| Author | Message | ||
     Gerardryan |
My mother just emailed me this URL about my dad, and I thought I'd post it: http://www.silive.com/sports/advance/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/opinion/9997812007412.xml | ||
| Amandacat |
That is an awesome story. Just the other day, my husband was lamenting the fact that he's not a professional football player, not for the fame but for the love of the sport, and he hasn't played organized ball since high school. I'm sure your father's life will sound like a dream to him. So what was it like being raised by a Real Football Guy? | ||
| Wendy |
Great article. Thanks Gerry. And I don't consider myself that much of a football fan. But give me a good article about any sports and I'm there. | ||
| Gerardryan |
Well, he doesn't really talk about it much, like the article says. If he did, I think my dad would describe himself as a teacher more than anything else, to tell you the truth. The funny thing is, as the first child mentioned in the article, I never knew him when he was a pro; he was always a schoolteacher and a coach, with these old clippings and programs that we could look at. We tease my father that he has appeared nude in Sports Illustrated: when he was a Titan, Sports Illustrated had a picture of him and two other players in the shower (waist up, of course!) and we had that picture. My father says that he was the inspiration for the Swimsuit issue. I guess like a lot of us, I don't think I had any real perspective on my father until I was an adult. It still amazes me that when he left football to become a teacher the money was better in teaching... and his story about taking the bus with the Army football team, sitting with Rosie Grier and watching Rosie knit and cope with Jim Crow is still compelling. Most of all I'm impressed by how "non-jocklike" our upbringing was, if you know what I mean. You might think that there'd be some stereotypical sports emphasis in our lives, but that really wasn't so. We all played sports, but we all did lots of other things too... we all got to play what we wanted to play :-) We all seem to have turned out well grounded and well rounded... and I admire him as much for that as for anything else he's done. |
