Quiet Strength (2 page)

The summer of 1996 had been a long time ago.

Now, in the winter of 2002, that same Florida sky was dark. Dark, cold, and damp. The mist that had begun in the afternoon had turned to light drops. The weather mirrored my dark inner world on that night of January 14.

I finished packing the last of the items. Not that much, really. A few boxes stood by the door, ready to be carried home. Nothing else of note remained. That office of mine had been lived in pretty hard, I had to admit. Most of the homework completed by my sons Jamie and Eric over the previous six years had been done in there, and the office had seen countless games of catch, video-game competitions, and other pursuits geared around young boys.

I later learned that Rich McKay, general manager of the Bucs during my tenure as head coach, had asked the facility manager to clean and paint the office that week, noting that my replacement was “about to move into an office that two boys have been living in every day for the last six years.”

As I wrapped things up, I noticed that the light drops falling outside had turned into a heavy rain.

I should have just walked out, since by then it was getting late. Instead, I wandered out of my office and through the building, stopping in the coaches’ locker room. Standing in the middle of the room, I let my gaze sweep over the cramped, worn twelve-by-fifteen room. I looked from locker to locker, reading some names, imagining others.

Monte Kiffin. Chris Foerster. Clyde Christensen. Rod Marinelli.

We had shared this locker room and many memories, these men and I. We had spent hours, weeks, and years together. These men had walked off the frozen, concrete-hard synthetic turf in Philadelphia with me just two days earlier, their careers critically stung by the Bucs’ 31–9 loss. So much had been at stake for all of us—and the players too—yet the outcome had never really been in doubt.

It was a difficult season punctuated by a painful ending.

And now God had something different in mind for all of us.

I tried to take solace in the things we had accomplished together—three straight playoff appearances, more wins than any other staff in team history—but they seemed hollow, even within me. I stared at the lockers, the enormity of the moment suddenly overwhelming as I remembered names of guys long gone from my staff.

Lovie Smith. Herm Edwards. Mike Shula.

The prognosticators had been circling for weeks. And amid season-long rumors that a new head coach was being courted, their speculations had finally become reality. I had been fired. Many of the assistant coaches—maybe all of them—would be let go as well. They would all come out fine. I knew that. But I also ached for the inevitable pain I knew they would face as they dealt with the uncertainty of their futures, that their children would face when they were uprooted from their schools, that their wives would face when ripped from their support systems.

Joe Barry. Mike Tomlin. Alan Williams. Jim Caldwell.

These men had just come that year. Why did they have to go? It was hard to figure. My family had come to Tampa for a reason. God had led us here, opened doors that we didn’t expect would be open, and allowed us to connect deeply with this community. But for what purpose?

Not football, apparently. I felt certain that the Buccaneers were my best, and possibly last, chance to lead an
NFL
team. For whatever reason, God had closed the door. For what?

Possibly some sort of ministry. I was heavily involved in the All Pro Dad organization and Abe Brown’s prison ministry, both based in Tampa, as well as our church, Idlewild Baptist Central. Maybe God was trying to turn my focus toward those.

But did He have to close this door already?

And close it so firmly?

It really was hard to fathom. I had been faithful, hadn’t I? So faithful in the mission that surely—
surely
—it was going to be blessed by Him. I had come here in 1996 with dreams of creating an organization based on values and character, and my staff and I had succeeded in doing just that. But God obviously wanted something else from me now.

It wasn’t really the firing itself that was a shock but rather the thought that God was allowing this great experiment to end. Hadn’t we tried to do things right?

Oscar reappeared. It was late, approaching midnight.

I walked out, traversing a path between the squat racks, benches, and other weight-lifting machines in the weight area attached to the building. A cool mist blew in under the awning, dampening my forty-six-year-old face. This half of the weight room was outside and open on its ends and side, but at least the Glazers, the Bucs’ owners, had partially covered it with a vinyl awning. Although the weights were cooled and heated—mostly heated—according to the daily whims of the southwest Florida climate, they were usually out of direct reach of the elements.

I looked to my left, past the row of squat racks and away from the building. Through the dark and rain, I could barely make out the two shadowy practice fields. The runway lights of the airport were clearly visible just yards beyond.

Where was the burning bush? Where was that still, small voice? Or, even better, the loud, booming one.

The only voice I could hear clearly was my own, crying out in the wilderness.
When will I hear Your voice, Lord?

I returned from my thoughts as Oscar quickly maneuvered between and around the weight machines to beat me to the next door. He pressed the electronic pad, releasing the magnetic lock on the chain-link gate that separated the weight area and practice fields from the waiting parking lot.

The Bay News 9 reporter had been waiting all night for this shot. For two days, news trucks had been parked along the street, on the front lawn, in the surrounding ditches—wherever they could fit close to One Buc.

I thought everyone had abandoned the vigil hours earlier, when the Buccaneers had issued a statement that there would be a press conference the following morning. But on a hunch, this reporter had doubled back in the dark and rain, and he was about to hit the jackpot.

He must have seen my head over the dark green screen of the fence; he began filming just as I carried the boxes through the gate and into the open area. He was across the street, sitting in the back of a news van on airport property, but given the narrow street and small parking area, he was no more than fifty feet away. The lens on his video camera more than compensated for that short distance as I walked directly toward him.

His nighttime footage of me would air repeatedly over the next several days. Everyone in the Tampa viewing area would have multiple opportunities to see Tony Dungy, former head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, placing boxes into his
SUV
in the pouring rain.

As I drove away from One Buc, I knew that my real and painful experience of being fired was an all-too-common part of the human condition in the young 21st century. I reminded myself that it was temporary. I took comfort in the knowledge that this, too, would pass. But my emotions were a mixture of peace and bewilderment with a swirl of unanswered questions.

