Bringing the Heat

by Mark Bowden

  When Himes and the Pack persisted, generating stories about how none of it made sense (Wes was calling in a few chits among the loyal scribes), the club put on a little show, inviting Wes to run several forty-yard dashes in front of their scouts—the usual free-agent tryout shtick. It was humiliating, but Wes could no longer afford to indulge his ego. When he was timed at 4.96 seconds, slug pace for an NFL defensive back, the team made public the results and figured it would get everybody off their backs. Himes challenged the times, and Wes, running on a track a few days later clocked by some New Jersey highschool coaches, bettered his performance by a few tenths of a second. It didn’t matter.

  In late August, Wes got a nibble from the Chiefs. He flew out to Kansas City and played one exhibition game in a Chiefs’ uniform. He was cut on the last day of training camp, but the club promised to resign him after he cleared waivers, which they figured (old and slow) he was certain to do.

  Except … who should come calling but the Eagles?

  With Andre’s toe troubling him, and Erik McMillan playing far below expectations, and with rookie draft pick Mike Reid out indefinitely with a knee injury, the Eagles were suddenly desperate for a proven safety. And in twenty-four hours of hasty negotiations, Himes worked out a one-year contract loaded with incentives and contingencies, totaling $900,000 if Wes could make it through sixteen games and play reasonably well. The club was still bothered by that little episode with Erika at the Broncos game, but Himes told them things between husband and wife (Erika had always been a big favorite with Norman and Harry) might still work themselves out—in fact, Erika would probably attend the signing!

  There were some hard feelings in K.C., but Wes flew back to Philly in early September to renew ties. As for Richie, who had been explaining for more than a month why the team didn’t need Wes anymore—All that stuff I said before? Never mind.

  “You have to be flexible and do the right thing and I think we’re doing the right thing here,” said the coach to his assembled, and slightly astonished, Pack. “I know we’re happy to have him, he’s happy to be back, and I know he’s gonna bolster our run defense.”

  Erika, who knew that a no-good cheating husband with a contract was worth about $900,000 more than a no-good cheating husband without a contract, was all goodwill and cheer at the event.

  Harry was just delighted to see Erika.

  “Welcome back!” he said warmly. He and Norman, who called in his congrats from Miami (that episode last December forgotten), were under the impression that the Eagles’ senior couple were together once more.

  You could hardly blame the Pack for making the same assumption. One writer even assumed that Erika had been planning a move out to Kansas City.

  “She began teaching her four-year-old daughter the tomahawk chop,” he wrote.

  “What a joke!” Erika said, when she saw the story. “Where did he ever get that idea?”

  Wes played intermittently throughout the season, solid, but nothing spectacular. He earned $801,270. At thirty-two, he planned to reenter the free-agent market in ’94.

  • • •

  ANTONE DAVIS played his best year in ’93. He had become a steady, sturdy performer at right tackle and from time to time seemed to be almost enjoying himself.

  FRED BARNETT was named to the Pro Bowl after the ’92 season and was married in the spring, also to a dancer—the Barnetts were wed in an elegant, quiet church ceremony. Donald Trump did not attend.

  Fred blew out his knee in the fourth game of the next season, in the same Jets game that claimed Randall, and spent the rest of ’93 recovering from knee surgery. In his absence, Calvin Williams became the team’s premier receiver, and after the season signed a new, oneyear $1.2 million contract.

  NORMAN FIRED JOE WOOLLEY early in the ’93 season. The club accused its longtime personnel director of making derogatory comments to the Pack.

  Truth is, Joe saw the dismantling in progress and thought he’d been damn polite about it. Not only had the team been hemorrhaging talent rapidly, it hadn’t been replacing it. In contrast to his years with Buddy, Joe’s experience with Richie and the draft had been disastrous. With Buddy’s first three drafts, they had built the nucleus of a contender—Keith Byars, Seth Joyner, and Clyde Simmons (’86); Jerome Brown, Byron Evans, Dave Alexander, Cris Carter (’87); and Keith Jackson and Eric Allen (’88). With Richie, three drafts (’91-’93) had failed to reap a single star player. Only four of Richie’s draft picks were even starters—Andy Harmon, “Willie T.” Thomas, Mark McMillian, and Antone Davis. Joe thinks it’s not because the Eagles’ draft picks have lacked talent, it’s because Richie lacks the patience to develop the players he picks. After he got over his initial anger, Joe’s reaction to his firing was relief. He felt like he’d been ejected from a crashing plane.

