by S. L. Price
In February 2003, the two-year grand jury investigation sparked by Naim’s slaying—expected to unveil widespread police misconduct—resulted instead in eight low-level arrests, the most prominent those of a Beaver County sheriff’s deputy and four current and former county jail guards. And though Short, the highest-ranking police official tagged with misconduct, had resigned the year before, he remained a lively topic. One fresh—and reported—allegation was a 1995 incident that had two unnamed associates extorting a suspected drug dealer, Rick Hill, on Short’s behalf; he allegedly wanted $2,500 a month to let Hill keep dealing in Aliquippa.
A month later, Short arrested Hill. While he was in jail, the same two associates and a future deputy sheriff allegedly told Hill’s girlfriend that Short would drop the charges if she gave him $2,500 and agreed to have sex with him. She declined. Missing from the court papers and newspaper account was one key detail: Hill’s girlfriend at the time was Della Rae Campbell. In 1993, after finishing off a five-year sentence for armed robbery of an undercover narcotics agent, Rick Hill had stepped in, paired up with Della, and raised Tommie, the future Quips star and NFL player, while Tommie Campbell Sr. and Short—the boy’s two possible fathers—were nowhere to be found.
“Rick Hill is my father,” said Tommie Campbell Jr. “He’s been with me since I was five years old. When I scored my first touchdown he was there to pick me up. Biological? Who knows? It doesn’t matter. He’s the only father figure. He’s the only true dad. I still call him ‘Dad’ to this day.”
Short was never disciplined or charged with the alleged extortions—nor for misconduct while serving as a law enforcement officer. While Della insists that the published account is “exactly right,” and both she and Hill say that they made their sworn accusations before the grand jury, they don’t agree on the aftermath. Della says that the couple suffered no retaliation. Hill says that Short’s maneuvering resulted in another stint in prison. “With him getting me out of the way, maybe he felt he could get back with her and have Tommie,” Hill said. “Because everyone seen that Tommie as a child had great potential.”
Short dismisses the entire scenario. “Nothing that Rick and Della are saying had any merit whatsoever,” he said. Of Della’s claim that he had demanded sex with her in exchange for Hill’s freedom, he chuckled and said, “I’d already had sex with her many times before that.
“See, I recognize Della for who she is: a strange creature, man. Wasn’t so much when I was [dating] her, but over the years she got to be. And Rick was just a drug dealer who was trying to save himself from going to jail for three years. This dude didn’t have twenty-five dollars to rub together—let alone twenty-five hundred. He couldn’t bring together twenty-five hundred dollars to save his fuckin’ life.”
By then, though, little Short said or did could make a difference. Naim’s murder and the grand jury investigation, all the rumors and allegations, had balled together into one indelible conclusion. “Oh, yeah,” said Sherm McBride, Short’s longtime friend and Aliquippa’s offensive coordinator. “A lot of people thought he was dirty.”
The loss of high position, the airing of so many allegations, would’ve broken others. But more than a decade later, Short remains Aliquippa High’s loudly defiant defensive coordinator, putting on a face that allows no one to think that the resignation, the asides from former cop colleagues, have had much effect. “Flip this, if you will,” Short said. “If I was really such an asshole—and with all the people that I knew who worked for the state police, the state attorney general’s office, the confidential informants, police officers, their methods—why wouldn’t I be doing all that shit right now?”
He certainly had the chance—and personal reasons—to do so. Years later, a task force combining the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the state police’s Office of Drug Law Enforcement unleashed “Operation Enough Is Enough,” the campaign against Aliquippa’s largest crack cocaine ring that eventually resulted in the arrest of seventeen men. The investigation was led by state trooper Mike Warfield, the former Quips quarterback and Short’s onetime protégé. The ringleader was Anthony “Ali” Dorsett, who had ignored Short’s punch in the face and ended up marrying Peep’s daughter, Kiki, in 2004. They had two children, and Short had to admit that Ali took good care of his family.