What’s next? What could we have done differently?

I kept driving, across Columbus Drive and up Dale Mabry Highway. I went past Raymond James Stadium, where I’d experienced so many highs. Fittingly, it was now empty. As I reached Bearss Avenue, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I kept reminding myself that I would move on, that things would turn out all right professionally, that Lauren and the children were resilient enough to handle all of this. And it was obvious to me that God had something else for us, or He wouldn’t have closed off what we were doing with the Bucs.

When will I hear Your voice, Lord? Soon, I hope.

I knew everything would ultimately be fine, but at that moment—on that rain-swept night of January 14, 2002—my Explorer and my spirits traveled under the same dark clouds.

What are you going to do to make the situation better?

—Dr. Wil Dungy

G
ROWING
UP IN
JACKSON
, to my way of thinking, was the way growing up was meant to be. Jackson is a small town in Michigan, about an hour from Detroit and twenty-five minutes from East Lansing. In addition to being my birthplace, it lays claim to being the site of the first official meeting of the Republican Party (brought together by the group’s common opposition to slavery), and for years it housed the largest walled prison in the world. If those three items are linked, I haven’t yet figured out how.

Most of the jobs in Jackson revolved around the auto industry. Guys played high school sports, got out of school, and went to work at one of the big factories. They’d buy a car and get married. That’s the way most of the guys I knew approached life.

But because of our parents, we Dungy kids never thought that way. Both my parents were college graduates, and it was always assumed that my siblings and I would go to college. Our parents talked regularly about what we wanted to do and their visions of what we could do. Early on, I thought everyone’s parents were like that, but later I learned that I was unusually blessed to have this sort of background. Growing up with educators gave me a different slant on things. More than anything, my mom and dad focused on exercising our brains, building both knowledge and character.

My mom and dad wouldn’t tell us, “Here are the steps: A, B, C, and D.” Instead, they allowed us to figure things out for ourselves and to explore and grow. Who I am today and the way I think were shaped by that time with my parents. This is true of all the Dungy children. Our parents encouraged us to follow our dreams and told us that if we wanted to do something, we could do it. And, they said, if we did it the Lord’s way, for the right reasons, we would be successful. Not that we would win every game or be wealthy, but that we would be successful in God’s eyes if we did the things that glorify Him.

Herm Edwards, a longtime friend and now head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, is always quick to remind me that, of all the Dungy children, I’m the one who is a football coach. I’m pretty sure he means that in a bad way. All three of my siblings are in professions dedicated to serving others. Sherrie is a nurse at the Southern Michigan Correctional Facility near Jackson, devoting her life to inmate care. Linden is a dentist and recently opened his own dental practice. His dream has always been to give care to people who otherwise might not be able to afford it. Lauren, Linden’s twin, is a perinatologist. She deals with high-risk pregnancies in Indianapolis and throughout Indiana. All three are exceptional at what they do. My line of work gives me more notoriety in some circles, but they’re all doing things that are much more important in the long run. The three of them are definitely a living tribute to our parents and their values.

I can still see my mother sitting quietly, intently reading every word, looking for more from the students she believed had been entrusted to her care and nurturing. Many times I was more than just an observer of this scene, as my mom enlisted me to grade papers for her students at Jackson High, where she taught English and public speaking. While I pored over the multiple-choice questions that could easily be graded by an elementary school child, she marked up the essays. Once she had given a grade to each test, she let me record the grades in her book. Although I don’t remember the exact names, here’s how it went:

“John Smith, A. Steve Jones, B. Steve can do better than this. How am I going to get Steve to earn an A? He’s not working to his potential.”

While my mom wanted to make sure she provided enough instruction for the voracious learners, she was more concerned with the students who didn’t earn As. She never really commented on the ones who got the highest grades; she was more worried about the one getting a B who should have been getting an A. She always had an eye toward her students’ God-given potential.

In my mom’s mind, the burden was hers: “How can I make the subject more interesting and keep their attention?”

My mom wasn’t afraid to go against the grain of how things were usually taught if she could come up with a better way to reach and motivate her students. And when she did go against the grain, she always practiced it on us Dungy kids the night before. In football terms, we were her “scout team.”

My mom ultimately did find a way to reach many of her students. I have received countless cards, letters, and calls from an entire generation who took classes from Mrs. Dungy during her twenty years of teaching, starting in 1966.

I received a letter one day from a man in Detroit:

I took public speaking from your mother at Jackson High in 1979. I have gone on to a career in business, and my ability to get up in front of groups can be traced back to that tenth-grade class.

I think the only downside my mom found to teaching at Jackson High—and it was my fault, I guess—is that when I played football and basketball at rival Parkside High, she had to listen to her students talk about how they were going to shut her son down during any given game.

My mom always insisted on teaching at least one elective English or Public Speaking class. She believed that many of the kids in Jackson decided far too early in life to finish high school and then immediately get a job at the glassworks, the metal shop, or the prison. My mom was concerned—almost fanatical—about making sure her students saw the many different opportunities the world held before deciding to end their education. She used Shakespeare and anything else at her disposal to do it.

One student who took an elective from my mom has called me many times through the years. He had spent his entire childhood in the special-education track of the Jackson schools. Although in special ed, he was able to take public speaking as an elective. Somehow, early in the semester, my mom realized that this student had been mislabeled a “special-ed kid.” My mom did not rest until she got his counselor to place him in regular classes. Once he was reassigned, this student began to blossom, and eventually he went on to attend and graduate from Western Michigan University. He gives my mom complete credit for the career he has today.