Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Marx has written five books and is a popular keynote speaker. Portions of this story previously appeared in the Baltimore Sun and in the New York Times bestselling book Season of Life.
First I needed reading glasses – that was a few years ago. Then I needed pills for an inflamed hip. The common denominator was clear. Time would not stand still for any of us, and I was marching deeper into my forties. Okay, I got it!
But now comes one final blow to let me know that any semblance of youth is officially gone: My favorite childhood sports hero is today celebrating his sixtieth birthday. How can this be possible? Bert Jones is sixty?
Bert is not supposed to have lines on his face and grandchildren to visit. He is supposed to be throwing bullets and fighting for first downs – lifting up teammates and even whole communities with weekly proof that just about anything is possible on a field of play.
For LSU football fans, Bert will always be known as the first All-American quarterback for the Tigers. He will forever be the guy who in 1971 led LSU to a milestone win over powerhouse Notre Dame, the guy who in 1972 beat bitter rival Ole Miss on a heart-pounding touchdown pass with no time left on the clock, the guy who in 1973 was selected by the Baltimore Colts with the second overall pick of the NFL draft.
For me, however, Bert became so much more than some big-time football star to be followed from afar. He became a friend. We first met the summer of 1974. I was in Baltimore – down from my childhood home in a suburb of New York City – for a tennis camp that happened to be held at the same school where the Colts conducted their pre-season training camp. As a sports-loving eleven-year-old boy, I could not get enough of the Colts.
I watched them practice. I collected autographs. And I actually got to know most of the players. Bert was the first person I had ever met from Louisiana, and he was a relentless ambassador for both the state and his hometown of Ruston. He could not believe I had never been hunting or fishing. He wanted to know what in the world we woefully deprived New Yorkers did for fun.
Some of the players – Bert included – came to treat me like a little brother. They played catch with me. They took me to Baskin-Robbins for ice cream. They talked to me about girls. After a while, the Colts equipment man and trainers were so used to having me around that they let me help with minor tasks such as hanging jerseys in lockers, handing out towels, and pouring Gatorade.
I was even invited to help at Memorial Stadium during a pre-season game against the Detroit Lions. This was Friday, August 9, 1974. Anyone into American history would immediately tag it as the day Richard Nixon resigned the presidency. To me, it would always be known as my first day as a ballboy with the Colts.
Once camp was over and I was home for the start of seventh grade, I did the best I could to keep in touch with my new football friends. When the Colts came to play in New York, I helped in the locker room and on the sideline. Each of the next few years I helped at a game or two, and the relationships kept growing.
I had several favorite players, but Bert was the one I admired the most. Starting in 1975, he led the Colts to three straight AFC East titles. In 1976, he was voted the most valuable player in the entire NFL. He was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, but even that was not enough. He was also on the cover of People, one of the magazine’s twenty-five most intriguing folks in the world, right along with Robert Redford, Farrah Fawcett, and Jimmy Carter.
It was not fame alone, though, that drew me to Bert. Fame is too vague, and what does it really mean in the solitude that comes with the end of a day? No, the qualities that drew me to Bert were much more tangible than that.
He was the ultimate competitor. As a youngster he had suffered from rickets, which left him pigeon-toed and knock-kneed. But even when he had to wear braces, he never really played games so much as he attacked them. It was the same with professional football. He was always the leader.
Still, the most enchanting thing about Bert was that he always seemed to be having a good time. He always seemed like such a kid, an overgrown country kid with special permission to run and throw and laugh, always laugh, as he claimed victory after victory in an adult world.
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| Former LSU Men’s Basketball coach Dale Brown (left), Jeffrey Marx and Bert Jones at a recent charity event in Baton Rouge. (Photo by Phil Cancilleri) |
Take his way of greeting the hottest, most miserable days of training camp. He would storm onto the practice field with a grin, a hoot, and a holler. “Can’t work me hard enough on a beautiful day like tuh-day,” he would yell over and over. Some of his teammates just rolled their eyes; others actually drew on his enthusiasm.
Take the sworn affidavit he wanted the lovely Danielle Marie Dupuis to sign on the 24th day of March 1977 as a condition of their impending marriage. “She will never oppose any plans of Bertram Hays Jones to engage in the manly pursuits of hunting and/or fishing,” it says. The document was duly signed and notarized. But it was just a joke. Sort of.
Take the way Bert initiated rookies during training camp. He would wrap his body with bed sheets, covering all but his eyes and hands, and would pull a baseball cap low in the front to help conceal his eyes. Then he would surround himself with offensive linemen for protection and break into the rookies’ dorm rooms just before curfew – all so he could blast them with baby powder and water.
