John Ed Bradley's Speech
Charlie Mac Reunion
November 22, 2002
ONE DAY LAST YEAR I was watching TV in a hotel room in New York, flipping through the
Charlie Mac Reunion
November 22, 2002
ONE DAY LAST YEAR I was watching TV in a hotel room in New York, flipping through the
channels with the remote control, when I came to an image that immediately brought me
out of bed and to my feet.
out of bed and to my feet.
An old man was being honored at a football game. He sat in a wheelchair, too weakened
by cancer to walk. Surrounding him was a cluster of middle-aged men wearing somber
expressions. The old man in the chair, Charles McClendon, had been a football coach
by cancer to walk. Surrounding him was a cluster of middle-aged men wearing somber
expressions. The old man in the chair, Charles McClendon, had been a football coach
once. Facing death, he was returning now for a final visit to the stadium where he had
built his legend. The men were the boys who'd played for him years before.
The scene was so poignant, and so heart-breaking, that I could hardly bear to watch it.
I turned off the set and threw the remote against a chair. I stumbled into the bathroom
and splashed water on my face. Finally I left the room and the hotel and went for a
walk. I walked for hours, up and down the streets of Manhattan.
The next day I joined one of my editors for lunch. I was still so preoccupied with the
image of Coach Mac and his former players - many of them my former teammates - that I
couldn't eat let alone speak. At the end of the meal my editor said, "John Ed, whatever
it is, you should write it."
"Write what?" I asked him.
"Write about what's troubling you. Ernest Hemingway said when he wrote about things he
got rid of them. Write what's on your mind and be done with it."
Done with it? I wondered. How will I ever be done with it? How will any of us who
played for Coach Mac at LSU ever be done with it?
The weight of memory is huge and often hard to bear, especially for those who live with
regret. Until recently I was one such person. For some twenty-two years, since the end
of my senior season in 1979, I had made a quite sizable effort to stay clear of LSU. I
avoided my teammates and coaches. I avoided Tiger Stadium. I even avoided traveling to
Baton Rouge, not wishing to be reminded. One might've thought that my experience as a
football player had been a terrible one, when in fact it was so good and so meaningful
to me that most every other experience that came my way was diminished because of it.
When my days as a player ended, I convinced myself that the pain of having lost
football would be greater if I kept reaching back and trying to embrace it again. I
didn't want to be a man who lived in the past, and who, though old and gray, bored
people with stories about a college athletic career that no one else remembered. This
in mind, I walked from the life around which my entire identity had been built,
determined not to look back.
As time went on and I grew increasingly estranged from my school and friends, I felt a
profound sense of loss. I also felt guilty and ashamed, and I knew that I'd made a
mistake. But how does one correct such a mistake? I was too proud to pick up the phone
and call a teammate. What would I say after two decades? Would I have to reintroduce
myself? "My jersey number was 56," I imagined myself saying. "My hometown was
Opelousas. I dated a cheerleader for a while and then a Golden Girl. In Broussard Hall
I was always in my room typing on that old manual typewriter, keeping everybody awake."
I began to doubt that the guys would even remember me. I hadn't been the most
compelling personality on the team, nor had I been the best player, and maybe time had
rendered me invisible. For three years my roommate had been John Adams, defensive end
from Deridder. John was as good a friend as a guy could have. I stood in his wedding
after our junior year. Before tonight I hadn't seen John in 22 years. I didn't call him
to express my condolences when his father died. John and his wife Linda had a child. I
missed out on that too. Nor have I seen or talked to Eddie Stanton, my roommate in
1979. Big Ed and I carried Coach Mac on our shoulders at the end of our game with Wake
Forest in the Tangerine Bowl. It was Coach Mac's last game and it was our last game. It
also was the end of a great friendship, because Ed and I both ran for the hills. We
haven't communicated since then.
How does this happen? Perhaps it has happened to some of you. I was as close to John
Adams and Eddie Stanton as I was to my own brothers, and yet when it was over for me at
LSU, it was over for me with them too.
