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Pain, pride and purpose

There came a point when former NFL quarterback Bob Griese and future NFL quarterback Brian Griese only had each other. And that turned out to be enough.

By GARY SHELTON
Published June 19, 2005

Thanks, says the son.

Thanks for the morning eggs, even though they ran faster than the legs he inherited from his dad. Thanks for the afternoons at the cemetery, and the way the tears freely streamed down the faces of a father and a son. In those moments when it felt the world would collapse, thanks for insisting that a young man stand upright.

Thanks, says the father.

Thanks for providing a purpose in a time of pain. Thanks for sacrificing the times with your friends so you could share the silence. At a time when he felt like retreating further inside himself, thanks for pulling him back into the light.

For Brian Griese, son, today is a day to be proud of his father.

For Bob Griese, father, today is a day to be proud right back.

They walk in the same footsteps, Brian and Bob. They share the same profession, the same position, the same personality. Brian is in his first full season as the starting quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers; Bob was a Hall of Fame quarterback for the Miami Dolphins. They play the same, they sound the same, they act the same.

For much of their lives, they have shared the same heartache.

Her name was Judi, and she loved them both. When she died, on the day before Valentine's Day in 1988, it left a hole in a husband and a son that neither felt would ever be filled. It was only by leaning against each other that either man endured.

"Without him, I wouldn't have been able to make it through," said Brian, now 29. "Point-blank, I would not be here. God knows where I would be."

"If he hadn't have been there, I would have been alone," said Bob, now 60. "I might have retreated into myself again. There would have been no one to help with the grief."

This is their story, Brian and Bob's. For all the success, for all the victories, it was overcoming loss that shaped them both into the men they are. When they had no one else, they had each other. When the world made no sense, they figured out what they could together.

Despite their public professions, Brian and Bob are private men by nature. They talk little and reveal less. Even teammates have described both of them as distant, withdrawn, impenetrable.

This week, however, both men talked about their relationship, about their scars and about their survival. Most of all, they talked about each other.

Brian was 12 when breast cancer returned to his mother. For five years, the disease had been in remission, but when it returned, it was cruel and quick. Suddenly, the former quarterback was a single parent; the future quarterback was an enraged youngster.

"I remember being angry," Brian said. "I was angry at society for not being able to cure cancer, at God for taking somebody who was so good to so many people and, most dangerously, I was mad at myself for not being a better son. I didn't have a chance to fix things, to go back to the times when I upset my mom.

"It got to the point where I would go to class, and they would want me to take a history test, and I'd say, "You know, I don't care about your history test. I'm going through something that none of you can understand. I want someone to answer some questions for me. Why did this happen? Who is going to take care of us now?' "

For Bob, eight years removed from his playing days, there was an aching familiarity to the loss. When he was 10, his father had died of a heart attack. Afterward, Bob became quiet, guarded. There was no one to talk to, so much of the time, he didn't talk.

"He found out very early in life, like me, that there are going to be some (bad) things that happen to you in life," Brian said. "In those times, who are you going to depend on? He learned to depend on himself."

Overnight, it seemed, the Griese home had gotten larger and lonelier. Both Scott and Jeff, Brian's older brothers, were away at college. There was just Bob and Brian and the emptiness.

"My dad and I sat across the table and just looked at each other," Brian said. "You know how everyone brings you casseroles at a time like that? When the casseroles ran out, we didn't know what we were going to eat. So we just went out every night."

There were mornings Brian didn't want to get out of bed; Bob would coax him onto the basketball court. There were moments Bob would grow quiet and stare at a TV screen without watching; Brian would get out the baseball gloves.

"We had to learn to depend on each other," Brian said. "I had lost my mother, and he had lost his wife and best friend."

At the worst of times, the two would retreat to Our Lady of Grace cemetery in Miami. They would sit around Judi's grave, talking to her, talking about her, feeling her presence.

"When I look back on it, he made it okay for me to cry," Brian said. "We were a family of football players. We were guys. There wasn't much crying going on in our house. But he knew I needed to cry. And by him crying, it made it okay for me to cry. That was invaluable for me. I'll never forget that."

As Brian became a teenager, there were nights he was invited out with his friends. Most of the time, he said no.

"I would want to go," Brian said, "but I would think about my dad sitting there, watching TV with no one to talk to. I'd think, "Why I don't I stay home tonight?' He was there for me, and I was going to be there for him."

