White Fang and the Golden Bear

by Joe Wessel

  Meanwhile, Mom’s friendship with them, and my friendship with Stu, opened the door for me to know Shula’s sons. Those relationships also bought me entry to the Dolphins’ training camp at Biscayne College (now known as St. Thomas University) in the summer before my junior year at Pace High School, which sat on the same plot of land as the college.

  Stu and I worked for janitorial services at Biscayne. We picked up jocks, took out trash, that sort of stuff. Our menial jobs didn’t mean much to us. What mattered were the afternoons when we’d get to work out with the Dolphins. That proved to be my first exposure to the NFL. That taste of the NFL made a lasting impression on a fifteen-year-old.

  Talk about a kid’s dream. What I experienced was a fantasy. I found myself getting to know the guys who comprised the team I’d watched and admired. When I’d played neighborhood football games, I’d pretended to be any one of the Dolphins players. They were the guys who had done all that winning. Shula’s first eight seasons coaching in Miami saw the Dolphins going 83–28. I’m sure Dad was just as excited as I was about my chance to be around them, though he low-keyed that kind of stuff. He’d been around celebrities, so he wasn’t particularly impressed by fame.

  Since we lived in Carol City, we were four to five miles north of Biscayne College. Miami Lakes was about ten miles away. That’s where Shula and Schnellenberger lived.

  Mom and Dad would occasionally get invited to parties over at their houses.

  Some of the players from the Dolphins’ undefeated season were still on the team when I first started hanging around them. Some were on the tail end of their careers. Did they ever talk about their undefeated season? Oh God yes. There were always references back to that 17–0 season, which seemed to have had a life of its own.

  Bob Kuechenberg served as the ringleader for a weekly Friday ritual during training camp. He and the other linemen shot the bull around a cooler stocked with Busch beer, which many would drink until they couldn’t move. Some of them smoked cigarettes. The equipment managers, Dan Dowe and Bob Monica, were all about the linemen. They catered to Kooch, Jim Langer, Larry Little, and Norm Evans. On occasion, they would let others in their group, but everybody knew the group belonged to the offensive line.

  As for Larry Csonka, I didn’t know him well. In fact, he terrified me. But he was always the prankster. He’s the one who put a little three-foot alligator in Coach Shula’s shower. He was always doing something to get the coaches riled up.

  Shula was old school. You never saw such a perfectionist. He strived for perfection in everything he did.

  Schnellenberger maintained a gruff manner. You always felt as though he were sizing you up, like, “Why are you here?” Adding to his persona, he smoked a pipe and had a deep voice, which helped sculpt a scary figure. Shula and Schnellenberger weren’t shy about bringing discipline to the team. The players talked about that fact all the time.

  Arnsparger came from another angle as a quiet leader. In contrast, Shula was a little more vibrant. Of course, this was my perspective as a kid. At the time, I didn’t have the coach’s lens I would later have.

  Defensive linemen Bob Baumhower and A.J. Duhe were friends and called themselves “Peanut Butter and Jelly,” because Baumhower was from University of Alabama and Duhe was from LSU. Of course, Stu and I mimicked them and started calling ourselves “Peanut Butter and Jelly.”

  I didn’t think much about how being around all of those guys affected me, as I was too wrapped up in the experience. Later I would realize that being around people who had some measure of fame helped me understand they weren’t any different from me. I think that taught me a good lesson—not to be intimidated by such public figures.

  Of course, the funny thing about childhood is that you never quite know where people are going to wind up. Around my junior year, I came to know Harry Wayne Casey, better known as KC, the leader of the world-renowned KC and the Sunshine Band.

  Though KC reigned as a megastar in the 1970s, to us, he was just the Schnellenbergers’ neighbor.

  I met him my junior year of high school at a party at the Schnellenbergers’ house.

  The Schnellenbergers were home, so I wouldn’t classify the party as a raucous high school party, but more like a hangout of sorts. After KC and I were introduced, we had a conversation about water skiing.

