IRVING, Texas - Eighty-five young men boarded a charter jet at DFW Airport last Thursday to fly to Oxnard, Calif. to try to become the 2008 Dallas Cowboys. Some of them know they are on a team trying to win a championship. Some of them are only desperately hoping to make it. They all think they are in for the challenge of a lifetime, to make a football team, to try to win a title.
They have no idea.
Tom Rafferty used to be one of them. He was better than many.
Rafferty was a fourth round draft choice from Penn State in 1976. It took him all of one year to become a starting guard, in the Super Bowl championship season in 1977. The only reason he stopped being a starting guard in 1981 was that he became the starting center. From '76 until his final year in 1989, the fewest games Tom Rafferty played was the eight he started for rookie coach Jimmy Johnson. Johnson was bringing along another smallish lineman, and Mark Stepnoski learned a lot from Tom Rafferty about leverage, toughness, playing smart and surviving.
Rafferty did all that on guile and will. Don't take that wrong. He was no mutt. He was one of the best Joe Pa had at Penn State. He was plenty strong. But no one ever called him John Hannah. Rafferty had an exemplary work ethic and a great attitude, the perfect combination of Irish humor and competitiveness with a dash of nasty.
And he needs all that today, now that he can't walk.
Well, that's not totally true. He can walk a little, a few steps as of last week. Small, halting, shuffling steps with his walker in front of him. By the time you read this, he may be taking a few more at a time. He's made terrific progress since being stricken with transverse myelitis in late April.
This is not a story about how faith in God transcends human misery. Neither Tom nor his dazzling, long-suffering wife of 32 years, Donna, describes themselves as religious, although Donna will allow "spiritual." No, this is just pretty much a story of how inexplicable things sometimes happen to really, really good people and that sometimes all you can do is make the best of it. The way Tom Rafferty sees it, there isn't another choice.
First of all, the medical definition. One of the Cowboys' outstanding doctors, Bob Fowler, offers this: "Transverse myelitis refers to a usually sudden and rapid development of lower extremity weakness, impairment of bladder and bowel function and sensory loss due to various processes affecting a given level of the spinal cord. Possible causes include tumor/cancer, trauma, localized infection and various other disease processes that can affect the spinal cord in a localized manner." Thanks, Bob. I wouldn't have shared the bladder and bowel part except that Rafferty doesn't hide it. He's learned control of that again. But imagine being 53 and having to learn that.
But then, imagine being a healthy former football player and going to sleep one night with a sore back and waking up and not being able to walk.
On April 25th, Tom and Donna were in San Antonio helping their son Michael move. Rafferty is just matter-of-fact when he now recalls, "I went to bed that Friday night with a loss of sensation in my right leg and a tingling in my left foot. I thought I'd ruptured a disc moving furniture. In the morning it was really worse and we went to the hospital."
And that's when the fun began.
Long story a little shorter, a doctor prescribed painkillers, muscle relaxers and rest. Tom (you have to know Tom) thought he just got out of some heavy lifting - until he fell trying to walk to answer the doorbell. By the time he got back to the hospital Saturday night he couldn't move his legs and he had a lot of back pain.
At the risk of drowning you in medical history (and not having the writers for "ER" or "House"), suffice to say what followed was a series of CT scans and MRIs, followed by huge doses of steroids. The exams showed inflammation of vertebrae between T 7 and 11, although they aren't sure exactly the cause. While Rafferty's body endured plenty of trauma during his playing career, doctors believe the condition was not related to football, but rather was either viral or autoimmune. After a few days Rafferty was transferred to a rehab center and then eventually to Dallas on May 20. He was at Baylor Rehabilitation Center until June 11. Now, Rafferty is recuperating at the family's magnificent home in Keller. But he's not resting.
"He is absolutely working his butt off," says Donna. "Honestly, I think it's part of the offensive lineman mentality. He's never been angry. A little frustrated sometimes, but not angry. This is what linemen do. They work extremely hard, and they don't get praised a lot. They don't do it for the limelight, they do it because that's what they do. That's what Tom is like. He's not perfect, but he's very strong. He's been amazing."
He IS amazing. Rafferty greets a visitor outside and walks, with the walker, up one of the three ramps they've installed at the house to accommodate his walker and wheelchair, which he still uses. He goes to physical therapy three days a week and to the gym to do upper body weight work three days a week. He tools around the newly refurbished house in his chair, he makes dinner (a trip around the island in the middle of the kitchen chasing the walker is a good barometer of strength and endurance), and he gets on his riding mower and takes a whack at the 2 ¾ acres on which the house sits.
"The worst part of all this," he says, and you have to know Tom, "is that I had Donna sold on how hard all the yard work was that I was doing. Now she loves getting up on the mower and up on the roof and doing stuff I was complaining about. I'm busted."
Tom Rafferty went from a vigorous, active salesman for Sports Supply Group, and husband and father, to a former pro football player who has to learn to walk again. In the last few weeks, he mastered climbing up a step in his swimming pool. He told buddies who had come to the house, "Hey fellas, this is new. I haven't done this before."
And never has Tom Rafferty cursed his fates or asked, "why me?"
"Those words will not come out of my mouth," he says. "I will not feel sorry for myself. I will just get better. I will walk again because there's no choice."
Of course, there IS a choice, and many people who get personally acquainted with disaster take it. The choice is to give up, to be overwhelmed, to feel the odds are insurmountable. It's not something Tom Rafferty will do.
Does his background as an athlete help him, as Donna believes? Rafferty has to think that over for a moment. "Yeah, it probably comes over," he nods. "You just have to surrender or beat it. I just want to beat it."
The trademark Rafferty humor is helping immeasurably. As a player and since, Raff had one of the sharpest needles. He loved to play practical jokes, and was chagrined when the favor was returned. Once in training camp, roommates including Roger Staubach grew tired of Rafferty consuming all the snack food, so they set out a bowl of dog kibble. Raff came in and helped himself heartily. Teammates changed "Raff" to "Ruff" for weeks.
One of my favorite Tom Rafferty memories is from the NFC Championship game in Los Angeles capping the 1978 season. In those days, I left the radio booth to Verne Lundquist at the end of the game to go to the field and then the locker room. On a radio show that week, I had picked the Rams to win by 3. With less than 2 minutes left, an interception return made it 28-0 Dallas. As Rafferty lined up to run down and cover the kickoff, he spotted me on the sideline. As Rafael Septien approached the ball, Rafferty turned his head toward me and yelled, "Hey Brad! #@$&!"
And now he's saying it to transverse myelitis. There was a big high school coaching convention in San Antonio last weekend. If you sell sporting goods, you go. Rafferty went. It's the least he could do to thank the dozens of co-workers who donated their vacation time to him. He's just gotten his car outfitted with hand controls, so as soon as he can get re-licensed he'll be on the road.
No big speeches from Tom Rafferty. No heart-felt pronouncements. Just resolve, humor and appreciation for what he has.
