The White Rhino Report – “A Marketplace Where Many Diverse Ideas Meet for Coffee!”: Building Men for Others – A Review of “Season of Life”
My friend, David Mann of Spring Mill Venture Partners in Bloomington, Indiana, recently made me aware of a book that is nothing short of life changing. David is a graduate of the Naval Academy and a Renaissance Man, so you can imagine that our conversations often center on issues of leadership and what it means to be a true and broadly educated Renaissance Man in this age of hyper-specialization. In the course of one of our dialogues, David mentioned the book, Season of Life, written by the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jeffrey Marx. The full title page spells out what this book is all about and why it is creating such a buzz: Season of Life – a Football Star, a Boy, a Journey to Manhood.
The story begins with Jeffrey Marx as a frizzy-headed young ball boy nicknamed “Brillo” working with the Baltimore Colts.
During those years, he built a friendship with Joe Ehrmann, who starred as a defensive lineman with the great Baltimore Colts teams of the 1970’s. Flash forward to 2001. Jeffrey Marx has become a respected journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize for his investigative reporting; NFL All-Pro lineman Joe Ehrmann has morphed into the Rev. Joe Ehrmann, a gentle giant who runs a non-profit organization called: “Building Men for Others.” The organization focuses on training men of all ages to become focused on the needs of others as they develop a healthy view of masculinity.
When Jeff and Joe met for the first time in eighteen years, their conversation took an interesting turn that provides a good window into the soul of what this book is really about. I’ll share an excerpt:
Joe asked me a question that initially seemed to be strangely out of place in our conversation: Had I read Richard Ben Cramer’s recently published biography of baseball great Joe DiMaggio? I had not. But I had heard about it.
I knew it painted a pathetic picture of a much-celebrated public hero. . . who was anything but heroic in his private life.
‘Well, more than anything, it’s the story of a man’s search for a heart,’ Joe said. ‘And that’s really a journey that an awful lot of athletes go through, an awful lot of men, period, because we’re searching based on all the wrong things – money, fame, power.’ (pages 29-30)
The book proceeds to recount the relationship that Jeff and Joe built over the next few years, and Jeff’s embarking on writing the story of Joe’s other passion – helping to coach the championship football team from the Gilman School in Maryland. What emerges is a fascinating and deeply moving parallel account of a journalist chronicling a unique and successful approach to coaching high school football players and challenging them to become the kind of men that they should become – while at the same time the journalist looks inward at his own journey towards a healthy understanding of manhood.
Gilman head coach, Francis “Biff” Poggi and defensive coordinator, Joe Ehrmann, and the eight other assistant coaches have created a unique and mind-boggling philosophy that has built a team of perennial champions that is often the top ranked high school team in the State of Maryland. Let’s listen in on part of Coach “Biff’s” opening speech to the team in the opening practice for the 2001 season:
“We’re going to go through this whole thing as a team. We are the Gilman football community. A community. This is the only place probably in your whole life where you’re gonna be together and work together with a group as diverse as this – racially, socially, economically, you name it. It’s a beautiful thing to be together like this. You’ll never find anything like it in the world – simply won’t happen. So enjoy it. Make the most of it. It’s yours” (page 44)
OK. There’s the appetizer. Now run out and get a copy of Season of Life so you can devour the entire smorgasbord of inspirational stories and thought-provoking reflections.
Any man who is self-aware enough to ask himself the question: “What does it really mean to be a man?” should read this book. And any woman who wants to support a man who undertakes such a journey should read the book as well.
Oh, by the way, after finishing reading Season of Life, I reached for the next book on my special shelf at home that I have mentally labeled “Next Books to Read.” So, I just finished the Richard Ben Cramer biography of Joe DiMaggio mentioned above. The book is very well written and one that I am glad I read. Joe Ehrmann was right; the life of Joe DiMaggio the man stands in marked contradistinction to the “Men for Others” that Ehrmann and his colleagues are trying to build. Joltin’ Joe was a man for himself – and in the end he died a lonely and pathetic figure.
Read both books. The contrast will take your breath away.
As always, I welcome your comments.
The 3 Scariest Words A Boy Can Hear : NPR
Heard on All Things Considered
By
NPR Staff
Joe Ehrmann, shown in 1975, was a defensive lineman with the Baltimore Colts for much of the ’70s.
