Book excerpt: Dallas Clark's mom died in his arms. It drove him to greatness.
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Before he was catching passes from Peyton Manning and becoming part of Colts lore, Dallas Clark was a senior in high school with the whole world in front of him. He came home from baseball practice, with just four days until graduation. The Seinfield finale was on that night. He said hello to his mom and went inside to eat dinner.
Then, his world shattered. Tyler Dunne tells the story in an excerpt from his upcoming book, "The Blood and Guts: How Tight Ends Save Football":
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Aunt Judy let out a haunting shriek in the garage.
He sprinted toward the sound and found Mom collapsed on the ground. She couldn’t breathe.
Clark dashed back into the house to call 911, returned, and tried to resuscitate her with CPR. He never took a CPR class in school but frantically tried to remember everything he had seen in the movies and… nothing. Mom was unresponsive. It felt like forever for the medics from the hospital in Humboldt ten miles away to arrive. A doctor told Dallas that his mother had died instantly from the heart attack, that there was nothing he could’ve done. She was forty-nine.
Here, he is skeptical. He still believes they told him this just to make him feel better.
Nothing could change the fact that Mom died in his arms. That PTSD stays with a person forever. Clark, now forty-two, grabs the drawstring of his hoodie with his left hand and stares ahead in a trance. His voice cracks.
“And I just wish I… well there’s a lot of wishes of how… so, yeah. It’s tough.”
It was the first domino to fall in a long journey of challenges for Clark. It created a fire in him that still burns today.
“Do I make it as far as I make it if Mom doesn’t pass?”
He went to Iowa as a walk-on to play football, and didn't even get a number. He got 142 written on his gear in Sharpie. More from The Blood and Guts: How Tight Ends Save Football":
Clark was eventually given No. 90 but even this crappy uniform hardly fit over his shoulders. He felt like a second-class citizen. After spotting a hole in one of his socks, he stepped in line to grab a new pair from the equipment guys. The All-Big Ten cornerback in front of him got a new pair, no questions asked, but when Clark asked? One was incredulous. “What?” he sneered. “Just because the scholarship kids get new socks, you think you need new socks?!”
Clark showed him the hole. A new pair was tossed at him in disgust.
“Like he’s reaching into his own dresser drawer and pulling out a pair of his socks. That was the bullcrap you had to put up with.” He threw them at me, like, ‘Here! Ugh. Geez. You pain me. I can’t believe you breathe the same air that I breathe!’”
During the summer, Clark worked for $7 an hour, waking at 6 a.m. each day. In the winter, he delivered the student newspaper on campus. He "was a puppet for dentist students, convenient because he sure didn’t have dental insurance. For $50 and free cleanings, he did whatever they said. Psychology students always needed subjects for case studies, too. For $25 a pop, he’d help them figure out why people pick red M&Ms."
He didn't see the field until his third year in college. He puked before the game — starting a tradition that would last for years — and lost 15 pounds in one game on the special teams unit.
During the spring of 2001, his coach convinced Clark to transition from linebacker to tight end — and it worked. He caught 38 passes for 539 yards and four touchdowns. The next season, he had 43 receptions for 742 yards and four touchdowns.
In the 2003 NFL Draft, Bill Polian took his in the first round. And the rest, as they say, is history: Eleven NFL seasons, 5,665 yards, 53 touchdowns and a Pro Bowl appearance. Peyton Manning had Reggie Wayne, Marvin Harrison and Dallas Clark.
Nowadays, Clark has a wife and three kids of his own. He lives in Livermore, Iowa, where he grew up. He still misses his mom. The pain of the loss still hurts. But he also wonders just how far it drove him.
“Would I have made it this far if I didn’t do this stuff? If I had my school paid for, if I had a warm meal to go home to, I don’t know. I do know I had a choice. It was either ‘do it’ or ‘get out.’ Get a job, get money, survive.
“If I’m from a home with loving parents and we’re well off, I don’t know. It’s a fair question, right?”
For more from Dunne on Dallas Clark and to preorder his book, click here.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Former Colts TE Dallas Clark fueled by tragedy, challenges