He got my room, too. I hated cleaning it up. And I loved it. This was the summer of 1979, and I was sixteen. After five years of helping at a game or two each season, I had finally been hired by the Colts. It was my first of four training camps working full time and living with the team, and by trashing my room, Bert was letting me know that I was one of the guys.
Life was good.
Bert always made time for me. He even let me borrow his car once for a date. I got a kiss that night. And I was pretty sure why. The girl knew whose car it was. She was impressed.
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Ultimately, Bert finished his football career with the Los Angeles Rams and returned to Ruston in 1982. After graduation from college – Northwestern University just outside of Chicago – I first moved to Kentucky and then to Washington D.C. as a newspaper reporter.
I never would have guessed that Bert and I would always stay in touch. Most NFL teammates scatter across the country and lose all contact once their playing days are over, so what were the odds of a star quarterback and a mere ballboy maintaining any sort of relationship? Actually, our friendship would only grow as we moved deeper into adulthood.
The summer of 1994, twenty years after initially meeting Bert, I made my first trip to see him and his family in Ruston, and we even went fishing. That, too, was a first for me. Bert took me out on a pond and showed me how to catch a fish, enthusiastically offering a celebratory high-five when I pulled in a largemouth bass. I would make several other trips to Ruston, where Bert was now the owner and operator of a lumber company called Mid-States Wood Preservers.
As Bert’s involvement in the lumber industry grew, so too did our chances to see each other, as he traveled at least once a year to meetings in Washington. Bert would always stay in the guest room of my Capitol Hill townhouse, and the Ruston country boy actually came to know my city neighborhood pretty well. One day, he even ran into a neighbor of mine that he happened to know, U.S. Senator John Breaux of Louisiana, and they exchanged greetings in the street right in front of my house.
Bert’s youngest of four children, Beaux, also came to know the area because he spent a summer in my house when he interned with a political consultant in Washington. Things had gone full circle: Whereas I had once been the young kid looking to Bert for guidance and approval, I was now the “old guy” dishing out advice and support to his college-age son. I enjoyed Beaux, and it meant a lot to me that my friendship with Bert – always a family man before anything else – now extended to the next generation.
Speaking of family, it was my decision to get married – in 2006 – that prompted one of my all-time classic moments with Bert. He had long been encouraging me to marry the incredible woman I had been dating long-distance for more than six years – she lived in Baton Rouge, of all places – and he was thrilled that I had finally pulled the trigger. A few weeks before the wedding, Bert wanted me to know one of his great secrets to a successful marriage. It was the ability to look your wife straight in the eye and say: “Honey, you are absolutely correct. I don’t know how I possibly could have been so wrong.”
Bert and I were on our way to dinner when he told me this. We were walking down Pennsylvania Avenue – on a crowded sidewalk – and he wanted me to give it a try. Looking at Bert and attempting to be at least somewhat serious, I said: “Honey, you are absolutely correct. I don’t know how I possibly could have been so wrong.”
Clearly, I was not good at this. “No, no, no, not nearly sincere enough,” Bert said. “You need to say it like you really mean it. Go ahead, try it again.”
And so I did. This time we got a few strange glances as I turned to my friend, looked him in the eye, and addressed him with an intentionally elevated and overly dramatic voice: “Honey, you are absolutely correct …” I can’t say I scored too well on the sincerity meter, but we did have a good laugh. Of course, having heard the story numerous times, my wife, Leslie, now gives me no credibility whatsoever – which is exactly what I deserve – when I halfheartedly trot out Bert’s well-intentioned line.
I get a much better reaction when I tell her that Bert’s peaches are here. Every year, Bert either ships or personally delivers a case of Ruston’s famous peaches. He started doing this long ago when I still lived in Washington. Now the deliveries are easier because I live in … Louisiana.
Having nothing to do with the first Louisiana native I ever met (Bert) and everything to do with the most important Louisiana native in my life (Leslie), I am now officially a resident of Baton Rouge. Or as one of my New York friends dubbed me: Yankee on the Bayou.
I go to a lot of LSU games – football, basketball, and baseball. I love eating gumbo. And I lie all the time – just for fun – by telling people I’m from Thibodaux (not that they ever believe me).
Oh, and one more thing: I get to see much more of Bert than I did when I lived in Washington. We reminisce about memories from the old days in Baltimore, and we create plenty of new memories as well – all of which is perfectly natural and comfortable.
But Bert Jones at sixty? My favorite childhood sports hero embarking upon his seventh decade?
Wow.
I knew what to think about the reading glasses and the bad hip.
I’m not at all sure what to think about this.