There were days when I felt as if I shared company with a ghost, and the ghost was me.
Or, rather, the ghost was the young man I'd been when I played football at LSU. He took
up residence in my heart and he wouldn't go away, no matter how hard I willed him to
leave me alone. He constantly reminded me that I could deny the past but never escape
it. If I refused to remember, he would remember for me.
The truth is, I've had more success as a writer than I ever did as a football player.
I've won awards, I make a good living, and I've traveled extensively in this country
and in Europe. And yet, despite the success, I have lived with a feeling in my gut that
my best days are behind me. I landed a top staff job with the Washington Post and saw
my by-line printed in the pages of the country's best magazines. That was pretty good,
but it wasn't as good as running through the goalposts at Tiger Stadium on a Saturday
night. I had novels published, one of them a bestseller. It was thrilling, but
listening to the LSU fight song from inside Tiger Den right before kickoff was more
thrilling. My books were translated into Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian and Japanese.
Nice, but not equal to the game with USC my senior year. I cut deals in Hollywood, went
to dinners and parties with famous actors. Exciting, all right, but it paled in
comparison to wearing the purple and gold.
What was wrong with me? I wondered. I could be in New York or Los Angeles, covering an
event of national importance, or in London or Paris, promoting a book, and I would
flash to pictures that I'd meant to put away forever.
I saw the eyes of my teammates past their facemasks. It was Saturday morning in the
spring and we were scrimmaging in an empty stadium. I could smell the churned-up grass
and the sour stench of beer in the sweat of my teammates: they'd been to sorority
parties the night before. I could hear the shouts and the whistles and the noise of
human contact, bodies being slammed against each other. Or I would flash to my
teammates congregated in the dining room at Broussard Hall, on a Friday night before a
game. We have just returned from a movie and we're having sandwiches and ice cream, a
last quiet meal before bed. Coach Mac steps between the tables calmly reminding us what
to expect tomorrow. "We win as a team," he says, "but one of you might be the
difference. Will it be you?" And now he singles out someone with a pointed finger. "Or
will it be you?" And now he indicates another.
I've had great editors over the years, but I never loved them the way I loved my
coaches at LSU. Take Dave McCarty, for instance. I still miss being able to look into
his eyes and say, "Can I talk to you for a minute, Coach?" I miss knowing that he will
say, "Sure, John Ed, what's on your mind?" and then give whatever I have to say more
attention and respect than it deserves. "Can I talk to you for a minute, Coach?" And
know that by his counsel everything will be made right again.
After that day in New York last year, when I saw TV coverage of Coach Mac being honored
at Tiger Stadium, I decided I would live with awful, searing regret for the rest of
life unless I arranged to see him again. My visit to Coach Mac was purely a selfish
gesture on my part. He certainly had more important concerns than sitting with me and
tending to my guilty conscience. I wanted his time, and time was the thing he had the
least of to give. He agreed to see me anyway.
Dorothy Faye answered the door. I have never known a finer lady. She gave me a hug and
led me to him. Women understand things; their capacity for compassion astounds me. I'm
sure Dorothy Faye's compassion astounded Coach Mac, too. I sat in a chair next to his
bed and he reached for my hand. I hadn't been his favorite player, I hadn't been a
member of any of his great, championship teams, I hadn't built on his legacy by going
on to play in the NFL. I wondered if I even registered in the big, heroic sweep of his
life. And yet, even as he lay dying, struggling to hang on, he made me feel as though I
was the most important player he'd ever coached.
When you have nothing of the present to talk about, you retreat to the old days. And
that was we did. We remembered games and players. His hand was big and soft and warm in
mine. I wasn't there long. As I got up to leave I began to cry. I cried for all that
was lost and gone forever - for the time only yesterday when I was a kid and he was my
coach, for the teammates I once adored but hadn't seen or talked to in what seemed like
forever, for the end of things that we can never have again. "Always remember I'm with
you," he said. "I'm with all you boys."
