| You would have to check your lottery ticket, realize you had
just won $40 million and then step on to an airplane that gets hijacked to comprehend the
wide range of joy and despair that Rams pro personnel administrator Jack Faulkner has
experienced this season. Faulkner is in his 45th season in the National Football League,
35 of them with the Rams. He has yet to be part of a team that has won it all. That could
change this Sunday, as his Rams are in the Super Bowl and favored to beat the Titans. The
title is so close he can practically reach out and grab it. A lifetime’s work. A
lifetime of waiting. A lifetime of wondering when it will be his turn to wear a ring that
says champions of all of pro football.
The Holy Grail is only four quarters away for Faulkner in what has been an improbably
magnificent joy ride for a Rams team expected to stall on the side of the road when the
season began.
Alas, Faulkner is a man with a heavy heart these days. His wife, Betty, died of lung
cancer on Nov. 9. They were married for 53 years.
Jack was a DB coach for the Los Angeles Rams in 1955 when they lost in the NFL title
game to the Browns. Betty was at the game.
"She’d be almost like a coach and pout for a while," Jack says of
Betty’s reaction to that loss. "She hated to lose."
Jack was the offensive backfield coach for the Rams during the 1979 season, when they
went to the Super Bowl and lost to the Steelers. Again, Betty was at the game. Again, she
saw Jack’s team fall one game short of a world championship.
On Sunday, Jack will get his third shot at winning pro football’s ultimate game.
Betty will not be at the game.
"It’s really tough," Jack says. "I just was hoping she’d be
here … "
His voice chokes with emotion and he pauses. It is a long pause.
"I still haven’t … "
Grief is dripping from every word, and Jack stops in mid-thought yet again before
continuing, "It’s only been like two months now, and I’d just like to have
her here with me. She would really be proud of this team. She would really be excited
about Marshall Faulk and the speed and the things that we have on the team now and the job
(head coach) Dick (Vermeil) has done. She would really be proud of that."
If she were still alive, Betty would root for Vermeil because he once roomed with her
husband when they were on the staff together in the ’70s. She’d root for the
much-improved offensive line because she knew OL coach Jim Hanifan. She’d root for
rags-to-riches QB Kurt Warner because, when Betty was alive, she loved the story about the
way Warner met a divorced mother of two, married her and eventually adopted both of her
kids.
She’d root for the whole darn Rams team because, well, she spent so much of her
life rooting for Rams teams.
"She loved the Rams," Jack says. "We’ve been with them for (35)
years. So, yeah, she was really a fan, I’ll tell you that."
The time they spent with the Rams pales in comparison to how much time they spent
together. They started dating in high school. Jack was a fullback and linebacker on the
Boardman High School football team in Youngstown, Ohio. Betty was a cheerleader. When Jack
was 16, he joined the Marines. He was initially sent to the Marine Corps base in San Diego
and then served in Saipan and Okinawa during World War II.
"That was real shooting," Jack says, laughing. Then his voice trails off as
more somber memories fill his head, and he adds, "A lot of guys got killed."
The entire 2½ years Jack was in the Marines, he and Betty would exchange letters once
a week.
Eventually, he would return. Eventually, they would marry. Eventually, they would wear
wedding rings for 53 years.
This past June, Betty was diagnosed with lung cancer when an MRI revealed a tumor.
Right up until the very end, the chemotherapy seemed to be going well, although the
radiation treatments were awful, burning her esophagus so badly she couldn’t swallow.
Jack and Betty’s daughter, Cathy, got married Nov. 6. The doctors said Betty would
be able to go. At the last second, the doctors changed their minds. Betty could not go.
She insisted that Jack attend the wedding and walk their daughter down the aisle. A day
after the wedding, the Rams lost a second consecutive game. It was their only losing
streak of the season.
Two days later, Betty died.
"I always thought she was going to make it," Jack says. "I really did.
Till they put her on the ventilator. Then the doctor told me she’d … "
It is a sentence he cannot finish.
After 53 years of marriage, how does a man go forward without his wife? Oh, how he
misses the way she loved to play bingo. Oh, how he misses playing golf with her.
In what may be the greatest gridiron year of his life but the worst personal year
he’s ever known, Jack Faulkner tries to cover the hurt with a blanket of football. He
recently had dinner before the Rams-Buccaneers NFC title game with ex-Bucs head coach John
McKay, and the two reminisced about their game 20 years earlier, when the same teams met
in the NFC title game, won by the Rams. Mostly, Jack watches game films of opposing teams
for the Rams and puts together player reports. When asked if he is putting in eight-hour
days at work, his answer speaks volumes about the wife he misses:
"I put in a little more than that. I’d rather stay here for a while. The only
thing I’ve got is the dog at home." |
