The Man I Never Met

by Adam Schefter

  George was at Adios Golf Club in Coconut Creek, Florida. The course was designed by Arnold Palmer, and a lot of famous, tough men were members: Dan Marino, Cris Carter, Carl Yastrzemski, people like that. George was a member, too.

  After Sharri told Paula and George the news, they each asked to speak to me. I was really moved by that. Paula said she had seen the spark return to Sharri for the first time in five years. I didn’t know what to say. I just thanked her. I handed the phone back to Sharri, who spoke to Paula and George.

  “Devon wants to speak to you,” Sharri said.

  She gave the phone to Devon and told him George was on the line. He was so excited.

  “Poppy! Poppy!” Devon said. “I’m gonna have a daddy!”

  After they hung up, George walked straight into a restroom and cried.

  9

  A few months after Joe Maio died, Sharri got a phone call: they had found Joe’s Cantor Fitzgerald ID card. The plastic badge was in perfect condition, except for a little warping.

  Not long after that, two police officers came to Sharri and Joe’s house. Sharri answered the door. She understood, instinctively, why they were there.

  They had found Joe’s remains.

  She went to a funeral parlor and saw the body bag. It was as tall as Joe was. She was confused. Hadn’t his body been destroyed in the building? Had he jumped when he couldn’t take the heat and smoke?

  “How did he die?” she asked. “What happened to him?”

  They wouldn’t tell her.

  The Maio family held a funeral in Rockland County, New York, and they buried Joe.

  * * *

  What did the ID card and body bag mean? We still don’t know. George thought the fact that the ID badge was intact meant he had jumped. He thought Joe saw some of his colleagues die and so he leaped from the building.

  In a way, it doesn’t really matter exactly how Joe died—whether he stayed in the building or jumped as dozens of others did. He was killed because terrorists hijacked planes and flew them into his building. But it’s natural to wonder how a loved one spent his final minutes.

  In some cases, the speculation may even say something about how people saw Joe.

  Sharri could not imagine Joe jumping—the Joe she knew would never have abandoned his colleagues in the building. She thought he would stay with them until the end. Jordan Bergstein kept imagining that Joe jumped because Joe believed he could land safely and walk away. This was illogical, but it was what Jordan wanted to believe. Joe was such a positive person. Says Jordan, “I like to think he had hope the whole way down.”

  10

  I had hope the whole way in. All those years, I had imagined I would meet the right woman. I didn’t know where or when, but I believed it. Now the details had come into focus. I was excited to begin my new life.

  As soon as Sharri and I got engaged, I moved into her and Joe’s house.

  Sharri wondered if it would be awkward for me to live in the house she had bought with Joe. For the second time since he’d died, she thought about selling it, but I did not feel uncomfortable there. I felt like I was home, and I deferred to her, as I’ve tried to do on many things in life. Whatever made her comfortable, whatever she wanted. She decided not to sell it.

  Devon had grown so much from the boy who would excitedly greet his father when he came home from work. He had gone from sleeping in a crib to sleeping in a bed, and he developed this habit of sleeping in Sharri’s room. He would climb into her bed, play with her hair, and fall asleep.

  Devon was fifteen months old when Joe died, but he was six when I met him. That meant he was too young to remember his father, but he was old enough to understand I was a new person in his life.

  It wasn’t enough to tell Sharri, “I understand you have a child, and I am OK with it.” I had to form a connection with Devon, but I didn’t know how, and I did not assume he wanted me there. Sharri worried he would be jealous when I moved in, but he really wasn’t. He adjusted quickly.

  Still, I put in my best effort to make him feel like I was like a dad. My instinct was to bond with him over sports. I think it’s a natural thing for a lot of fathers and sons. It’s something you can talk about, something you can share. You watch a ball game. You play catch. You talk about whether the Knicks will ever be good again.

  When I was a kid, I was a huge sports fan, and it was the most real and palpable connection I had with my father. We always could talk about the Jets or Giants, the Yankees or Mets, the Knicks or Nets, the Islanders or Rangers, or his college team, Penn State. I carried that with me into adulthood. But Devon was not a huge sports fan. He didn’t hate sports, but they weren’t his favorite thing. You can’t make someone love sports any more than you can make him love art or architecture or classical music. So we had to find other ways to connect.

  When Sharri and I were dating, I would bring him toys and temporary tattoos. It was a very different experience for me and not the kind of courtship I ever could have envisioned. I had to find non-sports activities and topics that interested him. I had started this relationship with Sharri with a bottle of prosecco and the Notting Hill soundtrack, and here I was, bringing temporary tattoos to a boy and helping his mom pick him up from elementary school.

  This sounds like a romantic comedy. At times, I wished it felt more like one.

  * * *

  When I was single, my days often revolved around two things: work and eating. The work does not require much elaboration: I tried to break stories, cover unique angles, carve out my place in the NFL reporting world, first as a Broncos beat writer and then as a league insider for the NFL Network. I took pride in my work. Every trade or free-agency signing was a way to be judged and measured. I never wanted to fall short.

