The similarities between Maelyn and Dylan reinforced to us that the circumstances of our lives are not unique. There are times when you can feel alone, but that doesn’t mean you are.
It was also a reminder of what Sharri had learned over time and says often: Everybody has something.
A death of a loved one, a disease, a divorce, an addiction, a horrible relationship with a family member—everybody has something painful and personal they must deal with. Nobody goes through life unscathed. My grandfather Poppy Dave, whom Dylan was named after, would put it like this: “Nobody gets a free ride.”
Sharri lived an extremely fortunate life until Joe was killed. The attacks on 9/11 had rendered her a stay-at-home mother in a new house with no husband. She was lonely, and she felt bad for herself. When she went shopping, she would see other mothers and fathers together with their kids and think, I wish I were in their place. I would give anything to be them.
Months passed. Then years. She talked to her friends, listened to their problems, and thought, I’m not sure I want to be in that position either. She realized that life is challenging for everybody. Her grief never fully dissipated, but the self-pity did.
When you have experienced the worst of humanity, you can be defeated or you can look for the best of humanity. We have seen the best of it. I have seen it in Paula and George, in Sharri and Devon, and even in Joe. His impact is still evident.
Even in death, Joe continues to prod people to do what they should do but don’t really want to do, to live their lives the way he lived his. Kim Rothofsky, Joe’s friend from childhood, says she still thinks of him almost every day, even though they had fallen out of touch a few years before Joe died.
Duane Tarrant, another friend from childhood, says Joe’s death made him take a hard look at his relationship with his girlfriend, Joanne Mucerino. They had broken up a few times. Joanne worked on the twenty-third floor of one of the towers. She got out. Duane thought about Sharri and thought, That could be me. He and Joanne got married and have two kids together.
Jordan Bergstein had been in a funk in the summer of 2001—his degenerative eye condition, retinitis pigmentosa, was starting to profoundly change his life, and it caused a lot of emotional pain. After Joe died, and the initial shock and devastation wore off, Jordan’s outlook changed completely. He shed his despair, even as his vision kept getting worse. Jordan thought about his friend Joe, with his endless passion for life, and realized that as limited as his own vision was, he still got to see more in his life than Joe did.
“Joe’s death,” he says, “has helped me live.”
And when Adam Gordon was in his late thirties … after Joe Maio had helped him lose his virginity … after Adam had brought a number of women back to their Upper East Side apartment and been intimate with them … after Adam had married one of Sharri’s best friends … after Adam and his wife had three children … and long after Joe had been killed, Adam started to realize:
I’m gay.
He came out of the closet when he was forty, but his life did not immediately turn into a Will and Grace episode. He had some hard times. He lost his job, moved to California, and could barely pay child support. And he thought, If Joey were here, this wouldn’t happen. Joe would have protected him. He believed that with every beat of his heart.
Eventually he started doing better. He was happy. And he kept thinking, I wish Joe could see me now. And so, once a year, Adam Gordon writes a letter to Joe, to let him know how he is doing.
* * *
You hear people talk about moving on. There is no moving on. Moving on means forgetting, and who wants to forget?
Sharri’s life with me did not replace her life with Joe. The two lives are now joined together. When she was married to Joe, her favorite day of the week was Sunday. Those were family days. On Saturdays, Joe would often play golf for half the day, but they spent Sundays together. So after he died, Sundays were the hardest for her.
Now, because I cover the NFL, I often work on Sundays. It’s the big day of the NFL week. Sharri has a tough time with it; so all these years later, Sundays still are hardest for her. When I’m in Bristol, working each Sunday, Sharri misses both of her husbands.
We have a pretty easy day-to-day relationship. I try not to ask for too much. I want to be able to do my job and get my morning workouts in, and sometimes I’ll suggest what we should eat for dinner. That is pretty much it.
