Gene Frenette: For Tony Boselli, going into Pro Football HOF without Dad a tough reconciliation

The text message to call his stepmother, Carla, came late Sunday morning on May 30, 2021, when Tony Boselli was on a rented boat in Key West. He was enjoying vacation time with his wife and five kids near an Islamorada sand bar.

Carla didn’t have good news. The Jaguars’ impending Pro Football Hall of Fame left tackle was told if he wanted to see his father, Don Bosco Anthony Boselli Sr., one more time, he better get on a plane.

Not next week, not tomorrow, but immediately.

Suddenly, the first-born child, always his father’s pride and joy, had to go into a vastly different kind of hurry-up offense than on the football field.

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The day before he departed for the Key West vacation, Boselli said goodbye to his father at a Jacksonville Beach condo. His dad would be leaving to go back home to Colorado. That’s where he wanted to spend his final days because he was done with the cancer treatments at MD Anderson in Baptist Hospital.

Tony thought he would see his father after returning home from Key West. But now every minute that passed was filled with anxiety.

Boselli made the plane reservation on his phone from the boat, stayed another hour or so with his family, and made the 15-minute ride back to the marina. Tony later packed and got dressed, arranged a one-hour Uber ride to the Miami airport, hopped on a direct early-evening flight to Denver, making it to his father’s house in Boulder, Colorado, around midnight.

Luckily, Dad was still hanging on. The melanoma that ravaged the major organs of Big Tony for almost a year didn’t prevent Little Tony — as family members always called them growing up — from getting 13 more hours with the man who had more impact on him than any other.

“He was in hospice care, pretty drugged up, but he did wake up and squeezed my hand,” said Boselli. “I just sat with him all night, gave my sister a break to get some sleep. It was such a special moment that I’ll never forget being there.

“At the end, he was rabid with cancer and so sick, but there was a peace about him. As sad as it was that he died, there’s a peace that he’s not suffering any more. Nobody wants to see someone they love go through that, but I was so thankful I was there.”

But as the Jaguars’ legendary No. 71 endures his second Father’s Day without Big Tony, he must navigate through another kind of sorrow as his Aug. 6 induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame gets closer.

Players being enshrined have many emotions swirling through their mind on that momentous day. There’ll be none bigger for Boselli, who turned 50 in April, then lamenting not having his father in the audience as he becomes the first Jaguars HOF inductee.

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Ever since he learned of his enshrinement in January — when fellow Hall of Fame tackle Anthony Munoz knocked on friend Eric Murphy’s door to deliver the news he waited six years to hear — Boselli can hardly stop thinking about wishing his Dad was alive to share in the excitement.

Little Tony has now had five months to process the joy of getting into Canton, yet also dealing with the disappointment of Big Tony being there only in spirit.

How does Boselli properly reconcile those two polar opposite emotions? Simply by cherishing the memories of an idyllic childhood, and how Dad’s influence shaped him into becoming the man that his own kids admire with equal reverence.

A cool, supportive Dad

Big Tony, a California native who lost his father at age 8, was always about family. Even after he and Boselli’s mother divorced when their first-born son was 11, there was no bitterness or awkward family dynamic after the couple went their separate ways.

Tony and his two younger siblings, Jennifer Wright and Michael, stayed in the same Boulder house to live with their father, who later had twin daughters with Carla. His mother, Dr. Candy Hodgkins, who now lives in Jacksonville with her husband, Fred, and is CEO of Gateway drug/alcohol rehab center, has been a steady presence in Tony’s life, as are all his four siblings.

“At [football] tailgates, it was always Tony and Carla, and Fred [Hodgkins] and Candy. There was no choosing of sides,” said Angi Boselli, Tony’s wife of 27 years. “Candy left [after the divorce], got a new home and they weren’t going to uproot the kids from their house.”

Wright admired how seamless her parents made things after the breakup, saying: “My parents worked very hard to keep us kids out of any heartaches going on between them. They did an amazing job of making it as easy as possible. They worked hard to respect each other even though they weren’t married.”

But no matter what happened through the years, the family anchor when Tony was growing up, and even into adulthood, was always Tony Sr. His father, about 6-foot-1 and 190 pounds, had a larger-than-life presence and a take-charge personality.

He maintained a healthy, active lifestyle until a year before his death. Before his cancer diagnosis, Tony says his father would boogie-board with his grandkids in California on annual family summer vacations in Newport Beach.

When Boselli was a kid, Big Tony participated in all kinds of games with his children.