  I’d been water skiing since I was eight, thanks to Dad and his love of the water. When we went fishing, we’d carry along the water skis and ski on our way to shore after we put away the fishing gear. Dad was a good water skier, in part because he grew up at the beach, and he had all kinds of friendships he could tap into for different water activities, including water skiing. Through Dad’s relationships, I knew some people at a boat shop near our house. I told KC I’d get him a deal on a slalom ski if he wanted me to help him.

  At the end of the party, about ten of us went over to KC’s house, where I met some of his bandmates. It was there that KC took me up on my offer, and I got him a deal on a slalom ski. After that, we started water skiing with him on the lake where he lived.

  Even though KC was at the height of his popularity, fame didn’t go to his head. I always found him down-to-earth, and not some big shot with entitlement issues. He liked being around younger people—appropriate, I guess, because young people comprised his audience and were the ones buying his albums.

  He was on the road a lot back then, but when he wasn’t, we would water ski and hang out. He’d get us tickets to concerts in the Miami area, and yes, there were some pretty good parties we attended. Girls were never scarce, especially at his Christmas party. I was never “in the band,” but hanging out with them made me feel like I was at times.

  Bill Chastain spoke with KC during the writing process, and KC recalled the early days of our friendship:

  “Because I loved music so, I wanted to put myself in the position where I was just happy doing anything associated with what I loved. So I tried to share my personal philosophy with Joe. He was just a very ambitious guy. He was really into sports, and he really wanted to have a career in football.”

  I felt close to KC, and so did my family. As KC recalled, “Joe and I spent a lot of time together. We talked a lot. I got to know his family, too. The whole family is just very caring and kind. They devoted their lives to charities, and people. And being a part of the community. You just got that kind of feeling from them. Once you met them, you felt like a part of their family.”

  All these years later, I appreciated KC’s remarks, particularly regarding my family, who served a critical role in my formative years, though I never really considered their impact on my friends. When, ultimately, my janitorial job abruptly ended, leaving me without a job for the remainder of the summer, I feared the reaction of my parents (as most kids my age would have). Yet Dad emerged as my greatest ally. I think he remembered being young and having to work to make money. That experience had prevented him from doing some of the things that he’d wanted to do. He told me, “Joe, you’re going to have the rest of your life to work. You’ve got football. You keep working at your football, and I’ll make sure you’re taken care of from a work standpoint.” As usual, Dad was spot on. Not having to work eliminated one pressure in my life at that time and gave me more time to lift, work out, run, and throw to wide receivers. What a blessing afforded to me by Dad.

  CHAPTER 9

  High School to Prep School

  SO IT WAS THAT DAD opened the door for me to live and breathe sports. In fact, I couldn’t get enough of them. I played baseball, basketball, and football when I got to Monsignor Edward Pace High School, a Catholic school in Opa-locka.

  Baseball probably was my best sport, even though I didn’t make the team my freshman year. I’ve always had an “alpha male” personality, which made playing catcher on the baseball team, quarterback on the football team, and point guard on the basketball teams perfect matches.

  I’m particularly thankful that I played basketball, which allowed me to get to know John Stack
, who had transferred to Pace High and would become my best friend. In addition to a big heart, John had a pretty good jump shot that later earned him a scholarship to Biscayne College.

  Though we met through basketball, mostly I think John and I clicked due to of our love of music.

  We enjoyed the same bands, like Styx—“Come Sail Away”—and Boston. And we were late bloomers. We talked about girls a lot. My parents loved John, and he quickly became the brother who I never had and helped me through the chaos that is high school (though my friendship with Stu didn’t go away; we were still very close, because of football). Despite my prowess when it came to baseball and the social lessons gained on the basketball court, it was my experience as a football player that would come to define my athletic career. I’ll never forget my junior year, when we first ran the wishbone.