  As for the eating, I’ll lay it out simply for you: I am not one of those people who can grab a grocery store bagel for breakfast and have a granola bar for lunch and eat whatever happens to be in the fridge for dinner and be happy. I like good, healthy, satisfying meals—not necessarily pricey meals, just something I actually want to eat. If I don’t have that, I sometimes can get grumpy.

  Sharri is not like that. Food is as important to her as handbags are to me. And for that first year or two, we both had to adjust to what the other needed—and we had to do it while raising a child.

  Devon and I had at least one thing in common: Devon loves eating. He just loved to dive into something good, especially desserts. He never would miss a dessert. He acted as if there were laws that required it. There is an old line about somebody who “never missed a meal,” and it was literally true of Devon.

  I had been subletting my town house in Denver when I met Sharri. After we got engaged, I sold it and with that money bought a house in Sag Harbor, out near the Hamptons. One night, we were driving back from Sag Harbor and Devon fell asleep in the car. This wasn’t surprising; it was 11:00 P.M., and he had spent all day swimming in the hot sun. So after we got home, I got him out of his car seat, carried him upstairs to his room, and tucked him in.

  And then, at three in the morning, he woke me up.

  I said, “What’s going on?”

  He said, “I didn’t get to have dinner.”

  It was so funny. He didn’t say, “I’m hungry.” He said, “I didn’t get to have dinner.” It was like he’d missed an appointment and felt this urgent need to make up for it. I had something I was supposed to be doing and I didn’t do that and so I need to do that. Now.

  I loved Devon from the beginning, and we had a lot of great times, but now that I look back on it, I’m not sure how prepared I was to be an instant dad. Even physically, I wasn’t prepared. My body was not used to being around kids. My immune system wasn’t ready for the runny noses and the poorly washed hands. I am fortunate that I have generally been a healthy person in my life, but that first year that I lived with Sharri and Devon, I must have gotten twenty colds. I was sick all the time—nose running, eyes watering, throat itching. My body just kept breaking down. />
  Together, Sharri and Devon and I tried to mold a new life for ourselves, but we weren’t entirely sure how to do it. My life and Sharri’s life were completely different in ways I didn’t really understand, even though they were right in front of me. I was comfortable with the idea of dating a widow with a son, but I didn’t fully appreciate the reality of what it was like to be a parent. I had never done it. Sharri’s whole life revolved around Devon—as it should have—but that was a huge adjustment for me.

  Reality smacked me in the face on a daily basis. I couldn’t just go to the gym when I woke up. I couldn’t have a sit-down dinner every night. I couldn’t do what I wanted when I wanted. I wasn’t the only person to worry about anymore; Sharri and Devon were. There were adjustments to make every day. Just as you can’t build a marriage entirely on sweet gestures like prosecco and flowers, you can’t get a child to view you as a parent simply by bringing him gifts.

  Friends saw me with Devon and thought, If you didn’t know the backstory, you would assume that was his son. My transition appeared seamless to them, but it didn’t always feel that way to me.

  Our personalities were different. I am always moving, always working. Devon is much more laid-back. Sharri felt like I didn’t compliment him enough. She took it personally. I made mental notes to improve the ratio of compliments to criticism. I also had to understand what it was like for Sharri. She was naturally protective of him and wanted nothing but the very best for him. She also always felt bad that he’d missed out on so much, and she wanted it made up to him in any and every which way possible.

  I found myself experiencing some of the same problems with Devon that I’d had with other relationships: I went in expecting perfection, and when I failed to find it, I struggled to adjust. I wanted to make it perfect, and sometimes that made it worse.

  I am a “glass half-full” person, and Sharri is more “glass half-empty.” She grew up in a house with a conservative, levelheaded father. She does not fall for big promises. When I tell her something great will happen, she says, “Don’t say that. Things happen in life. They don’t always go the way you think they will.”

  She believes you have to be yourself in a relationship. You can increase your awareness and sensitivity toward the other person, but you can’t change who you are. I was still trying to navigate through that. It took some time.

  The public moments, when you pick up a child from school or take him to the park, were easy for me. The private ones were more challenging. It was hard to discipline a child who didn’t look at you as his natural father. It’s hard enough to be a parent, but in many ways, it’s even more challenging to be a stepparent. We both full well knew that, as hard as I tried, and as much as I did, Devon’s real dad was, and always would be, Joe Maio.

  * * *

  I pushed forward in this new, unconventional, uncharted relationship. It wasn’t always easy, but it always felt right.

  On the morning of June 24, 2007, my sister, Marni, called. She asked if I was excited. I should have been; Sharri and I were getting married that day. The wedding was at Engineers Country Club on Long Island. This was the club that Joe had planned to join for the 2002 season. Sharri became a social member there; Joe never did.

  And the truth is that, when Marni called, I wasn’t excited, and I wasn’t really nervous. It felt like just another day, which I interpreted as a sign of how right it was. I woke up in the same house and I watched Devon play racing games in the playroom.

  The momentousness of the day did not really hit me until Devon told me, “I can’t wait to give away my mom to you.”

  That went right into my journal. That touched me.

