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'I feel like I've done something'

An injury cost Ed Chester time in the NFL, but working with kids feels right to him now.

[Times photo: Daniel Wallace] Eight-year-old Lane Tolbert goofs with Ed Chester, in the former Gator lineman's cramped office at the Boys & Girls Club. "He has such a presence," club CEO Keith Blanchard says of the man kids call "Mr. Ed."

By BRANT JAMES, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 7, 2002

GAINESVILLE -- Ed Chester is free.

Free from worry. Free from the daily ordeal of trying to make his damaged right leg do what it used to do.

A bit ahead of schedule, he's free from football. As the former Florida Gators defensive tackle unfurls from an old office chair, his broad smile brightens his corner of this musty office in this sweaty building. There's no air conditioning in most of the Northwest Unit of the Alachua County Boys & Girls Club. Hot morning air blows through the open front door and swirls the grit in the lobby.

It's not a glamorous place. But it's an important place, the place where Chester, 26, found the contentment and joy football stopped providing even before a major knee and nerve injury effectively ended his career nearly four years ago.

Originally hired as a football coach in 1999, Chester immediately gravitated toward counseling, and leaped at the chance to fill a new position as teen director about nine months later.

"To see a child that you happen to speak to one day, come back the next day and work on that attitude, it's little things like that that I dealt with that helped change my mind and made me want to do this," he said. "When I leave here at night I feel like I've done something."

Kids come to the Boys & Girls club in search of something: love, guidance, understanding. Most often at Chester's branch off 51st Street, they come from lower-income families.

The brown and white faces that stare up at Chester call him "Mr. Ed" and amuse themselves by draping off his large frame. But it's the teens with whom Chester most enjoys working. Getting through to them is often a more subtle venture. Breakthroughs happen in a weight room, on a basketball court, over a soda, and they don't always happen on the clock.

[Times photo: Daniel Wallace] Kids at the Boys & Girls Club in Gainesville inspect the scar on Ed Chester's right leg, a result of his 1998 injury while playing football at UF.

"They know we spend a lot of time here when we don't have to," Chester said. "And while they don't always show it, they do appreciate it.

"They know we do care for them and that we will do a lot of stuff for them. That's a big deal to them being here three or four hours after we should go home."

Chester is single and has no children, but has developed an affinity for kids that continues a family tradition. His father and namesake is an assistant principal at Springstead High in Spring Hill, his mother is a teacher and one of his sisters taught for a while.

"You should see him with the kids," Chester Sr. said. "I tell him he should get into coaching one day, but right now he doesn't want much to do with it."

Northwest Boys & Girls Club CEO Keith Blanchard marvels at Chester's magnetism with the kids.

"He has such a presence, and that has something to do with his size," he said. "But for all that he's very soft-spoken.

"And the kids know when they've disappointed him. He doesn't say anything, but he shakes his head and they're just crushed. They'll do anything to get back in his good graces."

Being a former Gator in Gainesville has its advantages. There's usually some autographed memorabilia to be had in a Northwest branch auction. But Chester's past doesn't come up often.

"He never talks about football," Blanchard said. "All I know about it I heard from the kids and the other staff."

Chester understood football's place in his life at an early age. The son of Springstead's first coach, he became one of the state's most sought-after players his senior year.

When Chester became a preseason All-American, All-SEC selection and one of 12 semifinalists for the Lombardi Award, recognizing the nation's top defensive lineman, he knew that the NFL would be his meal ticket, and his natural resources management degree an outlet for his passion for the outdoors.

Four years ago, the plan was thus: "I was looking at where I would go in the (NFL draft) and looking at how short a time I had to be in there so I could get out and do something else."

The grand plan was to build a zoo somewhere with friend and engineer John Lake, buy a boat on which he could out-fish his dad, and get out still able to hike in the woods. Maybe even live that dream to be a game warden.

Brooksville banker Jim Kimbrough was among the first to suggest to Chester he take out a $1-million insurance policy before his senior season. Gators defensive line coach Rod Broadway was so furious when he learned Chester was dawdling on paying the $8,000 premium he all but signed Chester's name on the policy himself.

On Oct. 10, 1998, on the first play of the No. 6 Gators' 22-10 win against No. 11 LSU, it came due.

It's too morbid to infer that Chester was relieved that he had just torn virtually every tendon in his right knee, sustained nerve damage and dislocated his knee cap. But as shock turned to realization that his career likely was over, Chester knew he was free.

"Laying there on that field, I knew it was probably over," Chester said. "I had told several people: Going to the NFL was more a financial decision than a love for the game. Football got me in college. I love it, but I didn't love it that much.

"When I was injured, my best friend, (former Gators offensive lineman) Deac (Story) came in the room that night and while everybody was there sulking he said, 'You got the insurance, right?' I said, 'Yeah.' He said, 'Then you got nothing to worry about. You should be happy.' We both started laughing, and from that point forward ... I felt good."

Knowing he was about to receive a "stupid amount of money," Chester set aside enough for a few extravagances -- his Chevy Tahoe truck, a new house in Gainesville, 19-foot fishing boat, and some goodies for his parents. He invested the rest, knowing his rehabilitation would never get him back on a football field.

"The stock market beat me up a little bit, but it's put away," he said. "Unless I do something really stupid, I can live off it for the next 30 or 40 years, no problem."

That makes a $24,000 job at the Boys & Girls Club more feasible, though sometimes he thinks he might be stealing their money.

"I wish I got paid more," he said, leaning back in his chair. "But to be honest, for what I do and for what I get paid, I'm still very lucky."

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