Every weekend in non-winter months, Dad took the family on boat outings in the Boulder reservoir, sometimes even after school on weekdays if the schedule permitted. He played pick-up basketball and took part in softball leagues.

When Dad came home from managing a McDonald’s franchise initially owned by his older brother, Bud, (he later purchased it while Tony was in college at USC), Boselli’s father was always game for physical activity.

“All day on weekends, and almost every day, we were at the lake,” Boselli said. “My Dad taught me to water ski when I was 4 or 5 years old. He taught me to snow ski in the winter. He was really a hands-on Dad, coming home from work and we’d play baseball or basketball.

“Being a Dad with five kids, I was always amazed how much energy he had after working all day. He’d say, ‘Give me 15 minutes.’ He’d have his one gin-and-tonic, then we’d go play. He was a very driven person and a really hard worker. That’s where I get that from. He had a big personality. Relationships were real important to him.”

Tony’s father continued fostering that bond into the late stages of his life, arranging for the entire Boselli clan to vacation together every summer.

But the father’s connection with his namesake son was unmistakable. Big Tony made sure little Tony, who filled out in high school and became a Super Prep All-American, did things the right way and remained a team player.

“My Dad never embarrassed me once, but he let me know how he felt,” said Tony. “He took the coaches’ side. I was probably 10 or 11 at a pee-wee football game, playing linebacker and we lost the game. I was complaining near the end and in the car. So Dad says, ‘What did you do? Why are you worried about what other people did? Why don’t you be quiet and do something?’ He wouldn’t put up with me complaining.

“Being good at what you’re doing, he really instilled that work ethic. I’m glad he bottled it up and demanded that from me. He was never satisfied with where he was. It’s great that you win, but he wanted to win again.”

Pushing Tony to greatness

Wright and younger brother Michael understood the benefits of Tony’s position on the family tree. Being the oldest came with perks and his siblings learned to accept it.

“For everything, Tony got first choice,” said Wright. “We’d fight as we were running to the car about who would ride shotgun. I’d call it and Tony would say, ‘No, you don’t.’ Dad would side with Tony. He was my Dad’s bright little protégé. Being the oldest son was a special place in our family.

“As much as we gave him crap for being the favorite, he also took on a huge amount of responsibility. My Dad put a lot of pressure on Tony. There was a responsibility to watch out for me, the younger sister, because we did everything together.

“There was an innate responsibility to lead and set the standard. Tony took that seriously.”

It was evident early on that Tony, the Jaguars’ No. 2 overall draft pick for an NFL expansion franchise in 1995, took nothing more seriously than football. His father relished every moment of that ride, attending all USC home games in Tony’s senior year.

When Tony was a junior at Boulder Fairview High, his father planted the idea of his son having a personal trainer before his final season. Just as Tony appreciated Dad not getting too involved in colleges recruiting him (Candy wanted him to go to Stanford for academics), he was excited about the training with Jim Kenney at the Flat Iron Athletic Club.

“It wasn’t like we were swimming in money, but Dad paid for it,” said Tony. “The rule was I had to do exactly what the guy told me, get there at 6 a.m. on weekdays, and abide by a diet.

“My Dad gave me everything I needed to be good at what I wanted to do.”

Andrew Boselli, 24, Little Tony’s oldest of five kids, and his siblings had a difficult time with the passing of “grandpa Tony” because it marked the first time in their lives they lost a close family member. They will never forget his impact on their dad.

“My Dad really respected and looked up to his father,” said Andrew, employed in Jacksonville by a California-based health care company. “I think my Dad’s best qualities he has toward us kids, he got from his Dad. The hard-working mentality, the love of having fun and enjoying life.”

Right to the very end for Big Tony, it was evident that family connection never went away.

Team Boselli in action

Four of the five times that Tony previously failed to make the Hall of Fame as a finalist, his father was in the room with multiple family members when he got the disappointing phone call.

“My Dad is the kind of guy when the chips are down, and that’s a down moment, he’s going to give you his best pick-me-up speech,” Wright said. “We all felt Tony deserved it a long time ago. My Dad would say, ‘You got this kid. We love you and you’re going to get it next year.’"

But when it happened again before last year’s Super Bowl in Tampa, a disconsolate Angi Boselli couldn’t escape the feeling that it might be Big Tony’s last chance to see the joy of his son getting into the Hall of Fame.

It set the wheels in motion for one of the grandest gestures — fueled by Angi’s compassion for her father-in-law's situation and love for her husband — and most cunning strategies in Boselli family lore.

By February 2021, about seven months since Big Tony was diagnosed with melanoma, hearing the news of another Hall rejection got Angi’s brain thinking about what could be done to make a dying father part of his son’s eventual HOF celebration.

