OK, so it’s two days later and you’re still trying to come to grips with New England’s Bill Belichick and Tom Brady matching Pittsburgh’s Chuck Noll and Terry Bradshaw with four Super Bowl championships. It hurts because you think the Patriots are cheaters. I get that. But Super Bowl XLIX weekend still was a great time for Steelers fans. Two words sum it up: Jerome Bettis.
It was long overdue, Bettis’ selection to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Nine years after he played his final NFL game, willing the Steelers to a win over Seattle in Super Bowl XL in his hometown of Detroit, he’s still the league’s sixth-leading rusher. He belongs.
“He called me first and said, ‘Mom, I’m in! I’m in!,’ ” Gladys Bettis recalled Monday. “He’s crying. I’m crying. It was such a beautiful moment. I’m so elated for that boy.”
It just seemed right to call the woman who made it all possible for Bettis. His success was her success and her husband, Johnnie’s. The story is about Bettis as a football star, but, more than that, it’s about the power of family and uncompromising love. Bettis was lucky growing up in the rough west side of Detroit. Many of his friends didn’t have one parent. He had Gladys and Johnnie, who died of a heart attack at 61 in November 2006, fewer than 10 months after getting to see his son enjoy his greatest professional moment, holding the Lombardi Trophy and announcing his retirement as confetti fell on him from the Ford Field roof.
“Mom, I wish Dad was here,” Bettis told his mother during that emotional phone call Saturday night.
“I told him, ‘Baby, I talk to him all the time. I got you covered on this one,’ ” Gladys Bettis said. “His dad would be so proud. ‘That’s my boy.’ That’s what he always used to say. ‘That’s my boy.’ ”
It would be inaccurate to say Gladys Bettis knew that Jerome would become a Hall of Famer. She didn’t want the youngest of her three children — “Roni,” as Jerome was known, as in macaroni — playing football. She feared for him getting hurt. She feared for his asthma. She much preferred bowling.
“When he was 12 or 13, he was playing in traveling leagues and going to different states,” Gladys Bettis said. “He bowled 300 games. Pros were watching him. They told him, ‘You’re too good. Go play football.’ ”
"His dad would be so proud. 'That's my boy.' That's what he always used to say."
It’s funny, Gladys Bettis’ brother, Leroy Bougard, was telling her and Jerome the same thing. She saw a kid who cared about his schooling. “I was thinking academic scholarship for him all along.” But her brother predicted Jerome would be good enough to get a football scholarship. Sure enough, after she relented and allowed Jerome to play football for the first time in ninth grade, he got that scholarship, to Notre Dame, of all places.
“I would go to all of his practices in high school,” Gladys Bettis said. “I’d sit in the car outside the fence with an inhaler in my hand. He finally came to me one day and said, ‘They want you to come on inside the fence. They think you’re a spy sitting out there.’ So I moved into the bleachers. Still had the inhaler.”
By then, the other kids had stopped ridiculing Bettis the way they did when he was younger. He was so different, not so much because he wore big, thick, black glasses and carried syrup sandwiches and a briefcase to school, but because he had two parents, because he cared so much about his studies and because he respected authority and knew the difference between right and wrong. No one gave him a hard time when he set off for Notre Dame, no longer a kid, but a big, strong, powerful man.
Bettis’ parents saw all of his games, college and pro. It’s no wonder he thanked his mother first when he spoke to the media after the Hall of Fame announcement.
“I tried to be the best mom I could be,” Gladys Bettis said.
Her son, John, 46, is general manager of Savoy Restaurant in The Strip. Her daughter, Kimberly, 48, is a customer service representative for Sam’s Club in suburban Detroit. Jerome Bettis turns 43 on Feb. 16.
“I would talk to my kids,” said Gladys Bettis, one of 12 children. “I’m a talker. I would go in their rooms. I would look in their drawers. I would look in their book bags. I heard people talk of a generation gap. We didn’t have a gap. We just had a lot of love.”
Gladys Bettis’ baby had a special place in her heart.
“I saw that Jerome had something special. People listened to him when he talked. I took him to churches and community centers and let him speak to kids. He was such a positive influence. I tell people, ‘What you see with Jerome is what you get.’ That’s the way he is. He grew up to be such a great man.”
Gladys Bettis couldn’t be with Jerome in Phoenix for the Hall announcement. She was diagnosed with breast cancer last summer and was a little too weak to travel from Detroit after having her final chemotherapy treatment a week ago. She’ll start radiation treatments later this month. She will turn 69 in March.
“Everything is good,” Gladys Bettis said. “I told my doctor, ‘Bring it on. I’m a fighter. I’m ready for this fight. I’m winning this fight.’ ”
Gladys Bettis will be in Canton Aug. 8 when Bettis is enshrined. Of course, she will be there. Do you think she would miss it? Do you think he would allow her to miss it?
“I don’t know who he’s going to pick to present him,” Gladys Bettis said. “I know it would be his dad if he were still here. That’s a definite.”
The guess here is Bettis will ask his former Steelers coach Bill Cowher. But wouldn’t his mom be a great choice?
“Oh, my, no, I couldn’t do that,” Gladys Bettis said, giggling. “On the way to the stage, I would be telling everyone, ‘Get your tissues ready. We’re going to be here for a while.’ ”
I’m not sure anyone would complain.
Ron Cook: rcook@post-gazette.com. Ron Cook can be heard on the “Cook and Poni” show weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on 93.7 The Fan.
First Published: February 3, 2015, 5:00 a.m.
