imgreat95
08-03-2002, 12:09 PM
Gene Therapy: Speaking of Undaunted Courage
Friday, August 02, 2002
On the night the club owner ditched his plane in the high grass at the county airport, we were sitting around at Steelers training camp trading how-tough-is-this-guy stories.
How tough is Dan Rooney?
Don't even start.
Beat cancer. Won the war his gall bladder launched against him. Banged himself up worse than any running back he ever employed in a car wreck on Banksville Road. And on and on.
His brother, Art Jr., whom he fired, once said, "Dan? Tough as a boot. Smart as a whip."
The Steelers president turned 70 this month. There are those who share some unexpressed sentiment, unexpressed to him at least, that it might be time to get out of the cockpit. They can forget it.
He might not look like Indiana Jones, but Dan Rooney is an adventurer of sorts, specializing, if you will, in adventures of the intellect. At the millennium, he gave everyone in the family an assignment -- his wife and all eight grown children: Rank the most important people who ever lived, in order of impact. That summer, he convened them to present their lists and discuss them.
On the sidelines at the Latrobe High School field where the Steelers practiced Wednesday night, an hour before he left Arnold Palmer Regional Airport for what could have been the final time, he was talking about a recent trip to Ireland and about planning a family vacation for next summer that would retrace some of the segments of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
"There would be some canoe trips that would be great, and some of it will be hiking," he said. "Have you read that book?"
"About Lewis and Clark?" I said.
"Yeah, I think it's called 'Undaunted Courage.' You gotta read that. Really great."
"Why are Lewis and Clark getting all the recent pub, cover of Time, all that?" I said.
"It's the 200th anniversary of the expedition. I read the Time piece. Tremendous."
He didn't stay through practice, which ended around nine. He wanted to touch down back at Allegheny County Airport before dark. It's a trip he has made hundreds of times since he started flying in 1975. It's 15 minutes in the air.
Normally.
Of course, when your electricity fails and you can't lower your landing gear and you can't crank it down manually without losing control of the plane, and when you call the tower and get voice mail, call 911 on the cell phone and eventually lose power on the cell phone too, normalcy is just the slightest bit elusive.
Lewis and Clark, you will note, were spared this predicament.
By now you know the happy ending, detailed yesterday by the pilot himself at one of the more bizarre news conferences in the history of training camp.
"I don't know what the FAA is going to say," Rooney quipped, "but I thought it was one of my better landings."
He'd stayed aloft nearly 45 minutes on instructions from the tower, contacted by the 911 operator, to burn off fuel, and eventually landed in the grass, the plane skidding into a runway marker and spinning to a stop.
He'd done it, as it happens, pretty much the way he has done everything in this life. Calmly, with a quiet yet rich confidence.
On the hot St. Vincent practice field not 24 hours later, he pulled off his news conference tie and settled into watching giant sweating men do the things he pays them millions to do.
"You were really calm, huh," I said.
"I was really calm in the plane," he said. "It was serious but I thought only one thing: If I'm gonna get it done, I can't panic."
For 20 years, I've bounced preposterous ideas off Dan Rooney on these sidelines, just to keep from going crazy, I suppose. This time I was going to ask him if he knew about any NFL rule that prevented the offense from using more than one ball. A passing drill used Wednesday night used four quarterbacks simultaneously, each with his own ball.
You could really put some pressure on the defense with that.
Then I was going to tell him that what the NFL really needs is to make the last mandatory cutdown date the one by which you must reduce the roster to 10. That'd be interesting, huh?
"So what about you?" he said. "Did you get something to write about?"
"Actually," I said, "you really helped me by ditching that plane. If I have to give you a nickname over this, do have any preference?"
"No," he said, "but I know it won't be good."
Friday, August 02, 2002
On the night the club owner ditched his plane in the high grass at the county airport, we were sitting around at Steelers training camp trading how-tough-is-this-guy stories.
How tough is Dan Rooney?
Don't even start.
Beat cancer. Won the war his gall bladder launched against him. Banged himself up worse than any running back he ever employed in a car wreck on Banksville Road. And on and on.
His brother, Art Jr., whom he fired, once said, "Dan? Tough as a boot. Smart as a whip."
The Steelers president turned 70 this month. There are those who share some unexpressed sentiment, unexpressed to him at least, that it might be time to get out of the cockpit. They can forget it.
He might not look like Indiana Jones, but Dan Rooney is an adventurer of sorts, specializing, if you will, in adventures of the intellect. At the millennium, he gave everyone in the family an assignment -- his wife and all eight grown children: Rank the most important people who ever lived, in order of impact. That summer, he convened them to present their lists and discuss them.
On the sidelines at the Latrobe High School field where the Steelers practiced Wednesday night, an hour before he left Arnold Palmer Regional Airport for what could have been the final time, he was talking about a recent trip to Ireland and about planning a family vacation for next summer that would retrace some of the segments of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
"There would be some canoe trips that would be great, and some of it will be hiking," he said. "Have you read that book?"
"About Lewis and Clark?" I said.
"Yeah, I think it's called 'Undaunted Courage.' You gotta read that. Really great."
"Why are Lewis and Clark getting all the recent pub, cover of Time, all that?" I said.
"It's the 200th anniversary of the expedition. I read the Time piece. Tremendous."
He didn't stay through practice, which ended around nine. He wanted to touch down back at Allegheny County Airport before dark. It's a trip he has made hundreds of times since he started flying in 1975. It's 15 minutes in the air.
Normally.
Of course, when your electricity fails and you can't lower your landing gear and you can't crank it down manually without losing control of the plane, and when you call the tower and get voice mail, call 911 on the cell phone and eventually lose power on the cell phone too, normalcy is just the slightest bit elusive.
Lewis and Clark, you will note, were spared this predicament.
By now you know the happy ending, detailed yesterday by the pilot himself at one of the more bizarre news conferences in the history of training camp.
"I don't know what the FAA is going to say," Rooney quipped, "but I thought it was one of my better landings."
He'd stayed aloft nearly 45 minutes on instructions from the tower, contacted by the 911 operator, to burn off fuel, and eventually landed in the grass, the plane skidding into a runway marker and spinning to a stop.
He'd done it, as it happens, pretty much the way he has done everything in this life. Calmly, with a quiet yet rich confidence.
On the hot St. Vincent practice field not 24 hours later, he pulled off his news conference tie and settled into watching giant sweating men do the things he pays them millions to do.
"You were really calm, huh," I said.
"I was really calm in the plane," he said. "It was serious but I thought only one thing: If I'm gonna get it done, I can't panic."
For 20 years, I've bounced preposterous ideas off Dan Rooney on these sidelines, just to keep from going crazy, I suppose. This time I was going to ask him if he knew about any NFL rule that prevented the offense from using more than one ball. A passing drill used Wednesday night used four quarterbacks simultaneously, each with his own ball.
You could really put some pressure on the defense with that.
Then I was going to tell him that what the NFL really needs is to make the last mandatory cutdown date the one by which you must reduce the roster to 10. That'd be interesting, huh?
"So what about you?" he said. "Did you get something to write about?"
"Actually," I said, "you really helped me by ditching that plane. If I have to give you a nickname over this, do have any preference?"
"No," he said, "but I know it won't be good."