Remembering Frank Gifford

August 9^th, 2015.

Frank Gifford died today.

I go online and gather a lot of information

                about him

--things I didn’t know

even though I was a huge fan

as a kid, as was my father

as were my brothers

--our devotion to the New York Giants

football team

          rivaled in its religiosity

only by our devotion to the New York Giants

baseball team.

Back then

I didn’t know Frank Gifford was from Bakersfield, California.

I didn’t know his grades were so bad in high school

he couldn’t get an athletic scholarship to his dream school

--USC.

I didn’t know he played for Bakersfield Junior College

and made the Junior College All-American Team.

In fact, I didn’t know there was a Junior College All-American Team.

I vaguely remember my dad telling me he was

an All-American once he did make it to USC.

My dad probably knew all the stats of Frank Gifford’s career

as it unfolded

playing three different positions and each

superbly.

He loved sport stats, my father,

      and today

the day of Frank Gifford’s death

I discover he had enough achievements

 in a 12 year career

to fill a pocket sized record book

                all on his own.

But today, even as I marvel

                at how much I did not know

about him,

I am the captive of what I did know

--the hours

spent stretched out beside my father in his bedroom

                on Sunday afternoons

as the Giants’ fortunes rose and fell

and their names crackled in our mouths

                like hard candies

--Charlie Conerly, Joe Morrison,

Rosey Brown and Rosey Grier, Andy Robustelli, Sam Huff,

Pat Summerall (the kicker with the golden leg) and

Frank Gifford;

Dad’s voice

my brothers’

and mine

whispering and shouting

 in a harmony of hope

frustration

           euphoria.

Yet, as sweet and bitter as it is

       to recall those Sundays
(my father and brothers are all gone;
my oldest brother, Larry, was a director for ABC
and actually worked with Frank),

                        at this instant

                I am gripped by a memory

of the day Frank Gifford, All-American, All-Pro,

visited our high school in Summit, New Jersey.

I was in junior high at the time.

Our classes were in a wing of the same building as the high school.

If memory serves, our All-American high school coach, Howie Anderson,

made it happen.

The event was held in the gym.

Frank Gifford did not come alone that day.

He brought one or two teammates with him,

but I really only remember him.

He was that big a presence.

The entire student body

               was crammed onto the wooden bleachers.

Frank enlisted our two top players

in a demonstration—Mike Papio, our quarterback

and Darnell Mallory, our halfback

                 —both exceptional athletes,

                champs of our division

                       and adored and idolized by all.

As I do the math today

I reckon Frank must have been about 29 or 30 years old.

But he had no age that day.

He was young, tall, tapered and beautiful.

My father and his friends called him “the golden boy”

but he was more like Mercury than gold.

I thought Mike and Darnell were geniuses of the gridiron

but as they all ran plays together

                     Frank Gifford showed us a whole new level of mastery

          that couldn’t be achieved in high school

and couldn’t be appreciated through a TV screen,

a mastery that said, “This is what you get if you keep at it,

keep practicing, keep honing your gifts for another ten years.”

He moved like music

                  explosive

                    quick

                          fluid

                in a way that was his and his alone.

He was animal, wind and god.

His ready and open face

               shone with a light

                                that was his and his alone

yet shared generously with all of us in the gym that day

the way a king shares his beneficence.                                  
Because my father was a journalist

       I had already met a lot of stars

--Roy Rodgers and Dale Evans, 

             Gene Autry,

           Fess Parker, to name a few.               

But in these years of my own athletic dreams

                I had never seen the likes of him.
He was a true action hero before the term was created.

               

I see him there, still...

                Frank Gifford

           beautiful in his youth

                                and beautiful in mine

in a way that only youth bestows

      when moments themselves

                are
               big

                  deep

                          and wide

           as a roaring

      stadium
            and feel like they'll never end.

C 2015 Bob Kamm