Gordy honored his son’s wishes, admiring his attitude. He and his former wife had raised their boys to work hard. None expected to be handed rewards without earning them.
“I had never had surgery, never been knocked out on anesthesia before, so it was scary,” Rob admitted. “For the first three days, my whole back was stiff. I wondered if I would heal, but you feel better every week. I just chilled for a month and a half, sitting on the couch. That’s basically all you can do.”
Bill Gorman is an assistant basketball coach at Williamsville North High School, where Rob played varsity basketball for three seasons. Like all of Rob’s coaches, Gorman recognized that he was dealing with a special athlete. But more than just winning games, he was concerned about educating Rob for a life in professional sports.
“We talked about the concept that as an athlete, any success you have can be taken from you in a second because of injury,” Gorman recalled. “When he told me he might not play anymore because of his back, I felt like crying. When you’re in the spotlight, things are going great, and things were going great for him. I told him that now he was going to find out who his true friends were.”
“He was nervous, there’s no doubt,” Gordy said. “But we never had a conversation about what he should do if he couldn’t play football. That’s not the way we think.”
The insurance policy was written in such a way that Rob could proceed with surgery and play for three games to test the recovery. If the injury was not healed, he could step away from the sport and still collect the money, although he could never play again. The surgery, however, was a calculated gamble.
“This is how I looked at it at the time,” Gordy recalled. “If he went back to college and the operation didn’t work, he had to leave the sport before the third game. If it wasn’t right in the second game, and he couldn’t play, we could still get money. I believed if he made it to the NFL and got past the third game, even into the fifth or sixth before something went wrong, he’d still get a year’s pay. It wouldn’t have been four million, but it would have given him something.”
As any football fan knows, the story turned out well. Not only did Rob get through the surgery, he was drafted by the New England Patriots in 2010 and made an immediate impact as a rookie, catching ten touchdown passes. The following season, as a twenty-two-year-old, he shattered tight end records, recording ninety receptions, 1,327 yards, and seventeen touchdowns.
Along the way, Rob became a bona fide superstar. His signature ball spike after a touchdown became known as “Gronking,” a term that found its way into the Urban Dictionary. He sat for ESPN interviews. He created controversy by appearing shirtless in a photograph beside a porn star who was wearing his jersey, both of them smiling coyly. Rap singers referenced him in their lyrics. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to be near Rob Gronkowski.
To look at Rob during that season, it was hard to imagine back pain had nearly brought him to a halt two years earlier. At 265 pounds, standing at six feet six inches, Rob has a square-shaped head topped by short brown hair, his features chiseled. He resembles Ivan Drago, the Russian heavyweight from Rocky IV, played by a young Dolph Lundgren. His neck is muscular, shoulders wide, biceps bulging. Simply put, Rob was bigger and stronger than most everyone else.
“Rob became an overnight rock star,” his father said, reflecting on the 2011 season. “I looked at the circus around him, and many times I thought, I can’t believe I raised this kid.”
Those who have known him for years are amused but not surprised by Rob’s breakout season. His personality is lighthearted and silly, but it masks a fiercely competitive fire that was nurtured by growing up with four brothers. His ascent into the NFL record books, many believe, is simply the next step in a natural progression.
“Rob just has this fun streak about him,” observed Mike Mammoliti, Rob’s high school football coach during his sophomore and junior years. “He was a big, happy-go-lucky kind of kid who just kept getting bigger.”
Mammoliti recalled one snapshot that embodied Rob’s personality. It was opening night at Williamsville North High School’s new athletic field.
“Rob was playing defensive end on the far side,” Mammoliti said. “The other team’s quarterback pitched the ball, and they ran a toss toward our bench. From the sideline, I saw Rob coming toward me, eyes as big as proverbial coke bottles, and he was smiling. He hit the runner and blew this kid up. He was laughing the whole time. He drove this kid two or three yards from the sideline all the way into our bench and then got up laughing. Robbie hit him while he was laughing and walked back to the huddle, laughing. I remember thinking, this kid just loves to play.”