Coach Mac personified a time when an athlete's character was as important as his
ability, and when making your school, your state and your family proud meant
everything. I talked myself out of attending his memorial service - for the same selfish
reasons. When my editor in New York learned about his death he called me in New Orleans
and asked if I was ready to write the story yet. "What story?" I said.
"You know what story," he answered.
It was a stupid idea, I told him. No one could possibly feel the same way about having
lost football as I did. I would only embarrass myself. "They'll relate," he said. "We
all lose something that sticks around and haunts us forever. Write it," he went on.
"Write it and get rid of it."
And so, shortly thereafter, I ventured to call Marty Dufrene at his home in Larose.
Marty and I had been teammates at LSU, but I'd lost track of him as I had everyone
else. I told him I wanted to write about him. I was afraid he'd tell me to go to hell,
but instead an amazing thing happened: Marty invited me over. He said he couldn't wait
to see me again. He and his wife Lynne would cook dinner. I could spend the night if I
wanted to. He was so kind to me, and so generous and understanding, that I found it
almost difficult to speak. By my years of silence I felt as if I'd betrayed this man
and others, and yet he seemed ready to have me move into his house forever if that's
what I wanted. I also got the feeling he would've given me every dime in his bank
account had I asked for it.
I'd like to acknowledge Marty now and thank him. When we were in school I admired
Marty and thought well of him as a football player, but we were both centers, competing
for the same job, and in the spring of 1979 he was brash and cocky enough to tell me
that he was going to beat me out for the starting position. I told him to keep
dreaming. Marty said he would. It was impossible not to like him. He kept a hot plate
in his dorm room and whenever you walked by his door there was always the smell of
Cajun food cooking.
After I left LSU I assumed Marty would take over as the starting center, but a
confluence of unfortunate events prevented that from happening. He suffered several
injuries that kept him off the field, and finally he subjugated his ego and desires and
finished up his stint in the program as a student trainer. Then in 1986 Marty was
paralyzed in a freak swimming pool accident. He's been in a wheelchair for a long time,
but once you talk to Marty for only a few minutes the chair seems to vanish. When that
happens you see the strength of one man's will against forces that would keep him down.
When I went to see Marty earlier this year it was as if no time had passed. We simply
picked up where we'd left off - not kidding each other about who should start, but
remembering how lucky we were to have had the chance to play for Coach Mac. Marty
taught me that no matter where life takes us or how much it beats us up or how many
years slip off the calendar, we are teammates and we'll always be teammates. His
courage is an inspiration, and where I have lapsed into self-pity and woeful
introspection Marty has never stopped being attentive to the friends he made while
playing football at LSU. Marty kept going back to the games, even when it meant going
to them in his chair and facing the reality that the golden boy from Lafourche Parish
who once played for the Tigers was now a quadriplegic. In my Sports Illustrated story I
quoted Marty speaking words that still choke me up when I think about them.
built his legend. The men were the boys who'd played for him years before.
The scene was so poignant, and so heart-breaking, that I could hardly bear to watch it.
I turned off the set and threw the remote against a chair. I stumbled into the bathroom
and splashed water on my face. Finally I left the room and the hotel and went for a
walk. I walked for hours, up and down the streets of Manhattan.
The next day I joined one of my editors for lunch. I was still so preoccupied with the
image of Coach Mac and his former players - many of them my former teammates - that I
couldn't eat let alone speak. At the end of the meal my editor said, "John Ed, whatever
it is, you should write it."
"Write what?" I asked him.
"Write about what's troubling you. Ernest Hemingway said when he wrote about things he
got rid of them. Write what's on your mind and be done with it."
Done with it? I wondered. How will I ever be done with it? How will any of us who
played for Coach Mac at LSU ever be done with it?
The weight of memory is huge and often hard to bear, especially for those who live with
regret. Until recently I was one such person. For some twenty-two years, since the end
of my senior season in 1979, I had made a quite sizable effort to stay clear of LSU. I
avoided my teammates and coaches. I avoided Tiger Stadium. I even avoided traveling to
Baton Rouge, not wishing to be reminded. One might've thought that my experience as a
football player had been a terrible one, when in fact it was so good and so meaningful
to me that most every other experience that came my way was diminished because of it.