Warfield had tracked Ali Dorsett for four years; in the months leading up to the arrests his inquiry had blossomed into a high-profile, multipronged operation. And in truth, he was worried how Peep would take it. Warfield thought he knew: working under Short’s wing in 1992 and ’93, he had never seen one instance of favoritism, much less corruption. But this was family now, and he owed Short. Warfield wouldn’t know anything until the shit started flying. “I didn’t want to lose Peep’s friendship, because of what he did for me,” Warfield said.
Short had sources; he could feel what was coming. But repeatedly, he told Warfield about his son-in-law: “He shouldn’t have been doing it. You do your job.” His message was so emphatic, in fact, that before the feds made the arrests in December 2008, Warfield—after, notifying his supervisor and, he says, receiving approval—talked to Short about “Enough Is Enough.” Peep could have sent out a warning, but “nothing has ever been leaked,” Warfield said. “Nothing has ever been said—and these people are close to him.
“I changed his daughter’s life. . . . But Peep didn’t hesitate. He knew, to a degree, what [Ali] was doing to the community. And what he had taught me, as a police officer, was no matter who it is—family or not, friends or not—you do your job.”
That coolness remains. To hear Peep Short, it’s easy to think that none of this touched him. Those who know him know better. “He loved that job, his standing in the community,” Patrick said. “I know it hurt him deeply. He talks about law enforcement sometimes, and you still see the passion. He wants to do something, but has to do it by other means. Coaching is one of them.”
But even that can be complicated. The news of Short’s alleged extortion of Rick Hill and his girlfriend went public before Tommie Campbell’s junior season at Aliquippa. If the boy ever heard the news, no one could tell; Hill says that he didn’t tell Tommie about the couple’s testimony to the grand jury until after his high school career ended. And if he ever resented Short’s supposed squeeze on Hill or his mom, Campbell never showed it. He played Short’s own position—defensive back—under Short his last two years at Aliquippa, and later, at Pitt, even wore Short’s number, 29. To honor Peep? “Yeah,” Tommie said. “You can say that.”
But he doesn’t say anything more. Even a decade later, with Hill and his mother broken up, with Hill moved away to Kentucky and his ex-coach and maybe-dad now available to him anytime, Rick Hill remains the man Tommie looks up to. Peep? Campbell does play golf with the man when he comes home to Aliquippa. They see each other often. But, publicly, he calls him “Coach Short,” and nothing else.
17
Last Ones Laughing
Western Pennsylvania, by the twenty-first century, had become legendary among football cognescenti for producing greatness—quarterbacks Johnny Unitas and Dan Marino from Pittsburgh, Joe Namath from Beaver Falls, Jim Kelly out of East Brady, Joe Montana from Monongahela—with everyone crediting the area’s steely backbone and coal-dusted lungs, the dead or dying industries that somehow made its kids hungrier, more desperate, tougher. But few places in in the state, much less America, kept spitting out talent like Aliquippa. Its seeming twin across the river, Ambridge, could claim just one NFL star, Detroit Lions linebacker Mike Lucci, and he’d retired in 1973.
Just in 2003, Aliquippa had native son Ty Law starring for New England’s record-setting defense, intercepting Colts QB Peyton Manning three times in the AFC Championship game and winning his second Super Bowl. Aliquippa had Sean Gilbert finishing up his solid eleven-year NFL career with the Raiders, and so what if his teammate, eight-year NFL vet Anthony Dorsett Jr., went to school in Texas? He w
as born in Aliquippa, too, when his dad, Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett, was a high school freshman.
“All those examples helped me, because you see that you can make it,” Darrelle Revis said. “It seems like you’re attached to it when you see them play on Sundays, or you see Mike Ditka on TV. You’re proud: He’s one of us. He’s a Quip. He’s an Aliquippian. That’s the best of the best, being one of the best football players in the world, doing one of the best jobs. And when you see somebody doing it, you say, ‘I want to be like him.’”
Of course, Revis also had examples closer to hand. Uncle Mark Gilbert, a former Division 1-A basketball player at Duquesne, was a force in keeping young Darrelle safe and sound and taught him plenty about playing high-level hoops. And Sean Gilbert, in summers or on the phone during his seasons with the Panthers and Raiders, had Darrelle churning hard from sophomore year on. “I remember plain as day my uncle Sean working me out, and talking me through stuff: how to be a football player,” Revis said. “Just try to be the best you can. If you give a hundred percent, then there’s no regret when you’re done.