We have a really strong marriage. I can see now that my concerns years ago were largely a product of my own expectations. I have learned that part of being in a successful relationship is understanding it will not be perfect. We have our little disagreements. She will be arguing with Dylan in the bathroom while I’m ignoring them so I can set my NBA fantasy lineup, which of course drives her crazy. Don’t you hear me yelling in the bathroom?!
And she will tell you that I am useless when it comes to everyday household problems. She’ll say I have no idea where the circuit breaker box is. One time recently, the toilet wouldn’t flush, so she had to reach in the tank and fix the chain. She thought, If this were Adam, he would be peeing in the woods. Like many women who are married to men, Sharri doesn’t really understand how I was able to survive on my own. I try to explain: I worked, I brought my laundry to a Laundromat that charged me seventy-five cents per pound, and I ordered takeout. It was not that complicated.
I try to be the best son-in-law I can be for Paula and George, even though I am technically not their son-in-law. Sometimes George will text Sharri, and she won’t get back to him right away. That’s just her style. She doesn’t treat phone calls and text messages with the same urgency that some people do. But George gets nervous. He worries. So he’ll text me, and I tell him, right away, moments after his text: Pop, everything’s OK.
We don’t talk a lot about Joe and Anthony, but I think about what happened to Paula and George all the time. Two sons, both gone. No time to prepare for either. No chance to say goodbye.
I am continually amazed that Paula and George have treated me like a son-in-law. I try to treat them with the same respect and affection that I offer Sharri’s parents. I look around, and there are people who won’t talk to their in-laws at all. We’ve all heard “my mother-in-law” jokes. There is a reason for that. A lot of people can’t stand to be in the same room as their in-laws. I have a great relationship with the Maios, even though it’s unconventional, and I love Sharri’s parents like I love my own.
I have two great sets of in-laws. Sharri has two sets of in-laws. Our kids have three sets of grandparents. It’s kind of like a weird permutation, like a child with six toes. It’s not bad or a lesser version of what you normally see. It’s just different.
Paula and George never resented my presence. They embraced it. They never acted like Sharri was forgetting or disrespecting Joe by being with me. A lot of people in their situation would have acted that way. I’m very fortunate.
I am also very conscious of the fact that the deaths of Joe and Anthony are an enormous cloud over Paula and George. They live with a lot of pain. It never subsides. When you pour your hearts into raising two boys, and they are your life, and they both die in inexplicable tragedies, what do you do?
Paula and George don’t talk about the pain all the time, but I know it’s there. It has to be. They are in a different emotional place from where even Sharri is, because losing a child is different from losing a spouse, and they lost both of theirs. Sharri has built a second adult life for herself, with a second husband and two children. It’s an opportunity she was granted. That’s a lot harder to do when you are older and you have lost your children. Still, Paula and George are an essential presence in our lives, and they handle each day with grace and dignity.
I have great, great respect and love for them.
And I have tried my best to help raise their grandson.
16
The little boy that Joe Maio left behind became a schoolboy and then a teenager. Anthony’s words, spoken at Joe’s funeral, were hea
rtbreaking at the time. They became even more chilling after Anthony died. But Devon is an incredibly resilient kid. If there is a hole in his heart, he hides it well.
Devon rarely asks about Joe. I don’t know if people would consider that normal or not. It’s just the way he is. If you have spoken to people who were adopted—or if you were adopted yourself—then you know that some adoptees long to meet their birth parents, and others have very little interest. This is obviously a very different situation, but it helps explain Devon’s mind-set. He has no memories of his father. He lives what we think is a great life with Sharri, me, Dylan, and our dogs. I know he thinks about Joe, but I don’t think he spends as much of his time wondering about Joe as strangers might imagine. One day I think he will; it might mean even more to him as he gets older and becomes a father of his own. But now, it does not seem to weigh down his days.
Sharri is different. She thinks about Joe every day, but especially at the milestone moments in Devon’s life. What would Joe think of his boy entering high school? Would Joe be the one who could get Devon cranking on his college essays?
