Sweetness (68 page)

On the morning of Saturday, July 31, Walter and Lita had a quiet breakfast in their hotel room before he, all alone, headed downstairs to the lobby of the McKinley Grand. From her room Quirk was on the phone, frantically finalizing the most awkward of seating arrangements. Because Walter and Connie were still assumed to be Walter and Connie, Quirk assigned her to the front row, alongside their children, Walter’s mother, Alyne, his brother, Eddie, and his sister, Pamela. Lita, meanwhile, was situated one row back, two down from Quirk and alongside Susan Ward, a public relations specialist who was working with Payton. “Susan was the buffer,” said Quirk. “I didn’t want to sit next to Lita. She was causing too much drama.”

Payton arrived at the front steps of the Hall shortly before the start of the event. He was visibly nervous and unfocused, and those few who were in the know had little doubt of the cause of his burden. Smooth and suave in public, Payton was terrified by the potential for center-stage embarrassment. Would Lita stand up and confront Connie? Would Lita storm off if he mentioned Connie in the speech? “Walter’s ideal was to hide Lita,” said Quirk. “But Lita wasn’t having that.”

At twelve fifty P.M., Jarrett rose to introduce Walter Payton into the Class of 1993. He felt his knees wobble and his hands quiver. This was a new level of pressure—thousands of eyes staring down upon him. His fourminute speech, however, was masterful. Nattily dressed in a beige blazer, white collared shirt, and colorful tie, Jarrett stood behind the podium and brought tears to his father’s eyes. “This is an historic event that my dad, Walter, and the other members of the Payton family will treasure for the rest of our lives,” he said in a high-pitched voice that cracked with adolescence. “My dad played thirteen seasons and missed only one game while breaking all the running back records. Not only is my dad an excellent athlete, he’s a role model. He’s my biggest role model and my best friend. I’m sure my sister will endorse this: We have a super dad.”

When Jarrett finished, his father rose and consumed him in a hug. Walter Payton strode to the podium, tears streaming beneath his sunglasses and onto his cheeks. He was overwhelmed. By his child. By the event. By the subplots. He had devoted so much time to pooh-poohing and minimizing the moment, and now that the moment was at hand, he found himself being hit by a tidal wave.

“Thank you . . . thank you,” he said as his voice broke and the applause died down. “You know, when I first got here, we made a wager who would be the first one to break down in tears and I was the first one to say that I wouldn’t and I was the first one to say how strong I was and everything else. As it goes to show that a lot of times when you are amongst your peers such as these great athletes, you try to be something that you’re not. And after hearing my son get up here and talk, I don’t care if I lose the bet.”

Payton proceeded to give an OK—not great—speech, packed with the requisite shout-outs to coaches like Charles Boston (“[He] took me under his wing and taught me the fundamentals of football.”) and Bob Hill (“[He] showed me what hard work and determination would do if you put forth the effort.”) and the standard acknowledgment that football is a team game, and
were it not for so-and-so and so-and-so I would certainly not be here today.
With his girlfriend of five years sitting two rows away, and his wife of seventeen years sitting one row away, toward the end of his remarks Payton provided people with what they expected: “I want to stand up here and say that in this point of my life, that Jarrett, Brittney, and your mom, you guys will not have to worry about anything in your life no matter what the situation or how it ends. Because just as running up that hill and trying to catch runners such as Jim Brown and Gale Sayers motivated me to do more than I thought I possibly could do, you three will motivate me to make sure that your lives are happy and fulfilled.”

The camera flashed to Connie, who nodded appreciatively. Lita, almost directly behind her, surely felt her heart sink. How many times had Walter told her that he couldn’t stand his wife? That he desperately wanted to leave her, but there were just too many complications? “It was a weird choice of words,” said Quirk. “But Walter had put on a show about his marriage for years. It came very naturally to him.”

When the ceremony finally came to a close, Payton was able to take a deep sigh of relief. He had survived. It wasn’t easy, but he had survived. With all eyes on his every move, he approached Connie for a hug and a kiss, then put his arms around his mother and his children. Lita, meanwhile, walked back to the hotel, alone. She plopped down onto a couch in the lobby, where she chatted with one of the few Payton acquaintances aware of her status. Holmes, meanwhile, returned to his room, still furious over the way Payton had ignored his family. After about forty-five minutes, his phone rang. It was Connie. “Bud,” she said, “I was wondering if I could ask a favor of you?”

