Thursday, April 14, 2005
By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Jerome was at the door.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Forgot his keys.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Mostly to save the hinges, Kurt Weiss yanked it open from inside Alumni Hall, University of Notre Dame. It is September 1992. And there, against the backdrop of a drumming Indiana downpour, stood the Fighting Irish running back everyone knew on sight.
"Aw, thanks, man," Jerome Bettis said.
Then as now, Bettis hit hard, talked soft.
"Hi," he said, extending his hand, "I'm Jerome."
This is from Weiss' crystalline memory, the part that covers a time in his life mostly poisoned by life-threatening illness. The still-disconnected story that has played out since says a lot about Jerome Bettis and Kurt Weiss and perhaps an awful lot more about the precepts for heroism, how we ultimately define it, and even of something as tangible as the hidden cost to a community should Bettis tell the Steelers he doesn't have another football season in him after all.
Yesterday, on a concrete patio outside the Biomedical Science Tower off Darragh Street in Oakland, Dr. Kurt Weiss insisted he won't bother to look up the heroism prerequisites for another "60 or 70 years."
"Being heroic or being called a hero should be the culmination of a lifetime of effort and accomplishment," said the second-year resident in orthopedic surgery at UPMC. "I appreciate people saying or thinking nice things about me, but I'm not doing anything extraordinary."
What Weiss might consider extraordinary are closer to the things Jerome Bettis did in the weeks after their soggy introduction in South Bend. Diagnosed with bone cancer after finding himself suddenly a step slow at football practice at North Hills High School, Weiss clung to the dream of attending Notre Dame as his older sister had. That dream came true, but two things were truer still in his first weeks on campus. He wasn't healthy enough to stay, and he was going to lose his leg. Inside Alumni Hall, word spread quickly.
"Jerome was upset," Weiss remembered. "He was just visually saddened that I had to leave so soon after getting there. He said, 'Is there anything I can do?' People say that all the time. They don't always mean it. They can't."
No, they can't. What can you do for a sickly freshman whose cancer had spread to his lung by the time they'd found it? Who was looking at -- what -- seven operations? Who had one in five, one in 10 chances to live?
"Just beat Penn State," said Weiss, an intense Pitt fan.
Bettis remembered Weiss in the minutes before Notre Dame went out in the snow to play Penn State that November. Mentioned it to head coach Lou Holtz. Holtz Gippered it to the boys. With 42 seconds left in the game, Bettis caught a touchdown pass that vaulted the Irish to a 17-16 victory.
Weiss listened to that one at Shadyside Hospital, screaming. Agony, nurses thought. Ecstasy, Weiss recalled.
Two weeks later, he got a package in the mail. Game ball with his name and the final score on it. New Alumni Hall sweatshirt. A note from Jerome: "I hope you enjoyed the game we won for you."
"Jerome knew that I could never repay him and might not even see him again," Weiss said. "But he still went incredibly out of his way to do something positive for a friend in need. He's just that kind of man."
This is what Pittsburgh loses when Bettis retires. Rather than complain about Bettis' if-all-goes-well qualified commitment to the 2005 Steelers, maybe some of us ought to take a different look at the fallout. Bettis' kind of character commands that perspective. It is no small thing.
"I think athletes should be role models," Weiss was saying on the patio. "When they're complaining, they're forgetting about something. If I'm in surgery 12 or 13 hours or I'm complaining about the number of calls I've got to take, I have to say, 'This is my choice. I chose this life.' With athletes, they chose a profession they know kids will inevitably look up to. With their performance and with the things they say, they have to know there's an implicit trust there."
If there's a better way to explain that sometimes contentious dynamic, I haven't heard it in awhile.
Weiss returned to Notre Dame the following autumn, after Bettis had left for the NFL. He marched in the Notre Dame band with his prosthetic leg. He went on to medical school in Philadelphia and now feeds on a much more critically implicit trust under Dr. Freddie Fu.
"I don't want these people to think they made a mistake in bringing me here," Weiss said. "I always want them to think, 'Thank God Kurt is on tonight.' Orthopedics is a tough situation. It's jumping on the table and reducing the hit. I can talk to people without the BS.
"Yesterday, someone lost his leg, traumatically. I can tell him, 'Look, you can go to college, you can be a doctor, you can marry a wonderful girl and have wonderful children, like I have.' "
Yeah, Dr. Weiss can pound that door like nobody else.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Kurt Weiss and Jerome Bettis have not seen each other since the fall of 1992. You can argue that each would have become the man he is without the other, but I think you'd lose. The rest of us are just terribly lucky they're here.
SUPER BOWL BOUND?
The Steelers are 7-4 in Saturday games (4-3 away from home). The last time the Steelers played on Christmas Eve, which falls on a Saturday, was in 1995 against Green Bay at Lambeau Field. Two games later the Steelers earned a trip to the Super Bowl.
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