Adjectives Adverbs
A Son of Football Calls His Mother
DOYLESTOWN, Pa. — A mother
sat at the edge of her bed. Angel figurines gazed down from a shelf, and a
wooden sign on the wall offered inspirational words about life and love. They
provided no comfort. She was on the edge, cellphone pressed to her ear.
This fraught conversation
with her son had started as a quarrel over his scatterbrain ways. A Dartmouth
graduate, a decade out of college, should be able to balance his checkbook. But
not Patrick, whose troubles in navigating everyday life frustrated everyone. x
Patrick.
His mother, Karen Kinzle
Zegel, sent him a maternal text message to calm down, all will be well. He sent
a quick response that, if you knew Patrick Risha at this stage, reflected
either bristling anger or unnerving apathy: I am calm.
Now her son was on the
phone again, saying disturbing things in a casual tone.
As she looks back on that late night last September, their conversation
wasn’t just about a measly $400 bank overdraft. It was about football. The word
was never uttered, but that’s what this was really about. Football.
Patrick Risha was born into a football family in a
football-first community: Pennsylvania’s Monongahela Valley, where the
pacifiers might as well be mouth guards.
His mountainous father, an educator named Pat Risha, played
college football and earned renown in the Mon Valley as the coach at Clairton
High School who specialized in motivating disadvantaged students. You’ll
succeed if you have heart, he’d shout. Players felt honored just to be hit by
his saliva.
One day Risha asked Karen Kinzle, a petite school nutritionist,
on a date. Then she didn’t hear from him for two months, only to find out later
the reason: football playoffs.
“I should have known then that the marriage was doomed,” she
jokes.
Their two children, Patrick and Amanda, grew up midsentence in a
never-ending football conversation. It was all about the big game Friday night,
then defensive adjustments for the next game, then field conditions for the
next, on and on. In the summer they vacationed at football camp; Dad and his
assistants in one bunkhouse, Mom and the kids in another.
At 6, Patrick was the Clairton mascot, wearing oversize pads as
wide as he was long. At 10, he was a Mighty Mite in the Mon Valley Midget
Football League. He was the kid forever asking: Do you think I have heart, Dad?
He became a regional celebrity as a running back at Elizabeth
Forward High School. The Horse, he was called, grinding out yardage with his
team on his back, then walking off the field helmetless and revealed, a
gridiron prince awash in mud, sweat and pride.
Newspapers trumpeted his exploits. “Risha Runs Over Titans.”
“Warriors, Risha Outlast Cougars.” “Warriors Ride Risha Into W.P.I.A.L.
Playoffs.” “Risha Rolls.”
His mother wore his jersey, cheering as he carried the ball like
the precious baby he once had been, tucked, secure. His little sister prayed
for him to rise from every tackle, unhurt, so that he could keep on banging and
spinning like a human top. The family lived for these American nights.
“It was football,” Amanda
says. “It was what we did.”
His mother remembers the external cost of all those games and
practices, his entire body, she says, “like a piece of meat.”
But at times it seemed something was going on
internally as well: the occasional fits of rage over nothing; that day he
swallowed a bottle of Tylenol after being grounded for drinking.
All aberrations, it was decided, in the arc of a smart,
well-mannered teenager with Ivy League dreams.
After high school, Patrick attended Deerfield Academy in
Massachusetts for a year — where he starred, of course, in football — and got
accepted to Dartmouth. It looked as if his dedication to the game had paid off,
his future secured.
He graduated in 2006 with a degree in government and a lingering
disappointment in his up-and-down college career, which included a back injury
that introduced him to painkillers. Still, he was known as a solid teammate and
an aggressive competitor.
“A pounding running back,” recalls Rich Walton, a teammate who
later married Amanda. “He just loved the contact.”
But, again, there were signs that something was off. A
gregarious guy who loved to shock preppies with his gritty Pennsylvania persona
was now reclusive. A student who could write a lengthy paper with ease now struggled
to jot down notes. He began taking Adderall for attention deficit disorder, but
no dosage could lock in his focus.
The Horse returned to the Mon Valley, unable to carry himself.
He gambled online. He took painkillers. He spent money he didn’t have. He had
fits of anger that overshadowed his big-hearted nature. Most of all, he seemed
overwhelmed by the prospect of paying a bill or updating a cellphone plan.
“It was just hard to relate to,” Amanda says. “I’d think, ‘Is he
lazy?’ And I would just end up doing it for him.”
One story in the lore of this new Patrick stands out. In a
single week in October 2010, his sister married his former teammate; his
longtime girlfriend gave birth to his son, whom they named Peyton (after, yes,
Manning); and his father, by then a controversial local power broker, died. It
was a lot for anyone to take in.
Several months later, he learned that his sister and
brother-in-law never received their prepaid wedding video. His response: to
break into the videographer’s home with a sledgehammer and reclaim their
wedding video and those of several other couples.
The intent behind this criminal act was honorable in a way, even
sweet. That video contained his divorced parents together, his little sister’s
big day and some of his father’s last moments. But the break-in also reflected
a disregard for consequences. Really, Patrick, a sledgehammer?
His guilty plea to a misdemeanor provided no reawakening of the old
Patrick. He seemed even less focused, less aware of consequence. One day he
showed his mother a few boxes containing six months of unopened mail.
His family began to wonder: Maybe all this had to do with
football. Patrick had been overheard saying he once came off a high school
field with no memory of having scored two touchdowns.
But now her Patrick was on the line from the Mon Valley, 300
miles west of her Doylestown bedroom, where she sat on the edge. He was talking
flat about standing on a ladder with the leash for Diesel, his black Lab,
around his neck. He was dismissing her pleas to see all the good in his life
and she was trying to discern between bluff and truth and then. ...
Patrick?
Examinations of the brain of Patrick Risha, 32, at the
University of Pittsburgh and Boston University revealed chronic traumatic
encephalopathy, or C.T.E., the degenerative disease caused by repeated blows to
the head that has been found in the brains of dozens of former football
players. C.T.E. has been linked to depression, impulsive actions and short-term
memory loss, among other symptoms.
Karen Kinzle Zegel is 61, remarried, and getting on with things;
she
recently began a website (www.StopCTE.org) for a foundation she has established in Patrick’s name. She is fine until she isn’t. All those Friday night regrets.
recently began a website (www.StopCTE.org) for a foundation she has established in Patrick’s name. She is fine until she isn’t. All those Friday night regrets.
After her final words with Patrick last fall, she would try to
lose herself by doing some gardening behind her townhouse, only to hear the
resounding cheers of fans at another Central Bucks High School West football
game. It was all she could do to keep from hustling over there to sound a
warning.
She knows the cheering will return in a few months. This time,
she will go. She will go, and talk to the mothers.
