Tom Shields figured he never would get married.
He had had a few close scrapes with matrimony as a young man, but like some post player on a pick-and-roll, he always had slipped away unencumbered. Now, in his 50s, he had all but accepted that basketball would remain his only bride, that the high points of his resume would remain the Class A state title he helped win in 1985 as coach at Providence-St. Mel and the 1993 runner-up finish he helped produce at Hales Franciscan.
There always had been a somewhat unexpected quality to his coaching career, though, so perhaps what happened next wasn’t as crazy as it sounds.
What happened next was a cyber-romance spanning 7,000 miles, almost that many miles of red tape and a marriage that made him not only a husband but also an instant father that ensured his Mother’s Days never would be the same.
“I thought marriage had passed me by,” he said Thursday, still a bit dazed by it all. Shields, who was named College of Lake County’s basketball coach last month, was sitting with his wife, Yi Su, and his daughter Yi Yi Su, in his mother Bernadette’s home.
Shields must not have given up every shred of matrimonial hope because he was surfing through a singles Web site in February 2004 when he discovered Yi Su’s profile. Her husband had died in 2000 and Yi Su, who lived in Beijing, had decided only recently to seek a new relationship.
They quickly found they could discuss almost anything with one another and fell into a daily routine of hours-long instant-messaging sessions. That went on for two months, until Shields disappeared.
After a week of no messages and no responses to her messages, a despondent Yi Su, whom we’ll call by her nickname, Li, sent Shields a letter.
“I wrote, ‘I just feel I’m falling in love with you, but why you disappeared?’ ” she said. “‘If you feel we not right for each other just tell me the truth. Maybe we can still be friends.’ “
The truth was, Shields was falling himself and was frightened to death of it.
“Cold feet,” he said. “The whole thing about marriage … I was scared.”
Li’s letter warmed his feet and his heart, and the relationship resumed at warp speed.
“I encouraged him to keep going,” she said. “I didn’t want to lose him.”
“She wouldn’t let me off the hook,” Shields added, laughing.
They decided to meet in person and that August spent 12 days together at a Mexican resort. After initial shyness the romance blossomed, and by the time they parted marriage was a foregone conclusion.
Now they just had to convince the U.S. government.
In 2003 the Department of Homeland Security had become responsible for immigration-related services and Shields hired a lawyer to steer him through a process that generated endless forms and would cost about $10,000.
In August 2005 it seemed it all might be for naught when a U.S. official in China at first denied visas for Li and her daughter, whom we will call by her family nickname, 11. (Yi Yi means one, one in Chinese.)
Li was missing one form, but then the official saw a stack of all those instant messages and approved the visas after all.
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Li and 11 arrived that Sept. 18, two days before 11 would turn 16. Tom and Li were married in a judge’s office six months later. He was 57; she was 43.
“I was terrified it wouldn’t work out,” Shields said of the immigration process. “I had to be with her.”
The trip was tinged with sadness for Li, whose mother and two siblings live in Beijing and who was a manager for a chemical factory there.
“But if this is real love and I can be happy my entire life, it is worth it,” she said.
Li helped Shields get through a rough stretch of his own life. His many stops through a long coaching career gave him a reputation as a job-hopper, but he believed he had found his dream job in 2003 at York, only to be devastated two years later when his contract wasn’t renewed.
Shields now teaches driver education at Waukegan, a job he will combine with his coaching position at College of Lake County. Li works as a nanny for a Chicago couple who adopted an infant from China, and she is writing a book that uses her own method to teach people Chinese.
Their daughter, a sophomore at Ridgewood, has a part-time job in a restaurant and ambitions to work in the music industry. Shields initially was skeptical about being a dad, but he and 11 have formed a loving relationship.
“I was lucky I had the opportunity to come here,” 11 said.
Both women, especially Li, still are adjusting to American life. Li is amazed by how we live so much of our lives “in a box,” as opposed to the Chinese, who love to eat and socialize in front of their homes.
Li also can’t quite understand why Shields still dislikes Chinese food. Both, however, seem determined not to sweat the small stuff.
“If you love each other, it’s easy to deal with other things,” she said. “I want to take care of him. I think no matter what race or country you are from, family is the basic unit.”
That attitude helped win over Shields’ mother, who was skeptical about the relationship at first.
“They’re very, very good for one another, very good,” Bernadette Shields said. “They think alike, which helps in a marriage.”
For Shields, finally being married helps.
“Just to know that when you go home someone loves you, cares about you, makes all the difference,” he said.
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