Then there were the eggs. Bring up the eggs, and both men start to laugh.

Together, Bob and Judi had vowed that their children would not be brought up by nannies. On his own, Bob was determined that he would make Brian's breakfast each day. He mapped it out like a football coach, scheduling a meal each day and when, within seconds, it was to be served.

"I give him a lot of heat for that," Brian said, grinning. "But actually, he got to be pretty good. At first, it was a little scary. He started off making scrambled eggs, which are easy. But then he got fancy, and he tried to make sunny-side up. The eggs were running all over the plate."

"He may have had one runny egg in his life," Bob says.

"Did he tell how he used to time his eggs so they would be hot when I came out?" Brian said, rolling his eyes as if to suggest the story is overblown.

"The hell it's overblown," Bob said. "If he had to leave at 7:30, he would be walking out at 7:29 and a half. I would wake him up at 7, and he would only get out of bed at 7:20. So the food had to be ready at 7:21, 7:22."

When men cry together, eventually they learn to laugh, too. The verbal sparring, the constant needle, is a major part of the Bob and Brian relationship. At times, they seem more like old roommates than father and son. Bob used to tease Brian that he would never be the quarterback his old man was. Brian gives Bob grief about the day, as an announcer, Bob suggested on the air that Ohio State would be better off to blitz Brian more often. Bob says he was much, much faster than Brian? Brian wonders: If Bob had so much speed, why is the only Super Bowl record he has left the one for most yardage lost in a single sack?

Then there was the phone call, back in 1990. Bob was out of town, so Brian answered the phone. It was the Pro Football Hall of Fame. After five misses, Bob had finally been voted in.

That night, however, when his father called home, Brian told him he had some news.

"Sorry," Brian said. "You didn't make it, but they think you will in the next couple of years."

"That's what I was expecting," Bob said.

Throughout the phone call, Brian never let on he was kidding. The next day, when Bob arrived home, there was a surprise party waiting. Bob was pleased he had made the Hall. Brian was pleased he had pulled off the joke.

"I knew something was up," Bob said. "I had a lot of messages to call a lot of people. The years I didn't make it, no one called. But I decided to let Brian have his fun."

Bob would have his, too. That summer, during his induction speech, Bob told the story of how his youngest son had teased him for years that the only way he would reach the Hall of Fame would be to visit his trademark eyeglasses, which were on display in an exhibit honoring the unbeaten '72 Dolphins.

"In your face, Brian," Bob said to a national audience.

"You should have seen the look on his face," Bob said. "Not only was he embarrassed, he knew the timing was right."

Brian remembers his emotions differently.

"I was laughing, but I was crying, too." Brian said. "It was only two years after my mom had died, and it was kind of a culmination of everything we went through."

For Brian, the healing continues. Even now, the scars have not completely gone.

"I still struggle with it," he said. "I wish I was a different person today. I wish I had a different personality. I wish I wasn't so introverted and so reserved and so shy. I have struggled in a lot of situations in my life because of it. If I had had my mother, maybe I wouldn't be that way. But I had to find a way to get through it, and that was part of the way I got through.

"I struggle with religion. I haven't been able to answer a lot of questions about why things happen the way they do. I'm not a person who believes in things blindly. It isn't in my nature."

In dealing with his own grief, Brian has found comfort in dealing with that of others. He is passionate about his work with Judi's House, the foundation based in Denver that he started to help children who have lost parents. Brian talks about the children he has met, and their stories, and his voice quivers.

"My buttons are busting off my shirt," said Bob, who has remarried. "I'm more proud of him for his work there than anything he's ever done."

Brian feels the same. And if he could deliver a message to Bob on Father's Day, he said, it would be this:

"The last 15 years or so, this hasn't been as much a typical father-son relationship as it has been a friendship," Brian said. "I would tell him how much I value his friendship. He's been my best friend my entire life, and he always will be."

Soon, perhaps there will be another element to the relationship. Brian is married now, to Brook, and he says he is eager to be a father, eager to pass along Judi's compassion and Bob's competitiveness.

Who knows? Maybe he'll make some eggs, too.

"He's going to be a great father," Bob said.

"I hope I'm half the father my father was," Brian said.

[Last modified June 19, 2005, 00:44:23]