  MARVIN “ONE-FOR-ONE-FOR-ONE” Hargrove didn’t get a phone call from the NFL in ’93. He was unemployed, still waiting for that next big break.

  “You don’t want to get a serious job that you’re going to have to leave if the phone rings,” he said.

  He was helping to host a radio jazz show at the University of Delaware and was thinking about pursuing a career as a jazz singer.

  EVERYBODY FELT SORRY for Richie after the ’93 season. First he lost all those starters to free agency. His free agents bombed, one after the other. He won the first four games anyway, then lost Randall and Fred for the season; Byron broke his arm and missed most of the year; he lost his starting right guard (Eric “Pink” Floyd) to a knee injury and then lost his left tackle, Broderick Thompson, the man he got to replace Ron Heller.

  Behind the quarterbacking of former Steeler Bubby Brister, the Eagles went into a seemingly hopeless midseason skid, losing eight of their next nine games. At one point, Eric Allen lamented, “We may lose the rest of our games.” When they salvaged a .500 record by winning their last three, Richie’s stock rose a little.

  He was seen less as a High Priest of the Pigskin, however, than as a kind of executive assistant with Eagles, Inc.

  MEANWHILE, BUDDY RYAN was in the play-offs and back on the front pages. Buddy took over as defensive coordinator of the Houston Oilers in ’93, and after a rocky start, the Oilers won eleven straight games. The new Buddy’s Boys on defense fit the profile perfectly; they led the league at stopping the rush and were atrocious at stopping the pass. They had a reputation for bringing the heat, forcing turnovers, and hurting people. Buddy hadn’t changed.

  Even the ol’ offense/defense locker-room rift took shape, with Buddy’s thinly disguised contempt for the Oilers’ chuck-and-duck offense erupting into a full-scale alphabet soup, national Pack event late in the season when Buddy took a swing at offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride on the sidelines in front of national TV cameras.

  “He’s his own worst enemy,” said Richie.

  Buddy was brazenly unapologetic. He said Gilbride runs a “highschool” offense, and didn’t belong in the Pigskin Priesthood. Lots of people figured Buddy, with this fracas, had blown his chances of ever getting another head coaching job in the NFL.

  Not Buddy.

  “If they want to win, they’ll know where to find me,” he said.

  The Oilers lost the AFC championship game, and Buddy, two weeks later, was hired as head coach and general manager of the desperate Cardinals.

  “You’ve got a winner in town,” Buddy said, beaming. He promptly signed Clyde Simmons and Seth Joyner. Season ticket sales soared.

  ONLY THOSE who did not know Norman Braman well were surprised in the spring of ’94 when he abruptly sold the Eagles to Hollywood producer Jeff Lurie. Norman’s bitterness over the way he was treated by Philadelphia’s press and the Id-people had long ago soured any sentimental attachments the Miami car dealer had with the city or the team. And despite his best efforts, the Eagles seemed bound for that long-term rebuilding mode he had hoped to avoid. It was harder to build a Super Bowl champion than he had imagined.

  So when along came Lurie, a forty-two
-year-old self-described football nut and heir to an enormous movie theater and publishing fortune, with an offer of $185 million, the largest sum ever paid for a sports franchise, Norman jumped. It was true to his life’s pattern of shedding his skin every decade or so. After nine years of Eagles ownership, Norman said he was ready to become a full-time philanthropist and world traveler. As he had so often in the past, Norman left behind scores of disgruntled fans and a city that felt ill-used by his tenure as team owner, but he emerged from the deal much richer— the sale price was nearly triple what he paid for the club back in ’85.

  The rapid dissolution of Buddy’s old team did, however, leave the Eagles with a rich bounty of ’94 draft picks—seven picks in the first three rounds. The Pack embraced Lurie as a white knight, savior of a declining franchise. The new owner fairly shone with promise. So a new era was about to begin.