He says that as a child, he was taught that being a man meant dominating people and circumstances — a lesson that served him well on the football field, but less so in real life.
Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images
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Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images
Joe Ehrmann, shown in 1975, was a defensive lineman with the Baltimore Colts for much of the ’70s. He says that as a child, he was taught that being a man meant dominating people and circumstances — a lesson that served him well on the football field, but less so in real life.
Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images
This story is part of All Things Considered‘s “Men in America” series.
It’s rare that a man makes it through life without being told, at least once, “Be a man.” To Joe Ehrmann, a former NFL defensive lineman and now a pastor, those are the three scariest words that a boy can hear.
Ehrmann — who played with the Baltimore Colts for much of the 1970s and was a lineman at Syracuse University before that — confronted many models of masculinity in his life. But, as with many boys, his first instructor on manhood was his father, who was an amateur boxer.
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Ehrmann says of his father: “I think his definition, which was very old in this country, was: Men don’t need. Men don’t want. Men don’t touch. Men don’t feel. If you’re going to be a man in this world, you better learn how to dominate and control people and circumstances.”
On the football field, those lessons served Ehrmann well. But, as he tells NPR’s Audie Cornish, it was not the same case in the pediatric oncology ward.
In 1978, Ehrmann’s teenage brother was diagnosed with cancer. However tough Joe was on the field, he did not feel equipped to help his brother or himself.
Interview Highlights
On how his brother’s death affected him
When he died, that was devastating to me. And I started to ask all the questions about what is the role, the meaning, the purpose of life. I was 29 years old, I was six years into my NFL career, and I had no concept — no concept what life was about, and no concept what I was about. And on this journey, I ended up asking the question: What does it mean to be a man? …
I recognized that everything I had invested my life in — all my accomplishments, my achievements, the stuff I had accumulated — I recognized at that moment they offered no hope or help to my 19-year-old brother — 18-year-old brother — lying on his deathbed. …
The great myth in America today is that sports builds character. That’s not true in a win-at-all-costs culture.
Sports doesn’t build character unless the coach models it, nurtures it and teaches it.
Joe Ehrmann
All I had was these old “man up” kind of things — “suck it up, we’ll get through this together” — when he really needed the emotional, the nurturing, the love. And I had to really struggle to pull that out of my heart.
On the roles a coach can play in his players’ lives
There’s two kinds of coaches in America: You’re either transactional or you’re transformational. Transactional coaches basically use young people for their own identity, their own validation, their own ends. It’s always about them — the team first, players’ needs down the road.
And then you have transformational coaches. They understand the power, the platform, the position they have in the lives of young people, and they’re going to use that to change the arc of every young person’s life. I think football is an ideal place — sports in general — team sports are an ideal place to help boys become men.
And the great myth in America today is that sports builds character. That’s not true in a win-at-all-costs culture. Sports doesn’t build character unless the coach models it, nurtures it and teaches it.
In addition to working as a pastor, Joe Ehrmann volunteers as a coach at Gilman School in Baltimore.
Coach for America
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Coach for America
On what those philosophies look like on the field
I think there’s a lot of screamers, there’s a lot of shouters, there’s a lot of shamers. My approach is this: Boy, you’re in the middle of the game, and some kid’s having a tough time. They get beat. … I tell all my players, “Come on over to me during the game and I’ll give you a hug.” And you think about the power of a hug versus swearing, shouting, shaming at some kid.
When I played football, I hated [when] some kid would get a knee injury, your teammate would go down and that coach would say move the practice down 20 yards and leave that kid laying there. … As coaches, we can kneel down next to that kid, you affirm the tears, the pain, the emotions, and you bring all the team around to say, “How can we help Bobby? He’s one of us; he’s done so much. He had so many dreams.” So, you teach them how to build authentic community as men caring for and loving each other.
On the changes he’s seen in ideas of masculinity
I think those three lies of masculinity — athletic ability, sexual conquest, economic success — in many ways, those things have been heightened. You have this increase in social media. You have young boys coming into this world, and they are hit 24/7. They’re given all kinds of negative messages about their masculinity. They’ve been conditioned, and they have way more messaging out of this culture than I ever had as a young boy.