When my days as a player ended, I convinced myself that the pain of having lost
football would be greater if I kept reaching back and trying to embrace it again. I
didn't want to be a man who lived in the past, and who, though old and gray, bored
people with stories about a college athletic career that no one else remembered. This
in mind, I walked from the life around which my entire identity had been built,
determined not to look back.
As time went on and I grew increasingly estranged from my school and friends, I felt a
profound sense of loss. I also felt guilty and ashamed, and I knew that I'd made a
mistake. But how does one correct such a mistake? I was too proud to pick up the phone
and call a teammate. What would I say after two decades? Would I have to reintroduce
myself? "My jersey number was 56," I imagined myself saying. "My hometown was
Opelousas. I dated a cheerleader for a while and then a Golden Girl. In Broussard Hall
I was always in my room typing on that old manual typewriter, keeping everybody awake."
I began to doubt that the guys would even remember me. I hadn't been the most
compelling personality on the team, nor had I been the best player, and maybe time had
rendered me invisible. For three years my roommate had been John Adams, defensive end
from Deridder. John was as good a friend as a guy could have. I stood in his wedding
after our junior year. Before tonight I hadn't seen John in 22 years. I didn't call him
to express my condolences when his father died. John and his wife Linda had a child. I
missed out on that too. Nor have I seen or talked to Eddie Stanton, my roommate in
1979. Big Ed and I carried Coach Mac on our shoulders at the end of our game with Wake
Forest in the Tangerine Bowl. It was Coach Mac's last game and it was our last game. It
also was the end of a great friendship, because Ed and I both ran for the hills. We
haven't communicated since then.
How does this happen? Perhaps it has happened to some of you. I was as close to John
Adams and Eddie Stanton as I was to my own brothers, and yet when it was over for me at
LSU, it was over for me with them too.
There were days when I felt as if I shared company with a ghost, and the ghost was me.
Or, rather, the ghost was the young man I'd been when I played football at LSU. He took
up residence in my heart and he wouldn't go away, no matter how hard I willed him to
leave me alone. He constantly reminded me that I could deny the past but never escape
it. If I refused to remember, he would remember for me.
The truth is, I've had more success as a writer than I ever did as a football player.
I've won awards, I make a good living, and I've traveled extensively in this country
and in Europe. And yet, despite the success, I have lived with a feeling in my gut that
my best days are behind me. I landed a top staff job with the Washington Post and saw
my by-line printed in the pages of the country's best magazines. That was pretty good,
but it wasn't as good as running through the goalposts at Tiger Stadium on a Saturday
night. I had novels published, one of them a bestseller. It was thrilling, but
listening to the LSU fight song from inside Tiger Den right before kickoff was more
thrilling. My books were translated into Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian and Japanese.
Nice, but not equal to the game with USC my senior year. I cut deals in Hollywood, went
to dinners and parties with famous actors. Exciting, all right, but it paled in
comparison to wearing the purple and gold.
What was wrong with me? I wondered. I could be in New York or Los Angeles, covering an
event of national importance, or in London or Paris, promoting a book, and I would
flash to pictures that I'd meant to put away forever.
I saw the eyes of my teammates past their facemasks. It was Saturday morning in the
spring and we were scrimmaging in an empty stadium. I could smell the churned-up grass
and the sour stench of beer in the sweat of my teammates: they'd been to sorority
parties the night before. I could hear the shouts and the whistles and the noise of
human contact, bodies being slammed against each other. Or I would flash to my
teammates congregated in the dining room at Broussard Hall, on a Friday night before a
game. We have just returned from a movie and we're having sandwiches and ice cream, a
last quiet meal before bed. Coach Mac steps between the tables calmly reminding us what
to expect tomorrow. "We win as a team," he says, "but one of you might be the
difference. Will it be you?" And now he singles out someone with a pointed finger. "Or
will it be you?" And now he indicates another.