Despite his superstar status, Rob isn’t the first member of his family to experience athletic success. It’s doubtful he’ll be the last. With a tight-knit clan of one tough dad and five tough boys, growing up Gronk has always meant being pushed and pushing back, fighting and scrapping, showing off to gain bragging rights without letting their egos become inflated.
Considering all they have experienced, the results are impressive.
The story goes back to the 1970s, long before Gordy, the patriarch, had earned the nickname Papa Gronk.
Gordy as a college football player.
Five sons cluster around Gordy, circa 1995. Clockwise, from top left: Dan, Gordie, Rob, Goose, and Chris.
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Gordy: Papa Gronk
“This kid’s got the biggest heart of anyone I coach . . .”
—FRANK VIGGATO, HIGH SCHOOL BASEBALL COACH
GORDY GRONKOWSKI IS THE patriarch of a family of professional athletes. With his former wife, Diane, he has five sons: Gordie, born in 1983; Dan, born in 1985; Chris, born near the end of 1986; Rob, born in 1989; and Glenn (Goose), born in 1993.
In addition, Gordy is the owner of G&G Fitness, a chain of fifteen stores between Buffalo and Cincinnati that sells workout equipment to individuals and professional sports teams. He played college football at Syracuse University in the 1970s and early ’80s, and was briefly on the roster of the New Jersey Generals in the short-lived USFL during the 1980s.
By all accounts, he has lived success. But Gordy admits his life was on a fast track to nowhere for much of his childhood. Things turned around after his first year of high school.
“When I was in junior high, I was a punk, fighting all the time,” he recalled. “I did everything imaginable. I never played Little Loop football because I was too fat.”
Gordy grew up in West Seneca, New York, a suburb south of Buffalo. Athletic achievements stretched deep into the family’s roots. Gordy’s grandfather, Ignatius Gronkowski, competed as a cyclist in the 1924 Olympics in France. But his father, Ignatius Jr., was a liquor salesman whose drinking problem kept him distant from his son. Gordy’s mother, Irene, was a stay-at-home mother who worked at a nursing home later in life.
“There weren’t many organized sports for kids in those days,” Gordy said. “We’d go around the corner to Centennial Park and play pickup games constantly. We made up all these different rules for the silly games we played.”
As a freshman at West Seneca West High School, Gordy’s grades hovered just above failure. Because he wanted to stay active, he became a member of the football, basketball, and baseball teams. But in his mind, athletics and academics fell worlds apart. Sports were a way to pass time, far better than sitting in a boring classroom.
He never truly connected with his father.
“My dad was very talented,” Gordy said. “He was a great athlete, he could sing, he earned perfect marks on his report card. But he wasn’t there for me. He pissed it all away. At the same time, I do appreciate him, because he put me on this earth. My dad made my brother and I into tough guys. Not intentionally, but we should thank him for that. If we lived a different lifestyle, we might never have known the other side.”
It was Gordy’s older brother, Glenn, who provided inspiration.
“He was two years ahead of me, and he was a brainiac,” Gor
dy said. “He was six eight but only weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. He was kind of nerdy, hitting the books every day. He was a junior when I was a freshman. I looked up to him.”
Around that time, recruitment letters arrived in their mailbox, requesting that Glenn consider several colleges. Academic scholarships were offered, but the combination of brains and athletics opened doors. Most were Division III schools, yet they were invitations to college at a reduced rate. Gordy was impressed.
“That’s when I started waking up,” he said. “Was I going to act like an idiot all my life or was I going to prove myself? My dad was a heavy drinker, and I didn’t want to go down that path. In the back of my head, I thought about going into the military. But my brother inspired me to come out of my shell and push myself.”
