Whenever someone you know passes away and their name comes up in conversation, a mental image of that person will rush to the surface of your thoughts — and often it’s one very specific image of one very singular moment, before other images come flooding into your mind’s eye.
It’s like that with me whenever I hear the name of Chicago Bears middle linebacker Dick Butkus — “the most feared tackler of all time” according to the NFL Network — who passed away two weeks ago on October 5.
For the record, I never knew Butkus personally, never met him, was never in the same room with him — unless you count Soldier Field as a room we shared briefly. I knew him in the same way lifelong Bears fans knew him who were old enough to see him play.
But I do have one closer connection to him that other fans might not have, a sort of “six degrees of separation” thing. In that sense, I’m only two degrees of separation from that Monster of the Midway, which is as close as you can come without saying you knew him personally.
That’s because my roommate at Western Illinois University was from Champaign, Illinois, and he was a senior in high school while Butkus terrorized opponents as a senior linebacker at the University of Illinois.
My roommate, Lee, was four or five years younger than Butkus, but having grown up in Champaign, he knew many friends and neighbors who were students at U of I. And being a bit of a party animal, Lee somehow found a way to get invited to college house and fraternity parties, even though he was still in high school.
And it was at one such party that Lee saw firsthand how Butkus earned the nicknames “The Maestro of Mayhem” and “The Robot of Destruction.”
The party was well underway, and when Butkus arrived, a chant arose from the revelers present. I don’t recall exactly what Lee told me the chant was, but it was something like “Do the trick, Dick! Do the trick, Dick!”
Butkus smiled and shrugged it off, but in time he relented.
Someone opened up a wooden door to a closet, and Butkus stepped up to it. He put one hand on one side of the door and the other hand on the other side, meaty palms flat against the wood.
He took a deep breath — and then he rattled the door right off its hinges! The room erupted in cheers. He dropped the door to the floor and someone handed him a beer.
If you think that’s an easy thing to do, go ahead, try it. If your wife in the next room hears the grunts and clatter and calls out, “What the hell is going on in there?” just tell her you’re battling a spider, but don’t worry, you’ve got the situation covered. It kept me out of trouble once.
How it plays out for your relationship after that is beyond my ability to predict, but I’m betting the door will be just fine.
That’s because you’re about as likely to unwrangle the hinges as you would be to get invited to play in eight Pro-Bowl games, or be recognized as NFL Defensive Player of the Year twice.
Of course, at the time that Butkus did that party trick, he couldn’t claim those honors either. He was just a senior in college who could claim to be nothing more than Big Ten Most Valuable Player and Unanimous All-American.
He would go on, of course, to thrill not only Bears fans but sports fans all over the nation with his ruthless intensity on the football field. Hall of Fame defensive end Deacon Jones said of Butkus: “Every time he hit you, he tried to put you in the cemetery, not the hospital.”
Although the Bears were somewhat pathetic (48-74, with 4 ties) during the nine seasons (1965-73) that Butkus played in Chicago, he sealed his legacy as one of the greatest and most intimidating linebackers in professional football history.
And now, with news of his passing, football fans all over America hear his name and revel over images of him that flash before their mind’s eye, just as always happens when someone you know passes away and you hear their name in conversation.
But for me, the first Butkus image that always pops to the surface has nothing to do with the football field. It has to do with a sorry closet door in Champaign, Illinois, an abused door I never saw firsthand but heard about from my roommate, who did see it.
As I said at the outset, I never met Dick Butkus. I can only claim two degrees of separation from him.
Of course, I would have loved to meet him and shake his meaty hand as my roommate did.
But not at a party at my house.
TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com.