I've had great editors over the years, but I never loved them the way I loved my
coaches at LSU. Take Dave McCarty, for instance. I still miss being able to look into
his eyes and say, "Can I talk to you for a minute, Coach?" I miss knowing that he will
say, "Sure, John Ed, what's on your mind?" and then give whatever I have to say more
attention and respect than it deserves. "Can I talk to you for a minute, Coach?" And
know that by his counsel everything will be made right again.
After that day in New York last year, when I saw TV coverage of Coach Mac being honored
at Tiger Stadium, I decided I would live with awful, searing regret for the rest of
life unless I arranged to see him again. My visit to Coach Mac was purely a selfish
gesture on my part. He certainly had more important concerns than sitting with me and
tending to my guilty conscience. I wanted his time, and time was the thing he had the
least of to give. He agreed to see me anyway.
Dorothy Faye answered the door. I have never known a finer lady. She gave me a hug and
led me to him. Women understand things; their capacity for compassion astounds me. I'm
sure Dorothy Faye's compassion astounded Coach Mac, too. I sat in a chair next to his
bed and he reached for my hand. I hadn't been his favorite player, I hadn't been a
member of any of his great, championship teams, I hadn't built on his legacy by going
on to play in the NFL. I wondered if I even registered in the big, heroic sweep of his
life. And yet, even as he lay dying, struggling to hang on, he made me feel as though I
was the most important player he'd ever coached.
When you have nothing of the present to talk about, you retreat to the old days. And
that was we did. We remembered games and players. His hand was big and soft and warm in
mine. I wasn't there long. As I got up to leave I began to cry. I cried for all that
was lost and gone forever - for the time only yesterday when I was a kid and he was my
coach, for the teammates I once adored but hadn't seen or talked to in what seemed like
forever, for the end of things that we can never have again. "Always remember I'm with
you," he said. "I'm with all you boys."
Coach Mac personified a time when an athlete's character was as important as his
ability, and when making your school, your state and your family proud meant
everything. I talked myself out of attending his memorial service - for the same selfish
reasons. When my editor in New York learned about his death he called me in New Orleans
and asked if I was ready to write the story yet. "What story?" I said.
"You know what story," he answered.
It was a stupid idea, I told him. No one could possibly feel the same way about having
lost football as I did. I would only embarrass myself. "They'll relate," he said. "We
all lose something that sticks around and haunts us forever. Write it," he went on.
"Write it and get rid of it."
And so, shortly thereafter, I ventured to call Marty Dufrene at his home in Larose.
Marty and I had been teammates at LSU, but I'd lost track of him as I had everyone
else. I told him I wanted to write about him. I was afraid he'd tell me to go to hell,
but instead an amazing thing happened: Marty invited me over. He said he couldn't wait
to see me again. He and his wife Lynne would cook dinner. I could spend the night if I
wanted to. He was so kind to me, and so generous and understanding, that I found it
almost difficult to speak. By my years of silence I felt as if I'd betrayed this man
and others, and yet he seemed ready to have me move into his house forever if that's
what I wanted. I also got the feeling he would've given me every dime in his bank
account had I asked for it.
I'd like to acknowledge Marty now and thank him. When we were in school I admired
Marty and thought well of him as a football player, but we were both centers, competing
for the same job, and in the spring of 1979 he was brash and cocky enough to tell me
that he was going to beat me out for the starting position. I told him to keep
dreaming. Marty said he would. It was impossible not to like him. He kept a hot plate
in his dorm room and whenever you walked by his door there was always the smell of
Cajun food cooking.
After I left LSU I assumed Marty would take over as the starting center, but a
confluence of unfortunate events prevented that from happening. He suffered several
injuries that kept him off the field, and finally he subjugated his ego and desires and
finished up his stint in the program as a student trainer. Then in 1986 Marty was
paralyzed in a freak swimming pool accident. He's been in a wheelchair for a long time,
but once you talk to Marty for only a few minutes the chair seems to vanish. When that
happens you see the strength of one man's will against forces that would keep him down.