She wonders: What would be different if Joe were alive? What would their relationship be like? Would they have a strong bond? Nobody knew Devon and Joe as well as Sharri does.
She thinks Joe would understand Devon in ways that I don’t. It’s easy to picture Joe telling Devon how to talk to a customer, or to envision Devon copying his father’s golf swing—then using it to outdrive his old man.
When she fights with Devon, she thinks, How would Joe handle this situation? Then she realizes that thinking about it will get her nowhere, so she tries to block it out of her mind.
Sharri looks at Devon and sees Joe. His face. His smile. His attitude.
George looks at Devon and sees Joe. His skin. His teeth. His mannerisms. Devon had a growth spurt at the same age that his father did. He carries himself just like Joe.
Devon has an easy confidence about him, just like Joe did. Like a lot of teenage boys, he is not the most orderly kid. He does well in school, but not always as well as he could. He knows when he can coast, and he does. Joe would understand. When Joe went to Boston University, he did not always work that hard. He did not get the best grades. He would go out on a Wednesday night, leaving his roommate Cory Tovin with books spread out on the dinner table, and then he would come home at midnight and say, incredulously, “You’ve been sitting here for five hours?”
Cory would explain that he was studying. It was what college students did. Joe didn’t do it that much. But Cory always knew Joe would be successful.
Sometimes Devon is so relaxed that it drives me crazy. I want him to push, to hustle, to go hard after what he wants instead of just making his way toward it. Sometimes I ask Sharri why he doesn’t do that, and she laughs and says, “Because he’s not you.” She is absolutely right. Devon is going to be very successful doing things his way, and he will be happy.
And maybe one day he’ll tell me that he has it right, that I have it wrong, and I need to be more like him and let up and live a bit.
* * *
I’m not wired like Devon and Joe. I’m a grinder. I always have been because I’ve never felt as if I had any obvious talents, so I had to work to make up for it. When I was a freshman at the University of Michigan, I tried to rush a fraternity but didn’t get in, so I went to the football office to see if they needed somebody to pick up jock straps and hand out water bottles. They didn’t need anybody. So I went to the basketball office to see if they needed somebody to pick up jock straps and hand out water bottles. They didn’t need anybody.
I just wanted to be part of something and work as hard as I could. It’s how I ended up at the school newspaper, The Michigan Daily. Nobody else would have me; The Michigan Daily turned away nobody. Any professional success I’ve had I attribute to my work ethic, not talent. I have had my foot on the gas pedal since college, trying to do all the right things. I try to return every text message and call everybody back and be as reliable for my employer as I am for one of my colleagues.
Success in my job is predicated on constant communication. Constant. I am in the information business. The more information I have, the more information I get. When people in the NFL talk about what’s happening in the league—who might get drafted where, which coaches are in trouble, who just got hurt in practice—you’re either part of that conversation or not. I need to be part of that conversation. There is no other option. So my phone is like one of my appendages.
Sharri is not like that. She doesn’t check her email fifty times a day. She doesn’t drop everything when a text comes in; sometimes it will be hours, or days, before she even notices the text. I’ll ask her, “Did you see my text? Did you get that email?” and she will say, “No. I’m not on my phone like you. I’m not married to it.”
In some ways, we are very different. Sharri is laid-back; I’m not. I want things done yesterday. I want them to be done right and as soon as possible. When we send out our holiday cards every year, they always go out the week of Thanksgiving, long before the holiday rush. I always want our cards to be the first in the mailbox, before the wave of cards from everybody else. Sharri laughs at me. “What happens if somebody else’s card gets there the day before?” But that’s just me. I want to get things done now.
That is why my job suits my personality. Or maybe my personality has been molded by my job.
My career started to grow a year after Dylan was born. My original five-year deal with the NFL Network was expiring, and we were unable to agree on a new deal. I just wasn’t comfortable with the offer. One Friday in March, after the network told me it was a take-it-or-leave offer, I told people at the network I had to leave it; it wasn’t fair.