“Sure,” Holmes replied.

“Well,” said Connie, “I’d like you to introduce me to Lita.”

Silence.

“Really?” said Holmes, who—along with most others—had no inkling Connie knew of Lita’s existence. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” said Connie. “I am.”

Moments later, Connie came to the McKinley Grand lobby and stood in front of a woman who was thirteen years her junior. “I introduced the two of them, and they sat and talked for quite a while,” said Holmes. “They were friendly, chatty. There was no hair pulling. It was a very civil understanding.” At one point, Connie looked Lita in the eyes and said, bluntly, “You can have him. He doesn’t want me or the children.”

By the time Payton arrived at the hotel, Connie and Lita had parted ways. He was shocked to learn of the meeting, but not entirely surprised. Canton was a small town, and the McKinley Grand wasn’t so grand. If anything, Payton felt a quiet sense of relief. After tiptoeing around for four days, the truth had finally come out. And while Connie seemed to hate him for being a skirt-chasing dog and Lita seemed to hate him for the speech, it was almost time to pack up and return to Chicago.

CHAPTER 24

DEPRESSION

ON AN EARLY MORNING IN THE FALL OF 1992, BILL WANDRO, BOYS BASKETBALL coach at Hoffman Estates High School, was told there was a man in the hallway who was looking to volunteer his time.

“He’s waiting to talk to you,” a secretary said. “He wants to help.”

How often had Wandro heard this one? At this upscale suburban high school of 1,995 students, every other father seemed to fancy himself the next John Wooden, itching to impart his (usually flawed) knowledge upon the fifteen boys who played for the Hawks. The profile was a familiar one:
middle-aged, bored, overly competitive, convinced he knew more than the head coach did.
Nonetheless, Wandro went to meet the aspiring coach. “So the guy starts talking to me and he says, ‘I’d really like to lend a hand,’ ” said Wandro. “I asked if his son attended the school and he said no, but he loved basketball and understood the game. We’re talking for two or three minutes before a kid comes up and says to him, ‘Can I have your autograph?’ He signs and I look at the name on this scrap of paper.

“ ‘Holy cow,’ I say. ‘You’re Walter Payton!’ ”

When Wandro asked why
the
Walter Payton would want to grace a mediocre suburban high school team with his presence, Payton explained that while football was his trademark, basketball was his love. The truth was a tad more complicated. Having been pulled over for speeding yet again (Payton was stopped for driving above the speed limit more than fifty times during his years in Chicago, yet almost always drove off with merely a warning), Payton was ordered by an unsympathetic judge to partake in six months of community service. Two weeks later, after undergoing a background check, Payton was introduced to Wandro’s dumbfounded players as the newest volunteer assistant. Was this merely the case of a celebrity putting in his time? Hardly. “He came to every practice six days a week, two hours per day, plus every game,” Wandro said. “He also coached the junior varsity team. He was a great coach—he really related with the kids. He was genuine with them.” Payton encouraged the players to embrace wins with euphoric giddiness and take losses as experiences to learn from. He told stories of his Bears days, but never, it seemed, as bragging material. There was always a lesson. A moral. He convinced Wilson, a corporation he endorsed, to spring for new uniforms for both the varsity and JV squads—flashy royal blue-andorange duds that, according to Wandro, “had our kids feeling like a million bucks.”

Inside Hoffman Estate’s gymnasium, Payton seemed to take pride in
not
behaving as a typical superstar athlete. When someone tossed a towel on the floor, he picked it up. When the janitors showed up to start sweeping, he grabbed a broom. Toward the end of every practice he and an assistant coach named Dan Davis engaged in spirited games of H-O-R-S-E. “We’d play two hundred thousand dollars a shot, and I got him down one-point-five million,” Davis said. “One day he comes in and writes me a check for one-point-five million dollars. All the kids are going ape. I put the check in my pocket and we practice. When practice ends he comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, Dan, don’t forget about giving that check back.’ ”

Throughout the 1992–93 and 1993–94 seasons, Payton was heavily involved, plotting strategy, working the sidelines, staring down referees. He continued to participate the two ensuing years, but in a decreased capacity. There was personal business to attend to and a pair of kids to raise and the general business that is life.