  Then I started to get him dressed, and the day really started to feel different. He looked so cute in his little tuxedo. It took me six tries to get his tie on before I finally did it properly. It was the first time I ever saw Devon wear a tie, and having to put it on him symbolized the added responsibility that now was a welcome part of my life. I felt like a man who was about to get married—and also be Devon’s dad.

  By that afternoon, I had reached a stage of full-on nervousness. My hands were cold and clammy. I reached for the right words to say to Sharri. I told her I was honored to be marrying her, which was a weirdly formal thing to say and kind of awkward.

  Devon walked his mom down the aisle. Sharri looked beautiful, Devon looked so handsome, and the day I thought might never come now was a reality.

  Before I took Sharri’s hand at the chuppah, I walked over to Devon, lifted him up, and gave him a big kiss. It must have touched everybody in the room, because you almost could hear a collective Awww.Everybody, I assumed, knew the circumstances of our lives.

  We had a traditional Jewish wedding, and after we stepped on a glass to break it, a Jewish tradition, I cracked that it was “the last time I get to put my foot down.”

  The day was perfect in every way—perfect weather, a great reception. A lot of people from all aspects of my life were there—Mitch Albom, my mentor when I was a young journalist; former Broncos coach Mike Shanahan, who helped teach me about life in the NFL; my college buddies from Michigan, my parents’ friends. Julie Romanowski, the wife of my friend and former NFL linebacker Bill Romanowski, grabbed the microphone from one of the band members at one point and sang “Wonderful Tonight,” the Eric Clapton song.

  We even discovered, randomly, that two of Sharri’s parents’ friends had known my parents when I was young. They saw my parents at the ceremony and thought, What are they doing here? They just thought they were going to Sharri Setty Maio’s wedding. They hadn’t realized the Schefter that she was marrying was the son of the Schefters they knew from life in Bellmore, New York. They joked that they could have introduced us twenty years ago.

  Several guests told me I had a permanent grin on my face. It was true. I was so happy, and so appreciative of how much my life had changed. Hearing us introduced as Mr. and Mrs. Schefter was a “Wow!” moment for me.

  I was not nervous for my toast. I talk for a living. And I figured, I just had to follow Devon, who had turned seven years old three days before our wedding. I didn’t think it could be that hard; Devon was a quiet kid, not overtly outgoing. Not only that, but he had refused to let anybody help him with his speech. Sharri’s mother tried, but he kept telling her, “Don’t worry, Nanny, I can do this. I can do this.” He wanted to do it all on his own.

  Then he got up there and said, “Hello, everybody.”

  The whole crowd laughed and clapped. Pleasing a crowd is pretty easy when you are an adorable seven-year-old in a tux, holding a microphone.

  Devon spoke from the heart.

  “I am very lucky to be here today for my mom’s wedding,” he said. “I love my new dad. I’m just … thanking my mom … for marrying Adam.”

  The room melted. Sharri could not believe her shy son had stood up in a room full of two hundred–plus people and said something so sweet, all on his own.

  It was just the kind of thing Joe would have done.

  Then I got up to speak. I told our friends and family that, following Devon, “I never thought I would have big shoes to fill, but I do.” I meant it. I told a story about our first date and gave what I thought was a pretty good toast. I thanked my family. And Sharri’s family. And Joe’s family.

  When it was over, after the dancing and dinner and cake and ice cream and all the compliments over the flowers, I rode home with my new wife and our son. As we pulled toward our house, I could hear opera music coming from a nearby party.

  It had been a wonderful, emotionally powerful day. And I had not even personally experienced all of it.

  I found out later that at one point during the wedding, a few friends wandered out to the bar. These were people who knew Sharri and Joe, long before anybody could imagine Sharri and Adam. The friends talked about our wedding, and they seemed happy that Sharri had found love again.

  Then there was a pause, and one of our guests said, “Let’s not forget Joe, though.
Joe’s in this room, too.” And they had a toast, at our wedding, to Joe Maio.

  11

  Six months before he died, Joe Maio asked his friend Jordan Bergstein to come visit his office in the World Trade Center.

  Joe and Jordan were close friends and golf buddies who bonded over their love for action and the quick bursts of adrenaline that led to harmless highs. A lot of the action came in the form of gambling. Not high-stakes gambling, where the loser wonders how he will pay the mortgage. Mostly, they made small bets for their own entertainment.

  Joe used his business acumen to make a betting market for the New York Jets, just among his friends. How many games would they win in the next four weeks? He traded positions with people and played the market well enough that he was sure to come out ahead, no matter what the Jets did.

  Joe and Jordan bet when they were on the golf course. They even bet when they walked down the street. One of them would take out a nickel, point to a parking meter twenty feet away, and say, “Five dollars if you hit it.”

  From there, negotiations would begin.

  “That’s far. I want three-to-one odds.”

  “No. Straight up. You take the shot if you want it.”

  “Two-to-one.”

  “Deal. No tears.”

  “No tears.”

  That’s how they always settled on the terms: No tears. It meant that all terms were final. No complaining later. And if you had asked them who won more bets, you would get firm answers: Joe would say Joe, and Jordan would say Jordan.

  So here was Jordan Bergstein, on a cold, rainy day in the spring of 2001, only a few months after George W. Bush had taken the oath of the presidency and given his inaugural address: