Companions in Courage (24 page)

D
espite asthma and nagging sore knees, Donnell Finnaman didn’t miss a practice in four years. Playing both offensive and defensive
tackle in Class 1A North Carolina High School Athletic Association men’s varsity competition for four years spoke of a passion
to succeed and excel.

Watching the five-foot-six, 140-pound tackle pull out on a bootleg and clear the way for the quarterback run left no reason
to doubt Coach Leonard Baker’s boasts of Donnell’s unusual talent. As one well-beaten opponent put it, “Finnaman is the best
I’ve ever faced.”

It was not an easy thing to acknowledge. Donnell is a girl and she is deaf.

When she was born in Egg Harbor, New Jersey, she weighed two pounds. Her twin brother, Donovan, appeared twenty minutes later
and tipped the scales at three pounds. Both little ones needed special care because of their premature arrival. Donovan had
more difficulty because of respiratory troubles. At two, Donnell also developed complications in her hearing.

Her ears functioned normally, but the signals to the brain never arrived. She was diagnosed with neural nerve deafness. Doctors
recommended she attend a special school away from home, in Trenton, New Jersey.

The separation from the family was difficult for her mother, Marchelle, and they soon moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina,
and enrolled Donnell in the East North Carolina School for the Deaf (ENCSD) when she was in the third grade. “She was able
to have a regular life, do the things that other children do, be a leader,” her mother says.

Donnell grew up with the label of tomboy. She loved football and perfected her tackling by taking on her twin brother in the
backyard. After a few years she signed up for intramurals at ENCSD. By the eighth grade she had started talking to Baker about
playing varsity football. He had no misgivings about her becoming part of the team.

“I knew that Donnell was serious, and that she was a talented athlete,” he recalls. The coach talked with Marchelle, checked
with the state association to make sure there were no restrictions, and ran it past the rest of the squad, gaining unanimous
approval.

“I asked her if she was sure,” says Marchelle. “I was afraid but proud that my daughter never really heard the word
can’t
.”

Donnell remembers the beginning challenge: “I had to show that I was physical and that I was not afraid to play with the boys
and that I was tough.”

On the first day of practice, the freshman Donnell was behind the tackling dummy. A senior charged it, plowed his shoulder
in, and knocked her down. She jumped up and signed (by pointing to her wrist) the phrase “one more time.” He tried again and
she stood him up straight.

Playing football is not just a novelty or a publicity stunt for her. She was ranked as ENCSD’s top offensive lineman at the
end of her junior season. “I have personal pride,” she signs, “but my greatest pride is playing a team sport. I want any focus
on me to shift to the team.”

When football is over for the season, Finnaman will concentrate on basketball. She has played center for the Fighting Hornets
for three years. In the spring, she will be a favorite to win the state Class 1A shot put title. She has earned this label
by finishing among the top ten in the shot in the NCHSAA 1A Track championships for the past three years.

They love Donnell at ENCSD. Fans wave the foam rubber hands to spell the letters I-L-Y or “I Love You.” Donnell wants to be
remembered “as a leader, a good athlete, and as a football player too.” She has single-handedly introduced the word “linewoman”
to the world of varsity football.

“Some people say I’m special,” she says, “but I don’t see myself that way.”

I do, Donnell. You are a very special Companion in Courage. Few could accomplish what you have. Fewer still would tackle it.

From the
Heart

P
rofessional athletes do a lot of good in their communities, and I wish that they got more publicity for their efforts. The
bad stuff always gets in the newspapers or on TV, but the hours spent helping others just don’t seem to make a good story.

At least that’s the way the media seems to look at it. I see it, quite naturally, from the athlete’s side. And while I think
players should be acknowledged for their positive contributions, I know that’s not their motivation. They get plenty of cheers
and applause elsewhere.

They do it to do good. The giving of their time and compassion comes back tenfold in emotional payoffs. And while I heartily
support all the wonderful programs athletes conceive and execute, I’m most thrilled and moved when athletes dedicate themselves
to children. That’s how I learned about Brian Grant and why I’m proud to include him as a Companion in Courage.

Dash Thomas, a twelve-year-old boy suffering from cancer, first introduced me to Brian. During the NBA lockout in 1998 I heard
Dash say that Brian, a forward for the Portland Trail Blazers, was his best friend. Because so many of the children that I
met at Buffalo General’s cancer ward numbered among my best friends, I decided I needed to know more about Brian Grant.

During the lockout Brian started driving to Sublimity, Oregon, a one-hour ride from Portland, to visit Dash, who had been
diagnosed with brain cancer. Dash, a young white kid, and Brian, a black NBA power forward who wore dread-locks, forged a
firm friendship. They became each other’s heroes.

When the lockout ended, Brian wanted to get Dash to a game. Unfortunately, that never happened. His young friend died in February.
Brian dedicated his season to Dash Thomas.

The NBA lockout will be remembered as a labor dispute, a fight between millionaire players and billionaire owners. Brian Grant
got something entirely different from it. “Because of the lockout, Dash died before he could come to a game. On the other
hand, without the lockout, I wouldn’t have had as much time to get to know him,” he said. “There was something about the way
he carried himself. He wasn’t like a twelve-year-old kid. It was like he was older. His courage—everything about him—was amazing.
He was an inspiration. My relationship with Dash changed my life.”

During the playoffs, Grant battled the best power forward in the league, Karl Malone, to a standoff. During their epic struggle
one of Malone’s famous elbows caught Brian in the right eye, opening a gash that took six stitches to close. It also opened
a window into his psyche.

While many of Brian’s fellow NBA players played AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) basketball and in the much-touted summer camps
before being drafted, Brian was cutting tobacco and baling hay back in Georgetown, Ohio. He watched his dad and uncles weld
boxcars—hard, nasty, physical labor. He saw them, with no first-aid kits available and no time to waste, slice potatoes in
half and put them on their cuts to ease the pain from their burns. One night Grant’s father came home with a bandage over
his eye. He had been hit by a piece of hot metal.

So a six-stitch gash? What should that mean next to the struggles of Brian’s father, his uncles, and a frail twelve-year-old
named Dash, hospitalized in Sublimity, Oregon? Brian’s attitude? “Stitch it up and let’s play!”

Brian continues to excel in the NBA, though he now plays with the Miami Heat, but he also stands out in his work with children.

Brian has many young friends and a growing list of community leaders who respect him. His future holds so much promise. But
he is never, ever far from his past, never really removed from family in Georgetown, Ohio, or separated from the memory of
a boy named Dash.

E
very day for years I have strapped my kids into car seats for their safety. Now I find out that Mighty Pete Sawicki would
have his fourteen-year-old daughter do handstands on the back of his motorcycle while riding in parades. Is that wild or what?

For Pete’s little girl Jeannette, it was just one more experience that reinforced her need for constant activity and attention.
In fact, if she were in the same school today in the Genesee-Fillmore neighborhood of Buffalo, the powers that be would have
slapped that “attention deficit disorder” label on her. “I was this hyperactive kid who couldn’t sit still,” she recalls.
“I was doing cartwheels in the classrooms, headstands on roofs.”

Her sister Christelle, now Sister Christelle and principal of Blessed Sacrament School in Buffalo, puts her memories of Jeannette
to work in a positive fashion. “I see kids like that now and see potential, and I always share with kids her story because
I feel education doesn’t always prepare us for what God wants us to do in life,” she says.

Jeannette was a handful, fearless and spirited. She could be dramatic when she needed the spotlight. She recalls drinking
a bottle of ink to get the attention of her fourth-grade friends because they were ignoring her cartwheels. She could also
test the limits of those who loved her—she simply could not sit still. Eventually the nuns asked that Jeannette leave Transfiguration
School because of how difficult she was to handle.

No telling of her story is complete without the now-famous incident in the German Day parade. She was fourteen and ready to
perform her motorcycle stunt with Mighty Pete.

“He used to signal me to kick up on the back of the bike, and I’d do a handstand; my foot would rest on his shoulder,” she
says. “I wasn’t paying attention and …he pulled away. I went to kick to the handstand and I went flat on my face. I was bleeding
all over the place. He wanted me to be great. So he said, ‘Get back on that bike. I don’t care if you are bleeding.’ Everyone
in the audience was clapping. ‘Yeah, little girl.’ I’m fourteen years old, blood all over the place, and I got up on that
bike, and it made me tough, and my dad made me who I am today.”

After attending business school and working in a local health club, Jeannette left Buffalo to travel with “The Great Unis,”
a strongman show in which she performed her gymnastics. Her athletic abilities helped her learn to be an accomplished tightwire
performer and trapeze artist. She appeared on the
Ed Sullivan Show
and in the Ringling Bros. circus. She settled in Pittsburgh, where she began to follow her dream to coach and teach gymnastics
to others.

Eventually she opened three schools and was nominated as the small businesswoman of the year. She never lost her flair. She
celebrated her forty-eighth birthday by doing a handstand on top of a limousine at the Pittsburgh Sheraton.

Jeannette’s gymnastic curriculum was unique. She created routines that involved an obstacle course, as opposed to the traditional
practice regimen. The flexibility this lent the program only enhanced it. Each individual could approach the course at different
speeds and levels based on a wide range of abilities. The excitement for Jeannette came from creating a new sport that worked
with and for highly skilled athletes as well as the physically challenged.

“Some people brought a Down’s syndrome kid with them to try the program, and they were ecstatic,” she says. “The child loved
the program. It’s kind of hard work, but it’s fun hard work. There are no weights involved in this, yet they will strengthen
their body by doing the obstacle course repetitively. That’s the key.”

Jeannette knew a little something about obstacle courses. Her life became one in 1993 when she suffered severe injuries in
a head-on car crash. She went through eleven surgeries, including dental surgery for a broken jaw and damaged teeth, and had
a metal rod inserted in her broken leg. Her new “obstacle course” included two weeks in the hospital, four months in bed,
and eight months in a wheelchair. She had to liquidate her business and eventually sold all three schools. But as her father
had taught her, it was “time to get back up on the bike.”

Unwilling as she was to yield to the damage or the pain, Jeannette’s recovery virtually obscures the fact that she was ever
injured. “My hope is still to walk on my hands. I miss demonstrating to the kids. I used to demonstrate everything. Now when
I do it, the mind wants to but the body suffers the next day,” she says.

As if the accident wasn’t enough, her plans for a new, $1.5-million school in Pittsburgh, an anniversary party to celebrate
twenty-five years of teaching and a fiftieth birthday all went up in smoke—literally. Jeannette lost her house in a fire.

“All I could think about was, maybe I better go home,” she says. “I was standing in front of a mirror a week after the fire,
and I called my sister and I said, ‘You know, Sister Christelle, maybe I better come home.’” Home she is.

Jeannette Jay is building another school in Buffalo, teaching kids at all levels of need and harboring a dream to host the
first national Junior Fitness Challenge in Buffalo in 2001.

“I have a focus and a passion on this, and that’s what keeps me going every day,” she says. “I can’t even sleep anymore from
the excitement. I get up at three or four in the morning and my brain’s going a mile a minute.”

It’s probably just trying to keep up with her body.

J
erry Sandusky helps people. Whether they are overcoming the disadvantages of a tough background or another team’s offensive
schemes, Sandusky pours himself into giving them an edge.

The seeds for Sandusky’s work were planted in Washington, Pennsylvania, where he lived with his parents, Art and Evie. Their
small apartment was surrounded by a recreational center that his parents directed. Jerry was a part of whatever game was on.
He learned to compete. He learned to love and respect people. He learned to laugh and to give his all.

When Sandusky enrolled at Penn State in the early sixties, he couldn’t begin to guess that he’d call State College home for
many years to come. He played defensive end for the Nittany Lions, got his degree, and stuck around as a graduate assistant.
After brief coaching stints at Juniata College and Boston University in 1969, he was hired as an assistant coach at his alma
mater. In 1977 he became defensive coordinator—the mastermind behind the awesome Penn State defenses that helped lead the
Nittany Lions to two national championships.