He is explaining himself without forcing a word. Abe Gibron closes his eyes, slips off his Bucs cap and tilts his head down like a man in prayer.
He hangs his giant chin on his chest for just a moment, long enough to reveal a pair of deep scars etched into his head.
”I`m . . . incoherent,” he struggles to say, his words slow and slurred. ”I`m . . . sorry.”
His eyes water. He turns his face to the ceiling, trying to keep the tears from spilling down his hound-dog cheeks. It`s useless.
Yet this isn`t a sorrowful story. It`s a story about a legend-a burly, beloved former Bears coach and NFL player-learning to cope with what was and what is.
The man who used to stalk and bellow on the sideline has slight numbness on his right side and speech that is muffled, the result of a brain aneurysm he suffered seven years ago just after his second brain-tumor operation.
But there remains a reason for cheer in Abe Gibron, whose generous nature and good humor made him a friend to so many during seasons past. Sam Wyche, hired as Tampa Bay coach last January, gave him a job appraising Bucs players. ”Sam Wyche has made Abe feel normal again,” said Susie Gibron, Abe`s wife of 32 years. ”He has done more for Abe than almost any therapy.
”I watch Abe leave for work in the morning with a briefcase under his arm. I don`t know if he ever opens it, but he has one. I haven`t seen him this happy in years. What Sam has done is give Abe a little of his old life back.” There is still that kindness about Gibron, the way he makes someone feel special with his two-fisted handshakes, a pat on the back and a groggy but understandable ”God bless you.”
”He still loves to dance,” said Rams coach Chuck Knox, a friend of 25 years who hired Gibron as a Seattle scout in 1985, just after his first brain tumor was discovered and removed. ”He`s a big teddy bear.”
There is still that warmth that draws people close to Gibron, one of the most colorful characters in NFL lore. His old cronies could tell a hundred stories about him: He threw a Bears end-of-training-camp party in an open field, just so Dick Butkus wouldn`t break anything. . . . He ordered and ate a whole goat (minus the head). . . . He routinely stood up in restaurants, meetings, wherever, and sang ”Back Home Again in Indiana”. . . . He once told Susie he was bringing home a few new friends for dinner-Billy Dee Williams, Jack Warden and James Caan from the cast of ”Brian`s Song: The Brian Piccolo Story,”in which Abe had a role playing himself-and ended up inviting what seemed like a cast of 400.
”He invited everyone who held a flashlight,” said Susie, who spent her honeymoon with Gibron scouting the Big 10. ”It was typical Abe.”
Then there was the time he taped a $100 bill into a Bears playbook during training camp and discovered weeks later that no one had found it yet.
Gibron had a soft touch beneath his gruff exterior. ”When he came down on you,” said ex-Bears quarterback Gary Huff, ”he came down on you hard, but with a fatherly hand.”
”He`s a big family man with a huge heart,” Knox said. ”He`s very proud of his family. He`s a very caring man, very protective of his family.”
Gibron wanted to shield his youngest child, 17-year-old son Kal, in May 1984. It was the night Kal had been selected captain of the Tampa Jesuit High football team. It was the night he took his first drink, a frozen daiquiri, then his second.
The boy never anticipated their effect as he got into his car and drove the wrong way on a Tampa bridge. He collided with another car, killing the driver. Kal plead no contest to manslaughter, served community hours at schools, telling children his story, and was placed under two years` house arrest.
The whole incident devastated Gibron and his family-the publicity, the protests by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the tragedy itself. It`s the one slice of his life Gibron prefers not to address today. But he`ll let you know this: Kal graduated at the top of his class at the University of Pennsylvania, then graduated from Notre Dame Law School and is now an attorney in Sarasota. ”He`s a . . . beautiful boy. Proud, yes. Proud,” Gibron says, his emotions flowing again.
Gibron, a Pro Bowl guard with the Cleveland Browns in the `50s, later played for the Bears and was their head coach from 1972 through 1974. Fans knew him at every corner-the hot dog vendors, the taxi drivers, the hard hats. Everyone.
”I`d never heard of him,” said Susie, who had moved to Chicago from Alabama 34 years ago. ”I went to a Bears game, my first-ever pro game, and later I was in a restaurant, sitting at a piano bar. This huge guy came up to me and said, `I`m Abe Gibron.` And I was thinking, who cares? I thought he was kind of rude. Then I found out what a sensitive, caring person he was.”
At 300 pounds-plus, the 68-year-old Gibron looks like a sleepy statue of Buddha. He is sitting in the Bucs film room, eating three fried bologna sandwiches and inhaling football. By his last bite, he has seen the same play about 15 times, replaying it over and over. He is watching each player, mentally taking note of how they`re doing their jobs.
”He`s in here all day,” Bucs running back Reggie Cobb says, stopping in to say hello. ”Hey, Abe, I saw you on an old (NFL) film singing `Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog.` Remember that?”
More Top Picks Best Weighted Eye Masks For Migraines
Gibron nods, laughs and continues to study film. He looks hard and long, just as he does at the Bucs` afternoon practices. He`s easy to spot, a massive figure perched atop a hydraulic crane that tilts a tiny bit to whatever side Gibron sits on.
”I wanted Abe to help me and he does,” says Wyche, who communicates with Gibron through nods or the notes Kal writes for his father at night. ”He lets me know what players are doing what. He has a good eye for talent. I wanted him to be around because this is a man who really loves football.”
Gibron left his love for several years, torn away from football by the effects of the aneurysm. No one could believe he lived through it. But he died a little inside.
”What hurts him so much now is that he was always in control, and now he`s not,” Susie said from the family`s Clearwater home, where they have lived since Gibron was a Bucs assistant coach from 1976 to 1984 under his friend, John McKay.
”He can`t speak well, he can`t write, he can`t drive a car. There were times when he was so depressed, he`d just sit in the same chair all day and cry. Sometimes I`d yell at him, `This is not living.`
”I`d tell him to realize he can`t have the life he had, but he can still have a quality life. I`d tell him to be thankful because he`s had a wonderful life.”
No one knows just how much Gibron will ever recover, mentally or physically.
”Two years ago, Abe was real bad, very depressed,” Susie said. ”A friend of ours had a condo in Jamaica and gave us the keys. He told us to get away for a while. I walked inside the condo and the first thing I saw was a sign on the wall that said, `Expect a Miracle.` ”
Some mornings, when she watches her husband leave for work, Susie Gibron remembers that sign.