  THAT SPRING in Brooksville, there were dead flowers and gray ribbons from old floral displays on the scruffy plot of earth that covered Jerome Brown, townsman now of a stiller town.

  Tim Jinkens cleared off the mess, righting an upended threelegged wire stand for a plastic bouquet and repositioning a worn Styrofoam emblem of Jerome’s old jersey. It wasn’t a formal cemetery, just a weedy lot off Route 41 south of Brooksville.

  It was not far from the corner of Hale and Garland, where the accident happened. There was still a gouge in the tree and telephone pole where the car had come to rest, and there were two small white crosses set in the weeds at the roadside. The two-lane blacktop road, lined with oak trees draped with silver-gray Spanish moss, was silent and empty at midday.

  “Jerome used to fly down this road, just fly,” said Tim. “When I was in the Bronco with him—you couldn’t sit in back because of the speakers—I would just get quiet. Sometimes I would close my eyes. It scared me.”

  “Did you ever tell him that?”

  “No way. Maybe I should have, but it wouldn’t have done any good. There was no stopping him. That was just Jerome. You know, every once in a while, when I’m working behind the counter at the bar, the guy next door will turn on his stereo and this whump-whump-whump sound of the bass will start through the walls, and I get excited. I still want him to come through that door so bad.”

  Jerome was gone, but one of the many ways in which he lived on was in the courthouse, where his estate had turned into a wrestling match worthy of Dickens’s Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce. In his will, Jerome left $10,000 for his sons, William IV and Dunell, but named as guardians of that money, and the rest of the estate, his parents, Willie and Annie Bell. Cynthia Sanders, Dunell’s mother, who pursued Jerome in family court for five years before pinning down paternity and $800 in monthly child support, had sued Willie and Annie Bell for control of the money left to Dunell and some continuation of support from the estate. LaSonya Stewart Scrivens, mother of William Jerome Brown IV, who spent seven years chasing Jerome in family court before establishing paternity and winning a court-ordered $500 in monthly child support, had sued Willie and Annie Bell for control of the $10,000 and a continuation of support. Willie and Annie Bell had filed a petition asking that the Sun Bank and Trust Company be appointed legal guardians of the boys’ inheritances. Consumers Credit had sued for $7,575.22 that was due on Jerome’s account, First Fidelity Leasing Group, Inc., wanted $56,166.30 for the green Corvette destroyed in the accident, topping a long list of such claims connected to car loans, credit cards, unpaid legal fees, medical bills, unused airline tickets, leased jet-skis, back mortgage payments on condos and apartments, prepaid promotional appearances Jerome wouldn’t be making. The horde of petitioners all awaited some ruling on what Jerome had left among his scattered assets, a thicket of bank accounts in Brooksville, Miami, and Cherry Hill, New Jersey, brokerage accounts, cars, and real estate in Florida and New Jersey.

  Some answers were available by the spring of ’94. Over his fiveyear playing career, Jerome was paid about $2.3 million by the Eagles, and he earned tens of thousands more through product endorsements and public appearances. Of those amounts, all that remained at his death was $216,023. Lawyer for the Brown family, Charlie Luckie, said he was so surprised at the final tally, he asked Jerome’s agents to prepare a detailed accounting, which they did.

  “The figure is apparently accurate,” said Luckie. “Jerome went in style. He made a lot of money and he spent a lot of money.”

  Between NFL pension funds and social security, however, each of his sons was entitled to about $1,500 per month in benefits, money that the boys’ mothers and the Browns were vying to control. “The Browns just want to make sure that at least some of that money gets set aside for the boys,” said Luckie.

  Meanwhile, lawyers for Jerome’s estate sued General Motors, claiming that despite Jerome’s reputation for fast living and fast driving (the official accident report cited Jerome’s “careless” driving as the accident’s cause, and enclosed a printout showing twelve separate speeding or reckless driving citations issued to Jerome in Florida alone from ’86 through ’92), the accident that killed him and his nephew was caused when the Corvette’s airbag accidentally deployed, temporarily disorienting and blinding Jerome. If true, it would be the first known instance of an accidental airbag detonation causing a fatal accident, and would significantly enrich the various parties vying for the remnants of Jerome’s estate.