When I went to see Marty earlier this year it was as if no time had passed. We simply
picked up where we'd left off - not kidding each other about who should start, but
remembering how lucky we were to have had the chance to play for Coach Mac. Marty
taught me that no matter where life takes us or how much it beats us up or how many
years slip off the calendar, we are teammates and we'll always be teammates. His
courage is an inspiration, and where I have lapsed into self-pity and woeful
introspection Marty has never stopped being attentive to the friends he made while
playing football at LSU. Marty kept going back to the games, even when it meant going
to them in his chair and facing the reality that the golden boy from Lafourche Parish
who once played for the Tigers was now a quadriplegic. In my Sports Illustrated story I
quoted Marty speaking words that still choke me up when I think about them.
"Whenever I have a down time," he said, "or whenever I'm feeling sorry for myself, or
whenever life is more than I can bear at the moment, I always do the same thing. I put
the Tiger fight song on the stereo, and all the memories come back and somehow it makes
everything okay. All right, I say to myself. I can do it, I can do it. Let's go."
What is our obligation to the past? What is our obligation to each other - to our
teammates of half a lifetime ago? When my story appeared in the August 14th issue of
Sports Illustrated, I was afraid that I'd put myself out to ridicule. I thought people
would laugh at me. But the response was as extraordinary as it was humbling. I received
hundreds of calls and letters - not only from former LSU players, but from players at
other schools who shared my feelings. It came as a shock, but also a relief, that there
were others like me: men who silently grieved the loss of a game they'd played in
their youth, men who walked with ghosts who never let them forget.
The thing about memory, when we close our eyes we can all be there again, in whatever
year we desire it to be. What year was it when you played? In memory the old are young
again, the dead are reborn. Coach Mac has just delivered a pre-game pep talk and led us
in prayer, and now we come out of the chute in Tiger Stadium to the roar of people who
are counting on us. The band begins to play; up ahead the cheerleaders are waiting.
Under the crossbar of the goalpost we huddle, seniors in front, underclassmen to the
rear. The heat feels like a dense, blistering weight in your lungs. If it's this hard
to breathe now, how will it feel by the fourth quarter? Am I strong enough? Am I good
enough? Will I make it?
And yet always in the back of your mind is the knowledge of your supreme good fortune.
Everyone else will travel a similar course of human experience, but we are different.
We play football for LSU.
And so, chin straps buckled tight, we file out onto the field as one, the gold and the
white a single elongated blur, neatly trimmed in purple.
whenever life is more than I can bear at the moment, I always do the same thing. I put
the Tiger fight song on the stereo, and all the memories come back and somehow it makes
everything okay. All right, I say to myself. I can do it, I can do it. Let's go."
What is our obligation to the past? What is our obligation to each other - to our
teammates of half a lifetime ago? When my story appeared in the August 14th issue of
Sports Illustrated, I was afraid that I'd put myself out to ridicule. I thought people
would laugh at me. But the response was as extraordinary as it was humbling. I received
hundreds of calls and letters - not only from former LSU players, but from players at
other schools who shared my feelings. It came as a shock, but also a relief, that there
were others like me: men who silently grieved the loss of a game they'd played in
their youth, men who walked with ghosts who never let them forget.
The thing about memory, when we close our eyes we can all be there again, in whatever
year we desire it to be. What year was it when you played? In memory the old are young
again, the dead are reborn. Coach Mac has just delivered a pre-game pep talk and led us
in prayer, and now we come out of the chute in Tiger Stadium to the roar of people who
are counting on us. The band begins to play; up ahead the cheerleaders are waiting.
Under the crossbar of the goalpost we huddle, seniors in front, underclassmen to the
rear. The heat feels like a dense, blistering weight in your lungs. If it's this hard
to breathe now, how will it feel by the fourth quarter? Am I strong enough? Am I good
enough? Will I make it?
And yet always in the back of your mind is the knowledge of your supreme good fortune.
Everyone else will travel a similar course of human experience, but we are different.
We play football for LSU.
And so, chin straps buckled tight, we file out onto the field as one, the gold and the
white a single elongated blur, neatly trimmed in purple.