know much about Johnston & Wales growing up, but it’s really nice.”
Slade said he’s “just in awe” of Cole’s journey and how he’s handled so much adversity at such a young age.
“It’s been quite a journey,” Slade said, “and there’s no perfect way to handle this as a coach. You just try to be there for the kid as much as possible, even if it’s just pulling him aside and trying to give him some confidence. He’s trying to fit into a new situation, too.
“It’s like, ‘Hey man, I know it’s an unfortunate situation that brought you here, but it could be a blessing that you’re finding 14 new brothers.’ ”
This story was originally published February 9, 2026 at 5:30 AM.