  A recent addition to the mess was a lawsuit by one Joseph Barnes, who joined with Jerome’s older half sister Gloria, mother of Gus, in demanding some compensation from Jerome’s estate for the death of the twelve-year-old. This last one hurt, because although Barnes was Gus’s biological father, “He ain’t never had one thing to do with that boy since the day he was born,” said Gloria, who was named as coplaintiff on the suit, as required by Florida law (parents must co-file). She said she wants nothing to do with it. For his part, Barnes claimed that he maintained a warm relationship with the boy despite Gloria’s hostility and despite the fact that they did not live together.

  Gloria’s grief over her son, the lost victim in Jerome’s tragedy, remained profound almost a year after the accident. She is a huge woman, bigger even than Jerome. She has an overbite, which makes her small face mildly concave. There is beauty, though, in her enormous sadness and the way she composes herself when asked to speak of it, resting two wide arms heavily on her knees and staring expressionlessly out the kitchen window of her tiny home in the projects. The deaths of her younger half brother and her oldest son make for a perplexing mix of pain and anger in Gloria, who had long felt— years before this happened—like someone left behind. She lives about three miles from Home Jerome, with its air-conditioning and swimming pool and ten acres and fine furnishings, crammed into a pink shoe box of a house with her remaining five children in the same neighborhood where she grew up (where Jerome grew up, too, and where her parents lived until the million-dollar payday and the DHM). Although Jerome was always kind to her (he bought her a car and from time to time gave her money), and she has no complaints about her father and stepmother, Gloria said she has always felt like an outcast. She has had her struggles with men, with alcohol, with drugs. She described herself as “unsophisticated,” concentrating on getting the six syllables out correctly. She didn’t intend to stay in this place. She had gone back to school to get her high-school equivalent and planned to earn a practical nursing degree, get a job, get off welfare. Despite the weight of bitterness and grief, Gloria is sturdy and determined.

  Still, it hurts her that her own most grievous loss was overshadowed by her famous half brother’s death.

  “He was everything he could be,” she said, speaking of Gus. “He was twelve years old. He was going to be thirteen in a couple of weeks. He sang in the church choir. He was an usher. He wanted to be a preacher. He wanted to be a pro football player. A couple of weeks before the accident, he said to me, ‘Mama, I’m gonna get you some things that you need. You ain’t gonna be beggin’ no more. You ain’t gonna be livin’ on the welfare no more.’ But Gus
never got the chance. The Lord has his own plan.”

  If Gus had a father, Gloria said, it was her father, Willie. During a troubled time some years ago, when the boy was small, Willie had taken him in as his own. He raised him up through kindergarten and first grade, and then Gloria got herself settled again and wanted him back.

  “It hurt,” recalled Willie. “Gloria is my daughter, and I always tried to help her, so I took Gus when she needed me to. It hurt me when she said she wanted him back. He was seven or eight years old. He wanted to stay with Mother and me always. But he went on back. I told him, ‘She’s your mother and you have to do what she says.’ But he was over here every chance he got. Not long before the accident we noticed he’d slipped his clothes back in over here. He still stayed with his mother during the week when he went to school, but on weekends and holidays he was always here.”

  The last time Gloria saw Gus, she had driven over to Home Jerome in the station wagon to bring him some clean shirts. He was mopping the kitchen floor.

  “I’ll see you later,” she told him.

  “If I’da known what was going to happen, I’d have snatched him up and carried him off out of there,” she said.

  Willie was leaving work on the day of the accident when he passed Jerome’s Corvette. Gus was in the passenger seat. Willie had gotten off work at 4:00 p.m. and was heading into town to stop at the bank.

  “I passed ‘em by, and Jerome, he throwed his hand up to me, so I throwed my hand back up to him,” Willie recalled.

  The accident happened at 4:15 p.m. Willie was on his way home from the bank when a policeman pulled up behind him and flashed his lights.