  I liked running that offense. I found it fun, and different. Air Force, Navy, and Georgia Tech run similar offenses today. We didn’t have the same type of athletes that some of the schools we played did. That offense helped even the playing field a little bit, since there weren’t a lot of teams running the offense. Defenses would have to be strict on their assignments to stop the wishbone. Some of the teams we played didn’t have the discipline to stick to their assignments. That’s not an easy task.

  We went 3–7 my junior season. Of course, I got blown up in the middle of that season against Pompano Ely. A guy hit me on my shoulder when I went to make a pitch on the option. That hit knocked me out of the game and broke my collarbone, which kept me from playing basketball indefinitely, though I did manage to recover from the injury quickly enough to play baseball my junior season, when we won the state championship.

  In the spring of 1979 prior to the start of my senior season, our head football coach, Dennis Hartnett, must have gotten some help from Howard Schnellenberger in changing our offense. We went from the wishbone to a passing attack. Talk about 180 degrees difference, as those offenses were the polar opposites of each other.

  Coach Schnellenberger had been the Dolphins’ offensive coordinator since the 1975 season. The 1978 season would be Howard’s last with the Dolphins before he moved on to make his mark as the head coach at the University of Miami in the fall of 1979.

  I never asked Howard if he got involved in our offense. I figured he met with Coach Hartnett, and he helped him formulate the pass patterns and the formations. Think about how lucky we were to have a guy who coached for a professional football team offering advice to our coach about how to run our offense!

  As the quarterback, I went from reading defenses, and either keeping the ball and turning up the field or handing off to a back, like I did while running the option, to where I found myself on most plays dropping back and throwing the football.

  Earl Morrall, my old friend from the days working around the Dolphins, had taught me how to better throw a football. How lucky could a kid get? Morrall had won the NFL’s Most Valuable Player Award for the 1968 season after stepping in for an injured Johnny Unitas and leading the Baltimore Colts to the Super Bowl. In the Dolphins’ undefeated season in 1972, Bob Griese broke his ankle in the fifth game of the year. Earl came in and led them to twelve of the seventeen straight wins. And this guy would be the guy giving me some direction and a better idea about what I was doing when I wanted to throw the ball? Wow.

  Earl had a unique throwing motion. He didn’t throw like most quarterbacks, who throw like baseball catchers. You wouldn’t see him just put the ball into position at his shoulder and snap off a throw like a catcher trying to throw out a base stealer. Everything with him was more of an above-the-shoulder throw. Earl guided me through everything, working on my footwork, my peripheral vision, and how to read defenses. Those little tips here and there helped more than anything.

  That year, thanks in part to Earl, things seemed to be shaping up for me. On the football field, the coaches had us switch to a full pro-style offense. I figured I could play my way to a football scholarship somewhere. After all, I loved playing football, and the new offense appeared to be the ticket that would make me more attractive to colleges scouting for talent. By the end of my senior season, I’d thrown for 1,500 yards and earned All-State honors.

  Due to these positive results, I thought that my future would include going to college on a football scholarship. Unfortunately, what I hoped for and reality produced different outcomes.

  I couldn’t understand why the colleges weren’t looking my way—frustrating for a kid who had dedicated so much time to the pursuit of sports, and thus the thought never occurred to me that my sports career had run its course. I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, acknowledge such a possibility. You could say I had a blind spot about the subject. My mind refused to go in that direction, at least initially.

  Ultimately, I first recognized it after we played Belle Glade High School. They had a good team, and I had completed 10 of 12 passes for 154 yards in the first half alone. Miami and Duke coaches had been at the game. I thought they’d at least come up and talk to me afterward. I mean, I was the kid who worked out with the Dolphins. Earl Morrall had been my private quarterback coach and was now the UM QB coach. Yet the college coaches weren’t interested. Nobody was. That took the wind out of my sails. I thought I’d done well and that my body of work would count for something. On top of that, schools were all over Stu trying to recruit him.