“He never studied much, that’s for sure,” said Glenn Gronkowski, Gordy’s brother. “Growing up, Gordy was a little butterball, small and chubby. When we played pickup games, he’d get pushed around, and we had to coax him to try again. But he started to work at things, and after a while, lifting weights and getting strong, he developed into a pretty good athlete. It was the same with his schoolwork. He didn’t take it seriously at first, but then he picked it up as he grew older.”
In a short time, Gordy matured and began to apply himself. His tenth-grade average shot up to 90 percent, a significant jump from the 65 percent of a year earlier. (When he graduated in 1977, his overall grade point average was 86. “It would have been higher if I didn’t screw up that first year,” he reflected.)
Meanwhile, older brother Glenn received a partial scholarship to play football at Rochester Institute of Technology, and later transferred to Canisius College when RIT dropped its football program. That inspired his younger brother, who believed he could achieve the same thing.
“Baseball was my favorite sport,” Gordy said. “I always wanted to play at the next level, but I threw my arm out so I knew I wasn’t going anywhere there. I decided to concentrate on football.”
With Glenn off to college, Gordy made a commitment to himself: he would add strength and focus on getting bigger. Increasing size was a way to push himself, a way to demonstrate to skeptics that he possessed internal motivation, a drive to succeed.
“I was out to prove people wrong,” he admitted. “I wanted to show my dad that I was somebody special.”
The winter of his junior year, he elected not to play basketball, but instead hit the weight room, training daily. By his senior year, results showed on the football field. Older and stronger, he played on both sides of the ball, offensive and defensive tackle, and turned in a successful season.
“But I didn’t get any letters from colleges, and I couldn’t understand it,” he said. “My brother had a stack of them when he was my age.”
Gordy approached his football coach, Fred Lampman, asking when recruiters might reach out to him. The coach smirked, turned, and walked away. There were politics involved, and unfortunately, Lampman didn’t believe Gordy was good enough to play college ball.
“I didn’t know all this at the time, but the way the process works is that high school coaches get questionnaire cards from colleges at the beginning of the season asking if anyone has potential. As a coach, you don’t want to put down anything that isn’t true. If you say a kid is six six, three hundred pounds, and running a four-seven forty-yard dash, he’d better be doing it. If a scout from UCLA comes all the way out here to see the kid is only six three, weighs two forty, and runs a five-two forty, then that’s a problem. Unfortunately, that happens, take my word. But coaches start the recruiting process through these questionnaires.”
Lampman believed two other players on his team were a better fit for college football, so he pushed them instead of Gronkowski. Jim Hatter received stacks of recruitment letters and ended up playing at the University of Buffalo. The other, Dennis Hartman, ultimately played fullback at Syracuse University. No one knew it at the time, but without Hartman, Gordy’s life would have taken a very different path.
“When my coach gave me the brushoff, that lit a fire in me,” Gordy said. “He didn’t think I was good enough. I thought, Screw you. I’ll prove you wrong.”
Gordy informed his baseball coach not to expect him for practice during spring break. He devised a plan to travel across the country on a Greyhound bus to the West Coast, where he scheduled interviews with football coaches. He composed introductory letters to a number of schools, including UCLA, UC Davis, Berkeley, and Long Beach State.
“My family didn’t have much money, and if sports didn’t work out, I looked into joining the Marines,” he recalled. “But I thought I’d give it one last shot to see if I could catch on somewhere in football. At the time, an open ticket for a Greyhound bus was two hundred and forty dollars. You could go anywhere. They would drop you off at a bus station in any major city. You had to show your pass when you got back on, and the ride would continue wherever you wanted.”
California was a mythical paradise to Gordy’s teenage senses. He had spent his youth watching UCLA and the University of Southern California play in the Rose Bowl. The image of sunshine and surfboards was another lure. Mostly, though, he wanted to travel somewhere new, where he could escape the doubting eyes of his father and his coaches.
