It is the women in our lives who allow us to chase our silly dreams. They pick us up, dust us off and make sure our wings are ready for the next day. They always leave a light on.

For 51 years, Norma Mae was there. Women are like that. It's another gift they give us. She was there at 4 in the morning, kitchen light burning a hole in the pre-dawn, making breakfast for 125 kids at Charlie's basketball camp. A few years ago, Bob Huggins paused to ponder the number of meals his mother, Norma Mae Huggins, cooked for those campers.

Let's see: Thirty-two years of basketball camp, eight weeks a year, three meals a day. "Millions and millions," Bob figured.

Norma was there for carpool and discipline and reading books. She cleaned the house every day. She ran the world while Charlie Huggins was off being a locally famous high school coach.

"My dad always had a hot meal waiting when he got home," Bob recalled. So did all seven children. "I had a hot breakfast every day until I left for college," Bob Huggins said. "My mother did everything. I don't know where she got the time."

Engrave that on any thank-you message to the women in your life. And this: "My mom was always there for me. It didn't matter what it was," Bob said.

She died Saturday, quietly, the way she'd have liked. Sixty-eight-year-old Norma Mae Huggins spent a lifetime making a fuss over others. The last thing she wanted was a fuss in return. There were no elaborate goodbyes. "If my mom had had calling hours, there would have been people who'd never have gotten in," Bob Huggins said.

It was the camp, Huggins said: "It was a constant parade of people that were touched by that camp, that got to know my mother. She had such an extended family."

Norma's family bloomed and grew for 32 summers. Her cardiologist at Altman Hospital in Canton, Ohio, had been one of Charlie's campers. To some kids, Norma would be the first person they saw in the morning and the last they saw at night. Norma would work the concession stand until 10:30 p.m. "Then she'd relax a little bit, go to bed and do it all over again the next day," Bob said.

We've written in this space about Charlie Huggins, the irascible, driven high school coaching legend. But never about Norma Mae, the quiet engine behind the machine. We've come to learn too late about the creation of Bob Huggins' considerable work ethic.

"My dad bought that camp on a teacher's salary with seven kids. He couldn't hire help. He put in unbelievable hours to make it go. But he couldn't have done it without my mom," Bob said. (And Bob's four sisters.) "I remember her being sick, but I don't remember her taking a day off."

Then Bob Huggins said this: "My dad never had an issue at home." Charlie was free to live his ambitions. Norma did the rest. We men don't always remember how good we have it, thanks to the women who love us. We should do it more, before we no longer are able.

Charlie Huggins sold his basketball camp two summers ago, to Bob's brothers. Norma got a break from cooking. "They actually started going places and doing things," Bob said. They went on a real vacation for the first time in their married lives, to the Smoky Mountains. "Absolutely loved it," Bob said.

Small blessings can be ironic and even cruel. Bob Huggins never got much one-on-one time with his mother. That's how it goes with seven kids and working summers that danced to the beat of a ball. "She was always cooking and cleaning and doing for other people," Huggins said.

Only then, at the end, she wasn't. The bouncing ball had slowed enough that her kids could catch up with her. "We had a lot of good time toward the end," said Bob.

Norma Mae Huggins died Saturday, on her 51st wedding anniversary. Charlie's building a memorial to her at the basketball camp, just down the hill from their house.

E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com