“He used to have me in some intense workouts, but I never shied away. If he walked in here now and said, ‘Let’s go work out’? I’d go. I always challenged myself to try and match his level. My uncle, NFL player? If he wants to work out, I’m going. So I can show him that I can keep up with him.”
The Quips went 8-3 and 10-2 his first two seasons. By 2003, Revis’s senior year, he owned the game. Running back, defensive back, kick returns: He did it all. Zmijanac had him two years in basketball; Revis was his backbone there, too. “Quiet, always worked hard, never missed practice,” Zmijanac said. “Late once: went to get his tuxedo for the prom and I think he had a flat tire coming back. Totally apologetic. Darrelle Revis is the finest young man I’ve ever known. He is exactly what you see. There are young men I put in the same class, but I’ve never met one finer. What you see is him.
“Never, never, never did I see him act any way that I would be . . . well, there was one time . . . ashamed of him. The first game he played basketball for me, we played man-to-man full-court press the whole game. We were playing Hopewell, and down twelve, fourteen points in the first quarter; he called time-out on his own. I stormed to mid-court and we had a discussion: You aren’t running anything! We won before you got here and we’re going to win after you leave. Don’t ever do that again. We’re going to press them until they submit. We ended up winning by twelve or fourteen and he came after and said, ‘I’m sorry.’”
His legend-making moment came in 2003. No one in Aliquippa history—not Ernie Pitts, Ditka, his uncle Sean, Josh Lay, not Monroe Weekley—has ever come close. In the state championship final in Hershey, Pennsylvania, against Northern Lehigh—a team that had allowed just 47 points all season—Revis rushed for 91 yards and three TDs, the last one the game-winner. He returned another kickoff 89 yards for the score. He recovered a blocked field goal and ran 69 yards for another. He scored five touchdowns in all in Aliquippa’s 32-27 win, intercepted a pass and returned it 33 yards, and even completed a pass, for 39 yards. Oh, and he had five solo tackles, too.
“He played like Jim Thorpe,” Zmijanac said then. “That’s who he was like. He was Jim Thorpe.”
“I don’t know how I did that,” Revis said. “People don’t really know the inside-inside: that week of school? I was sick. I didn’t practice the whole week; I was throwing up and everything. I went to school a couple days and they would tell me to go home, I was so sick. Our game was on Saturday and it snowed, so they gave us an extra day and we played on Sunday. And Saturday’s when I started feeling better. Took medicine and . . . I don’t know. It was awesome.”
Two days later, Aliquippa was due to play archrival Beaver Falls in basketball. “There is no way I’m going to miss that game,” Revis had said on the football field after the state title win. It’s Aliquippa tradition for its best footballers to finish the season and instantly suit up for basketball: Ty Law, Josh Lay, and Darrelle’s uncle Sean had done it. Zmijanac had just stopped coaching double duty, was no longer in charge of hoops; it would’ve been no shock to see Revis and the rest of the footballers sit out. Problem was, Beaver Falls supporters and players counted on that, and took to the Internet to crow.
“They got on AOL, later in the night, talking trash: ‘We heard your starters are not playing. We gonna crush y’all!’” Revis said. “So we were like, We’re going to surprise ’em.” He made sure that everyone went to class on Tuesday, to make sure the best team was eligible. “Everybody was in on it . . . and we came.”
The home crowd, grateful for his football performance and expecting little else, gave him a standing ovation during introductions. And despite just one basketball practice—his first time on court in seven months—Revis then scored 36 points to lead Aliquippa to an 86-82 overtime win; alone, in a span of forty-eight hours, he had scored 66 points, won a state title; he received another standing ovation at game’s end. He had done everything a high school athlete could hope to do, and afterward had just one thought: Man, I’m tired. Everyone else around Revis, though, was smiling, hollering, declaring him the greatest Quip yet.
Such glory is plenty seductive. But like few others, Revis recognized early the trap of being a hometown god, had seen too many former Quip stars return, year after year, to the familiar streets because—even when it horrifies—there’s no place like home.