“In my head, I had to make sure his Dad was there,” said Angi. “I told one of my best friends, Kay Murphy, that Tony’s dad will never get to witness it. We started scheming immediately.

“We hoped Tony Sr.’s health would be turning the corner, but it kept getting more bleak. It took a while to figure out how to couch it.”

The thought was to get Big Tony to be part of a video tribute to his son, but without tipping him off that they were doing it because he was dying. Angi knew he wouldn’t go along if he suspected that was the reason.

By early 2021, Tony’s father had moved into a condo in Jacksonville Beach so he could get regular treatments at MD Anderson. But Angi’s mind was constantly preoccupied with how to convince her father-in-law to do this video tribute, something she intended to keep a secret from Tony until he actually made the Hall of Fame.

Finally, they told the elder Boselli they were doing two videos, one if he makes the Hall in 2022 and another if he falls short again. They used COVID-19, which had altered the HOF voting process, as an excuse to convince her father-in-law to go along.

“COVID sort of became the perfect cover,” said Angi.

It wouldn’t be the first time Mrs. Tony Boselli pulled off a ruse that caught her husband totally off guard. She also had to coordinate the surprise of arranging Tony to answer Murphy’s door when Munoz delivered the news he would be enshrined in Canton.

But this was far more nerve-racking. Besides tricking her father-in-law into doing the video, she had to pull Tony away from his father for a couple hours while Eric Murphy interviewed him at the condo and a couple employees from Jaguars Productions, Trent Padilla and Brent Reber, handled the filming and sound.

So on May 20, 2021, just 11 days before Big Tony lost his battle to melanoma, he conveyed his thoughts into a camera, poignantly telling his son how he felt about his accomplishments as a player and a man.

The nine-minute video was stashed away, waiting for the right time to spring it on an unsuspecting Hall of Famer.

'My head in my hands'

With the NFL Honors program scheduled for February 10, 2022 in Los Angeles to introduce the Hall of Fame class, and every insider in the Jaguars’ organization fully aware Boselli was getting in, it was time to execute a surprise even bigger than Munoz delivering the HOF news three weeks earlier.

Jaguars owner Shad Khan and president Mark Lamping made arrangements for a post-Honors celebration in an atrium at Heritage Hall on the USC campus, featuring 80 invited guests and an appearance by some members of the Trojans’ marching band.

During the event, a video started playing that featured 30 people who were part of Boselli’s football journey — former Jaguars coach Tom Coughlin, former Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver, Fred Taylor, former USC teammate Willie McGinest, Jaguars radio analyst Jeff Lageman and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell were among the speakers — offering congratulations on his HOF election or telling Tony stories.

“I was getting embarrassed watching it,” said Boselli. “All these people saying nice things about you. It made me uncomfortable.”

When the last video tribute was played, Tony went from uncomfortable to overwhelmed.

Suddenly, right there on the big screen in front of family and friends, Tony’s father appeared and spoke for 90 seconds. The Jaguars’ video department edited the nine-minute video — shot in his Jacksonville Beach condo nine months earlier — and will use the remainder for a Boselli documentary to be unveiled in October.

A stunned Tony couldn’t bear to look at the screen, which only warmed the hearts of Angi and others in the audience who knew how touched he was by that special clip.

“It was an amazing and fun night, and then my Dad comes on and I’m like, ‘What?’ “ said Boselli. “I couldn’t watch. I put my head in my hands. I heard some of it, but not much. It was overwhelming.

“I mean, what stands out is him saying he was proud of me. What else as a son do you want to hear than your Dad loves you and is proud of you?”

The good wife’s gift

Boselli still hasn’t watched the entire video, but says he intends to before his HOF induction. Here’s the text of what his father, who was clearly weak from the melanoma fight and spoke in a lowered voice, said about Tony in those 90 seconds:

“He was a really tough character. He was tough in all sports and everything that he did. He was the hardest-hitting player on the team. Today, Tony Boselli is a hard-working man. In fact, there’s many times I’ve told Tony, ‘Quit working so hard. You’re working too many hours and you’re doing too much.’ He says, ‘Dad, that’s OK, because you were a hard-working man, too, and you supported us and you always showed us how to be that kind of character.’

“Tony was the most gifted athlete out there. I would like to share with him how proud I am of what he’s accomplished throughout his years of football, throughout his years of being a man, and everything that he has done to get to this position. Because he has done a lot more than just play football to get to this position. He is truly a great man.”

Angi, who has survived both thyroid and endometrium cancer and undergone four surgeries related to those conditions, remains humbled by the whole experience of that night.