  One part of me felt happy for Stu, who signed a football scholarship at Duke University. Another part of me felt jealous, even though I knew that Stu was everything college coaches wanted. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought I could ride the coattails of Stu’s success, like colleges would want to include me in a package with him. I didn’t know what I’d later know when I became a coach: I wouldn’t have recruited a player like me, either.

  Yet my parents made sure I never quit, even though everything suggested I should. Aside from that, though, Dad seemed to feel that I needed to wear this one myself. Though I’m not sure that I made the right decision in the short term, I’m glad that Dad had encouraged me to figure out my options.

  Coach Schnellenberger just started his tenure as the head coach at Miami, so I went to him looking for some perspective on my situation. He suggested I go to either a prep school or a junior college, because I needed an extra year of preparation.

  Playing football at a prep school didn’t count against your college eligibility. Having no scholarship offers forced my hand, and I decided to attend prep school at Fork Union Military Academy in Fork Union, Virginia, starting in the fall of 1979, to continue pursuing my football dream.

  In hindsight, I probably should have thought more about playing baseball. I had more talent as a baseball player, and my size wasn’t an issue on the diamond. Football just ranked higher with me. Baseball simply wasn’t as fun.

  Fork Union would have some athletes from time to time. Basketball star Melvin Turpin attended Fork Union when I went there. He would become one of the University of Kentucky’s “Twin Towers” along with Sam Bowie, and he later played in the NBA. Future Heisman Trophy winner and No. 1 pick of the NFL draft, Vinny Testaverde, attended Fork Union after I left. Also, Eddie George attended Fork Union before winning the Heisman at Ohio State.

  Colonel Red Pulliam served as the commandant and head football coach at Fork Union. I’m telling you, Dad and Red were brothers from different mothers.

  Coach Pulliam was a man of few words and led through discipline. But just like Dad offered some tough love at times, once you peeled back the hard surface of Coach Pulliam, you found a compassionate man with a big heart. He cared about his players and wanted to see them succeed. The players’ success was the lifeblood of the school, but he genuinely cared for all of us.

  Prep schools could schedule games against college JV teams back then.

  We played against freshmen teams from Navy, North Carolina, North Carolina State, William & Mary, and Richmond.

  Fork Union proved to be the perfect destination for me, giving me another year
of football. Coach Schnellenberger had been spot on, as that’s exactly what I needed. While I worked hard at Fork Union to play well enough to reach my goal of playing college football, I experienced one of the saddest periods of my life.

  Several weeks before I was about to leave for school during the summer of 1979, I got the news that John Stack got diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia and would be heading to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

  We’d trained together all that summer, lifting weights, running, getting our bodies and minds ready for our next phase of life, a phase we all take for granted. Like many other teenagers, we thought we were bulletproof—only John wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest that summer.

  John went to Memphis the second or third week of August. I would have gone there with him, but I’d already left for Fork Union. His family sent me a picture of him. He wore a black Grateful Dead t-shirt with the skull and crossbones. The irony of the shirt hit me when I saw it.

  Back then, the mortality rate for leukemia stood at around 98 percent, meaning only 2 percent diagnosed with leukemia lived. They didn’t have the treatments then that they have now.

  When John first began getting treatment, I don’t think he thought he was going to die. He did know he had a grave disease, though. John fought like a warrior through the torture, pain, and devastation of his physical body. In between my football and classwork at Fork Union, I tried to visit him on two occasions. Each time I tried, he’d gotten sick and couldn’t be around others. His condition made him very susceptible to other complications.

  John remained positive through the first couple of months. Then he started making jokes about the girls, like, “Hey if I don’t make it, make up for it.” He tried to maintain a great attitude, but his condition worsened.

  In a letter to my parents that fall, I wrote the following about John:

  He is going to make it I know. He has too many people behind him. He needs us and we need him.