Accompanied by a classmate, Guy Bryant, Gordy packed a white Adidas bag with enough clothes for a weeklong trip. Before they left home, he conducted reconnaissance on the coach’s office, ducking inside when the coast was clear.
“I stole the canisters that had our game films,” Gordy admitted with a smile. “They were eight-millimeter. The quality was terrible. But my coach wouldn’t give them to me, and I needed them if I was going to convince a football program to let me into college.”
Guy Bryant remains friends with Gordy nearly thirty-five years later.
“We were two eighteen-year-old kids who had just come through the winter of 1977, which was one of the worst in Buffalo history,” Bryant recalled. “I was interested in going to school in California, so I joined Gordy. Originally, we planned to drive Gordy’s car, but when his father wouldn’t pay the insurance, we took a bus for sixty-four hours. We saw the armpit of every city from here to the Pacific Ocean.”
Carrying those films into a series of West Coast offices, Gordy had varying degrees of success. UC Davis was Division II, and team officials suggested there would be no problem adding him to their football program. But Davis did not have a business track, and Gordy wanted to study business. Coaches at Berkeley were uninterested. UCLA suggested Gordy attend Bakersfield, a junior college, to prove his football skills there. While this wouldn’t have been his first choice, at that point Gordy was thrilled to have a legitimate chance to attend college.
But the next visit, Long Beach State, offered a better option.
“I bonded with their guy right away,” Gordy recalled. “He took my film, left me sitting there, and went into a room to watch it.”
When the coach emerged a while later, he smiled at Gordy.
“I like what I just saw,” he said, handing the canisters back. “We always hold out one scholarship for kids who didn’t get recruited, kids like you.” He paused. “Do you want to come to Long Beach?”
Gordy felt like he was walking on air. The coach did not know that to save on hotel expenses, he and Guy had been sleeping on a bus moving up and down the coast.
“Some stories from that trip still can’t be told,” Guy joked. “Gordy got a horrible sunburn one day. Overall, California was a pretty liberal place compared to Buffalo. We saw a different side of the world.”
After a quick visit to San Diego State—the coaches liked him but were out of scholarships—Gordy returned home, where he was met with disbelief that his aggressive approach had been successful.
“People couldn’t believe that I got a full ride to Long Beach State,” he said. “My father told me I was nuts. But my baseball coach, Frank Viggato, was a big supporter. He thought my West Coast trip was the greatest
thing. In fact, he was in the athletic office at West Seneca West when Long Beach State called, asking to speak with my football coach. Knowing the relationship between me and Fred Lampman wasn’t so great, Viggato took the call and said there was no need to talk to anyone besides him.”
The plan to enlist in the Marines was jettisoned. Instead, Gordy prepared for a move to California after graduating from high school in 1977. But a varsity baseball game that spring altered the direction of Gordy’s life.
Jerry Angelo was the defensive tackle coach at Syracuse University. (By 2011, he had moved up the football ladder to become general manager of the Chicago Bears.) Angelo had recruited Gordy’s classmate, Dennis Hartman, to play football for the Orange. One afternoon, as Angelo was driving through Western New York, he stopped to see his star recruit playing high school baseball. Hartman was big, an impressive power hitter, but another kid caught Angelo’s eye.
“I was smacking the ball over the center-field fence during warm-ups,” Gordy recalled, “and I went on to have a pretty good game.”
During the game, Angelo approached Viggato, the baseball coach.
“Who is that?” he asked, pointing.
“Gordy Gronkowski.” Viggato did not hesitate. “I love the kid and he’s getting screwed. He’s got the biggest heart of anyone I coach. For a while it didn’t look like he was going to be playing football anymore. But let me tell you how he just landed a scholarship to Long Beach State . . .”
Angelo was intrigued. When the game ended, he introduced himself to Gordy, asking if his football coach would loan him film of Gordy playing. Gordy was quick to jump on the idea.
Growing Up Gronk: A Familys Story of Raising Champions Page 2