“I remember telling my mom one time, ‘We’re going to make it out of here,’” Revis said. “Because those guys on the corner talk the same stuff—I was this good in football or basketball!—and have nothing to show for it. I didn’t want to be in the same position, sitting somewhere and saying, ‘I could’ve done this or that.’ Well, why didn’t you do it? Why didn’t you prepare yourself?
“I was motivated then, I still am now: to get out of a place I didn’t want to be stuck in forever. That’s Aliquippa. I love it, I will always go back, but I always had a bigger picture of life and where I wanted to go and do. I knew what I wanted and was determined to get it. If I didn’t? Then I’d done the best I could. But I told my mom: I am not going to be stuck on this corner.”
When Revis graduated in 2004, everything about Aliquippa was getting older and, worse, smaller; the demographic death spiral now seemed unstoppable. Total population was heading south of 10,000, 25 percent were sixty-two or older, 22 percent were living below the poverty line, enrollment at the high school—amid what would become a 50 percent plummet over the decade—had shrunk to 465. The pool of boys showing up for football in late summer kept evaporating, from the edges in. The best eleven Quips could still compete with anyone at AAAA—let alone their own Class AA—but one ankle twist could spell disaster. Talk of dropping to Class A didn’t spark the same scorn anymore.
Size matters, of course. A shrinking tax base means slashed public services, which leads to increased crime, declining schools, shoddiness in the public square. The Aliquippa school system, saddled with a special education population of 20 percent, regularly finished near the bottom of the state’s rankings in math, science, reading, and writing. “It’s a national issue, illiteracy in the black community, and it’s alive and well here,” said Dave Wytiaz, Aliquippa’s superintendent of schools since 2010. “I could show you the data, the test scores; there’s no question why we’ve struggled academically. That’s one of the things I’ve been trying to change. It’s a literacy factor.
“Looked at objectively: You can see a community like Aliquippa in its entirety going away, like the dinosaurs. I don’t know if I can picture Aliquippa forty, fifty years from now. I love the community. Will I miss it once my mother is gone? I don’t know. There’s really nothing to hold me here. What I do now is look at these kids—white or black and they’re seven and eight years old, truly innocent—facing conditions and situations where it’s not their fault. It’s not fair. A lot of the worst isn’t seen—some things that’ll turn your st
omach: living conditions, everything. And at the same time there’s this will, this . . .”
Wytiaz stopped, clapped his hands together, loudly, then gripped them tight. “Together,” he said.
And more and more, the entity serving as glue and haven and rallying point was football. But even that was no guarantee of safety, no predictor of success: kids who studied hard and avoided trouble were destroyed by Aliquippa’s random swipes; others immersed in crime became caring, productive citizens. “Half of them make it, and half of them don’t—and you never know which half it’s going to be,” Zmijanac said. “It’s joyful, and then it breaks your heart—all in the same day.”
The stakes made football’s usual my-way-or-the-highway mentality useless. Zmijanac figures he loses a good half-dozen players to the street each year, and has a long history of benching stars. But the team keeps an open door. “If he wants to come back, we’ll always bring him in,” Sherm McBride said. “No matter how many times they fall. Our job is not to give up on them.”
And on the most fundamental level, the team kept people going. At the turn of the century, McBride and the rest of the coaching staff on the ground in town realized that too many kids, with nothing in the fridge at home, were coming to school on empty stomachs. Only the subsidized lunches—more than 80 percent of the students were eligible—kept some from dropping out altogether. Athletes were no different.
“The football field was my sanctuary: I didn’t have to worry about nothing,” said Willie Walker, a star lineman on Revis’s 2003 state championship team. “They fed me. That was pretty much the biggest issue growing up, just being hungry. They fed me, showed me love, and gave me discipline. I got a friend Eric Veney, our Most Valuable Player in 2003, and never missed a day, not one, in all of high school. I missed a lot of days because I was doing other stuff for money and I said, ‘Eric, why not?’ He said, ‘Because I wasn’t going to miss no food.’ So it wasn’t just me.