My contract was not up for another six months, but they pulled me off the air immediately. The following Monday, the contents of my office arrived at my house, packed up in two boxes. Someone at the league office had cleaned out my office for me.
So I negotiated a deal with ESPN instead. And after it was finalized, I asked the NFL Network to let me out of my deal early—this way, the network wouldn’t have to pay me for six months to do nothing, and I could start at ESPN right away. The people who ran the network declined. They decided they would rather pay me to do nothing than not pay me and have me work at a competitor.
It was silly, but as I have learned throughout my life, things don’t always happen the way you want them to happen. What matters is how you handle it. I didn’t want to leave the NFL Network; I made so many friends there who I remain friendly with to this day. There were some great people in my life.
The funny thing is, when I accepted the job at ESPN, I didn’t even know what I would be doing for the network. I knew they were hiring me for news and information and also because they were about to launch a new 9:00 A.M. SportsCenter, but I later found out that they planned to include me on their Sunday NFL Countdown show, with broadcasting legends Chris Berman, Tom Jackson, and Chris Mortensen. I had no idea my job would include that when I accepted the offer, and I laugh when I think about it today. Who takes a job without knowing exactly what it entails? I did. Glass half-full. Blind faith. Me.
Moving to ESPN turned out to be one of the best things that happened to me. I joined Twitter around the same time, which gave me an outlet for breaking news. At ESPN, I achieved more than I ever could have imagined possible when I started covering the Broncos or even when I joined the NFL Network, and now I had some balance in my life. I had people who were more important to me than my work.
Craig Esposito still says I changed after I met Sharri. Devon changed me as well. And then Dylan changed me again. Craig would know. He saw me at my lowest point. He saw the void, and then he saw how my family filled it.
Of course, there were times I reverted back, and work took hold. I tried to balance work life and family life.
I would get to do live shots for ESPN from my home office most days, which allowed me to take Dylan out to lunch every day. Ea
ch day, I would get done with a TV hit, and we would head out to a local eating establishment for soup or a sandwich and some daddy-daughter time. But one day in 2012, as I filled up the car with gas after eating lunch, with Dylan asleep in her car seat, I got a text that the St. Louis Rams were wrapping up the search for the most coveted head coaching candidate that year and hiring Jeff Fisher. I rushed to file the story to the ESPN news desk from my phone and to post it on Twitter. And right after I did, one of the SportsCenter producers called to ask how quickly I could get home to be on SportsCenter. I told them, “Minutes.”
I paid for the gas and rushed home as quickly as I could. All I could think about was the ramifications of the Rams hiring Fisher and the impact it had on other teams, like the Miami Dolphins, who also were looking for a head coach. I raced into my driveway, ran into the house, got wired up for the live shot as quickly as I could, and popped on air to deliver the news: Jeff Fisher to St. Louis.
Sharri popped her head into my office and calmly asked, “Where’s Dylan?”
And then it hit me. In my haste to get on air as soon as possible, I had accidentally left Dylan asleep in the car. It was only for a few minutes. But it was a reminder that working can never override parenting.
17
I have tried to do everything I can to give Devon a great childhood like I had and like Joe had. Because of my job, I have been able to give him some unbelievable sporting experiences that a lot of adults would call “bucket list” items. We sat behind the Mets dugout for a World Series game against the Royals—and nearly got taken out by a screaming line drive that someone hit right at us. We watched North Carolina’s basketball team play Duke in Cameron Indoor Stadium. We went to a Michigan game in Michigan Stadium and stood on Michigan’s sideline. We watched Dirk Nowitzki pass Shaquille O’Neal for number six on the NBA’s all-time scoring list in Brooklyn, and afterward, Nowitzki gave Devon his jersey. We even went to Green Bay one December day to shoot a Gillette razor commercial with three Packers offensive linemen—David Bakhtiari, Corey Linsley, and Don Barclay—with Devon spending time talking to them about playing offensive line, the position he played in high school.
The Man I Never Met Page 12