In 1995–96, Wandro coached the Hawks to the Class AA state tournament in Peoria. Though Payton would only come to one or two practices a week, he was still a contributor. One day, shortly before the team was scheduled to depart for the big event, he arrived at the gymnasium and gave a rousing pep talk about commitment and trust and what it meant to be a champion. Wandro’s players sat rapt throughout the fifteen-minute lecture, and as Payton neared the end he slipped off his Super Bowl ring and said, “If you don’t believe you can do something, you won’t ever get it done.” With that, he handed the ring to one of the awestruck players, a senior center named Nick Abruzzo. “Nick, I want you to hold onto the ring for the weekend,” Payton said. “I trust you, just like you need to trust one another.”

As the members of the Hawks wandered off to the locker room, Wandro pulled Payton aside. “Walter, are you serious?” he asked. “I’ve coached these high school kids for years, and I wouldn’t trust most of them with my CD player. You just gave one your Super Bowl ring.”

Payton shrugged.

Later that night, Abruzzo hosted a pasta party for his teammates at his house. The players traded turns ogling the jewelry until it was time for everyone to leave. “OK,” Abruzzo said, “who’s got the ring?”

Silence.

“Seriously, guys, where’s the ring?”

Silence.

“Fellas . . .”

“It vanished,” said Abruzzo. “It just disappeared.”

The Abruzzo family spent the night searching high and low for the treasured hardware. They dug through pillows, moved tables, emptied cabinets, shook canisters. Nothing. They called the local police department, whose officers questioned a handful of the players. Nothing.

Two days later, shortly before the team was scheduled to board a Peoriabound bus, Abruzzo visited Payton at his office. With tears welling up in his eyes, he explained what had happened. A glum look crossed Payton’s face. He was crushed—but refused to let it fully show. “You know, Nick, I’ve lost that ring a bunch of times myself,” he said. “I once even left it in a hotel room and forgot about it. Don’t worry, it’ll turn up.”

Burdened by the disappearance, Hoffman Estates lost its quarterfinal game to Westinghouse, 42–41. Upon returning to the office, Wandro swallowed hard, picked up the telephone, and called Payton.

“Walter,” he said, “I feel just terrible about this. I don’t know what to say.”

Once again, Payton tried his best to play the incident down. Inside, however, he was heartbroken and his association with the Hoffman Estates basketball team would soon end. Through his remaining years, he remained convinced that one of the kids had swiped his jewelry, then lied about it. “It was never fully about the ring,” said Davis. “I think Walter simply felt taken advantage of.”

So what actually happened? On the night the ring went missing, some of the Hoffman Estates players were goofing around on a brown fake leather couch in the Abruzzos’ basement. In the midst of the scrum, Payton’s ring somehow slipped behind a cushion and into a pocket created by a torn swath of fabric.

Two years later the Abruzzos, moving to a new home, let it be known that they were discarding much of their old furniture. Phillip Hong, a graduating Hoffman Estates High senior who, as a linebacker for the Hawks, wore uniform No. 34 in honor of Walter Payton, claimed a worn brown couch that nobody else wanted. He brought it with him to Purdue University, and for the next three years the couch was a fixture in his various dwellings. “It came to college with me every year,” Hong said. “From Chicago to West Lafayette, Indiana, from moving truck to moving truck.”

One evening, in the midst of his junior year in the spring of 2001, Hong was sitting on the couch, watching TV. His red-and-tan Doberman pinscher, Bailey, was clawing into the underside of the couch, trying to retrieve a wedged-in chew toy. “Bailey was laying on his side digging with his front paw,” said Hong. “In doing so, he ripped the lining out from under the couch.” Hong dropped to his knees, stuck his arm beneath the couch, and wiggled his hand. He expected to grab a saliva-coated ball. Instead, Phillip Hong grasped Walter Payton’s Super Bowl ring.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he thought to himself. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

A couple of days later, Hong was invited to Connie Payton’s home, where he gladly handed over the lost jewelry. She gave him a framed photograph of her late husband, and took Hong to what once served as his hero’s private office. “I got to sit in his chair,” he said. “That blew my mind.”