Not just the HOF celebration, but how much Tony and his siblings treasure the significance of that video. She understands more than anyone how crestfallen her husband remains about his Dad not being around.

“It was the best gift I’ve been able to give, though I’m getting too much credit because everybody cooperated,” said Angi. “The Jaguars, my sweet friend Kay [Murphy], and Eric took so much time and energy to execute it. It was absolute teamwork.

“I’m just super grateful we were able to come up with a solution. I know this doesn’t replicate Tony having his Dad here, but I felt like it made [getting to the Hall of Fame] a little more complete for him.”

Do not get Tony started on his wife’s gesture. That in itself could be a one-hour documentary.

“The greatest thing football ever did for me was give me my wife,” said Boselli. “I would have never met Angi if I didn’t go to USC. She’s my best friend, the most important person in my life and biggest fan.

“What she did with that whole video is one of the countless, million things she’s done in my life that are so thoughtful and amazing. It doesn’t surprise me at all she thought of it and made it happen. It’s who she is.”

Preparing for Canton stage

Boselli left Wednesday for London to help promote the Jaguars’ game against the Denver Broncos at Wembley Stadium on Oct. 30. He had planned on the plane flight to start writing at least a rough outline of his HOF acceptance speech, which the Hall now limits to a “hard eight minutes” before inductees will be nudged off the stage.

“I’m sure I’ll forget to thank somebody,” said Boselli, who serves as the chief growth officer for All Health, a digital health care company headquartered in San Francisco. “How do you tell your story and tell about all the people that crafted that story in eight minutes?”

No doubt, Boselli’s work ethic will compel him to make sure his speech strikes the right chord, especially when it comes to talking about his father’s impact.

If the family has any apprehension about induction day, it’s how Tony will handle that part of the speech. His sister, Jennifer, says he did a “masterful job” delivering the eulogy at his father’s funeral, but Angi says he also “got choked up” at one point, so they’ll be watching his emotions closely when he’s on stage in Canton.

“He will read his speech one million and one times,” said Angi. “He’ll have to read it and read it and try to desensitize a bit. I want to hear Tony’s speech before he delivers it because I’m going to be a mess. I need to be prepared for how he’s going to address his father.”

Andrew is bracing himself for that moment, adding: “My Dad tells it like it is, and that’s very much like my grandfather. He doesn’t sugarcoat anything. I know that one point in his [induction] speech will be difficult. I know not having his Dad around really, really hurts him.”

The inescapable frustration for Boselli is knowing his father and he didn’t get the Hall of Fame closure both wanted, but so much of Big Tony’s final three months when he stayed in Jacksonville Beach provided his son with invaluable time together.

Looking back at his USC college days, Boselli laments being so fiercely independent that he probably didn’t go home to Colorado as often as he should have, didn’t pick up the phone to call more.

“If I think about regrets, I wish I would have dug in a little bit more then,” said Tony. “I wish I would have been more purposeful of my time in getting back to Colorado.”

That’s the thing about lost time in relationships with loved ones. People can’t get it back.

But under brutal circumstances, Big Tony and Little Tony did get some precious extra time. When his father came to Jacksonville for cancer treatments and stayed from February through May, 2021, they solidified a bond that neither of them would trade for the world.

They had more time to love, laugh, cry, joke around, maybe reminisce about the past. Like the joy Tony remembers his father had when he bought his first Cadillac.

Or recall the time he told his Dad in seventh grade that a much bigger ninth-grader with a moustache threatened to beat him up the next day for no particular reason. A scared Little Tony remembered his father’s advice to defend himself, only to be relieved when the bully told him he was “just joking.”

Those types of memories have been comforting to Boselli, both now as his Hall of Fame induction approaches and certainly when he got home to Colorado just in time to say his final goodbye.

“He was sleeping most of the time, but we had a couple moments where I grabbed his hand,” said Tony. “He knew it was me. I did most of the talking. The whole family was there when he took his last breath.

“It was an important moment for him and me, no doubt about that, probably more for me. It made me really think about how fortunate I was to have a Dad like him. He was my biggest cheerleader growing up. He was in my corner no matter what.”

Now it’s up to Don Anthony Boselli Jr. to continue living out his father’s legacy. Not as a Hall of Fame football player, but as a Hall of Fame dad.

Gfrenette@jacksonville.com: (904) 359-4540 

Gene Frenette Sports columnist at Florida Times-Union, follow him on Twitter @genefrenette

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: The missing piece: Jaguars' Tony Boselli goes into Hall of Fame without Dad