An American Son: A Memoir (12 page)

A
S I LEFT THE KANSAS CITY AIRPORT, MY FIRST THOUGHT was the reports about Tarkio’s remoteness had been exaggerated. An hour later, however, all I could see were the stars in the night sky. I had never seen so many. There wasn’t a trace of civilization anywhere.

I arrived at Tarkio College in the middle of the night after a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Kansas City. I was shown to my dorm room and instructed to be at my first practice no later than eight thirty the next morning. I picked the top bunk, climbed in, closed my eyes and fell asleep wondering what my friends in Miami were doing that night.

Practices at Tarkio were easy compared to South Miami practices. At South Miami, Coach Collier loved to run what he called the “hamburger drill.” Two players would lie on their backs; one of them had the football, while the other was the defender. Coach would blow his whistle and both players scrambled to their feet and ran toward each other at full speed. As a 140-pound high school junior, I had given away as many as thirty pounds to my opponent. I gave the hamburger drill my best effort, but I couldn’t overcome the laws of physics. Bigger, faster opponents ran over me.

We didn’t run hamburger drills at Tarkio. Nor did we run twelve-minute sprints in the ninety-plus-degree heat and stifling humidity of a Miami summer. The players were quite a bit bigger at Tarkio, especially the linemen, but they were also slower than the players at South Miami.

Tarkio had a junior varsity as well as a varsity football team. Varsity played on Saturdays, junior varsity on Sundays. Early in the season I dressed for the varsity games, and then started at wide receiver for junior varsity the next day. Midway through the season, three starting defensive backs suffered injuries in the same game. Coach asked me to switch to defensive back until the starters healed, and I agreed, playing cornerback in practices that week.

I started at cornerback in the next JV game, and played one of my best games ever. I started getting more practice with varsity at cornerback, and when the starting varsity cornerback left our next game with a concussion, I replaced him.

My assignment was to cover the opponent’s star wide receiver, an all-conference speedster who had been burning us the entire game. A good offensive coordinator will always target a backup, especially if he’s a freshman. I knew they would come at me right away. I ignored my responsibility and dropped back into deep coverage, anticipating a long pass to their star receiver. And that’s the play they called.

He still managed to catch it for a touchdown. But my coaches were impressed. When we reviewed the film the next day, they were surprised that I had been in the perfect position, running stride for stride with one of the fastest receivers in the conference. The team did not finish the season with a winning record, but I was feeling good about myself. I was coming to grips with the fact that I did not have NFL talent. But for the first time in my life, I was a significant contributor on a football team.

The academics at Tarkio were an unpleasant surprise, however. No one took class attendance as they did in high school. We took notes while a professor lectured, and our grades were entirely determined by our midterm and final exams. I was terribly unprepared. I didn’t know how to take notes, and I had no idea how to study for a college exam. In high school, I had merely tried to memorize facts in my textbooks to prepare for multiple-choice exams. At Tarkio, the exams were essay form. I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to improve these deficiencies, either, and as a result my first-semester grades were abysmal. Had I wanted to play a second-semester sport such as basketball or baseball, I would have been declared academically ineligible.

I couldn’t blame my poor grades on my active social life. With fewer
than five hundred students, there really wasn’t much of a social scene. We played video game tournaments in our dorm rooms, and on weekends we went to keg parties at an apartment complex off campus, where a lot of upperclassmen lived. If we wanted to go to a movie or even eat at a McDonald’s, we had to drive to St. Joseph, Missouri, or Davenport, Iowa.

Tarkio’s residents were the nicest people I have ever met. It took me a while to get used to it. In Miami, people only exchanged greetings if they knew one another. But in northwest Missouri, even strangers said hello to you.

I liked the people and the football, but just about everything else at Tarkio made me miserable. I missed my friends in Miami, and my social life there. I struggled to adjust to life in a small town that didn’t have a movie theater or a restaurant other than a single Pizza Hut. I wanted to go home and decided I would surprise my parents by returning to Miami for Thanksgiving. I surprised my friends, too, when I showed up for a pep rally before a South Miami football game. Everyone greeted me warmly. Coach Miller seemed glad to see me, and Coach Collier congratulated me for getting in good condition and making the varsity team. He acted as if my success confirmed the potential he had seen in me that others hadn’t. His evident pride in me meant a great deal to me then and still does.

I also got to meet the newest member of our family while I was back, my nephew Danny. My mother recounted for me how lonely and difficult Barbara’s life had been since Orlando had left. Three years earlier, when Landy was born, Barbara’s hospital room had been crowded with flowers, balloons and friends. When she gave birth to Danny, the only flowers in her room were brought by my parents, her only visitors.

I returned for my second semester at Tarkio to ominous warning signs that the school was in dire financial straits. A series of newspaper reports examined the state of Tarkio’s finances, which incited rampant rumors that the school was bankrupt and would have to close. I was alarmed. If Tarkio closed, some of my college credits wouldn’t transfer to a school in Florida. If the school could keep its doors open for only another two years and I stayed enrolled there, up to a quarter of my credits could be nontransferable. Even more worrying was the prospect that Tarkio would have to cut its athletic budget. Since football was by far its most expensive sport, it was more than likely the school would terminate its football program first. In
addition to my concern about Tarkio’s precarious future, I had also begun to worry about the value of a degree from a small and unknown school.

I began to explore transferring to another school. I wanted to keep playing football, so I reached out to the coach at Wagner College who had recruited me. Wagner didn’t work out, either. The difference between the aid they could offer me and my tuition was more than I could afford. For a while, I tried to convince myself that my best option was to remain at Tarkio and take my chances that the school and its football program would survive another few years. At Tarkio, I played in front of crowds that were smaller than the crowds at my high school games. But where else could I be a starter and possibly an all-conference standout? And a degree was still a degree even if it came from an obscure school. I was leaning toward staying when I encountered a new dilemma that would change my immediate situation and the future I envisioned for myself.

My neck had bothered me throughout my freshman football season. After games, I often woke up with excruciating pain that caused numbness in my right arm and hand. After the season ended, so did the pain, but the numbness persisted. I was having problems in the weight room because my right arm had become much weaker than my left. Eventually, my conditioning coach told me I wouldn’t be allowed back in the weight room until the team doctor had examined me and cleared me to return.

After a quick examination, the doctor informed me he needed to run a series of diagnostic tests to determine the problem. My description of the pain suggested I might be suffering nerve damage, and I wouldn’t be allowed to play or practice unless they determined that wasn’t the case. When I pressed him, he told me that if I did have nerve damage in my neck, one more hit could leave me permanently impaired.

That was all I needed to hear. As a boy, I had dreamed I would one day play in the NFL. But I never really had the size or speed. That dream was over. I accepted who I was and who I wouldn’t be. I made a practical, adult decision. I had to transfer to a school that would prepare me to do something important with my life, something other than play football. But I didn’t want to move back to Miami—I would be too distracted there. And given how poorly I had done in my first semester at Tarkio, I couldn’t afford any distractions. I wanted to go to the University of Florida, but I didn’t have the grades to be admitted there. I heard a couple of kids in the class
below me at South Miami High were going to attend Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, and it sounded like a good fit for me. I decided to attend Santa Fe for a year, improve my GPA and apply for admission to Florida the following year.

I spent the summer in Miami working as a messenger for a courier service that did a lot of work for Miami law firms. I drove a blue 1983 Pontiac Firebird, which my father had bought for me from his sister, to courier packages between the law firms on Brickell Avenue and downtown Miami. I saved money for college, and squandered a little of it on the weekends. In late August, I packed up the Firebird and left for Gainesville.

I moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Gainesville only two miles from the University of Florida with a high school friend, Alex Sarmiento. His girlfriend was a student at UF and also happened to be one of Veronica’s best friends. As soon as we unpacked and got our bearings, we began scouting the Gainesville party scene. The best parties in town were held at the university’s fraternities and sororities. They dominated student social life at Florida. Since neither Alex nor I was a Florida student, we obviously couldn’t join a fraternity. Nor could I have afforded to join one—I could barely pay my tuition, books and living expenses with my grants, loans, summer savings and the occasional twenty dollars from my parents.

Gainesville is a fun town, especially on football weekends, and I enjoyed myself there. But I had made a serious resolution to apply myself academically. I spent most weekends studying in my apartment. The University of Florida had become more selective in its admissions policy, and my grades would have to be very good to compensate for my poor performance at Tarkio. I dedicated myself to the task, and received the best grades in my life my first semester at Santa Fe.

When I returned from Christmas break for the start of the new semester, financial difficulties almost caused me to quit school. I had exhausted my savings, and the loans and grants I received weren’t enough to cover all my living expenses. My parents couldn’t help me, and I prepared to return to Miami to find work and save enough money to return to school in the fall.

I called my parents and explained my predicament and my plan. Then I prayed. I asked God for the strength to accept His will and whatever disappointment awaited me. After I finished my prayer, I went to collect my mail. I found an envelope addressed to me in our mailbox. Inside was a
check sufficient to cover the shortfall in my finances. It was a small grant I had applied for and forgotten about. I called my mother again, and told her what had happened. She praised God, as did I.

My second-semester grades were even better than the previous semester’s. I wasn’t a social recluse, and life in Gainesville wasn’t a ceaseless academic grind. But I spent most of my time studying and learning how to become a serious student. Early that summer, I got my acceptance letter to the University of Florida for admission in the fall of 1991.

My political science classes, and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in the summer of 1990 and the U.S. response, Operation Desert Storm, rekindled my interest in politics. I had always paid attention to politics, but after my grandfather died my interest became episodic. That summer, I phoned the office of our local congresswoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and inquired about internship opportunities there. I was invited to the office for an interview and offered a summer internship.

The internship involved the kind of grunt work—answering phones, copying documents, sorting and responding to constituent mail—that some people find unrewarding. But it was a networking and résumé-building opportunity that paid dividends for me down the road. I met several people in the office who one day would help open doors for me to other political opportunities. I learned the nuts and bolts of constituent service and why it’s a critically important function of a congressional office. I use the constituent service methods I learned in Ileana’s office as the model for constituent services in my Senate office.

I took a math class at Miami-Dade Community College that summer as well. But my schedule still left plenty of time for socializing, and I made the most of it. I spent a lot of time with a friend from high school, Javier, and his girlfriend, Jenny. One evening at Jenny’s house, I met her best friend, Jeanette Dousdebes, a beautiful seventeen-year-old brunette.

I had seen her before at one or two social gatherings, but we had never spoken. Javier spent a long time talking with Jenny and her parents in another room, leaving Jeanette and me alone in the living room. I don’t really recall what we talked about; I just remember we talked for a long time. I knew that night I was very interested in her, but I had no idea if she felt the same way.

Javier told me a few days later that Jeanette had made a few favorable comments about me to Jenny. She hadn’t said she liked me or even expressed an interest in meeting me again. But I was encouraged enough by Javier’s report to start scheming for another opportunity to see her. I coaxed Javier into organizing a group of friends to go to the movies. I told him to make sure Jenny invited Jeanette. It had to be a small group so I wouldn’t have much competition for Jeanette’s attention, but not so small that she would feel she had been tricked into a date with me.

We went to see
Robin Hood
with Kevin Costner in the title role. I managed to sit next to her. I don’t remember what I said, but Jeanette claims I talked so much she couldn’t watch the movie. The movie’s theme song was by Bryan Adams. To this day, whenever I hear the song, I remember the night I started to fall in love with Jeanette Dousdebes.