Formerly Fearsome Rosey Grier Faces Sacking by County : Jobs: Former defensive tackle and protector of Robert F. Kennedy is among scores of county workers laid off because of budget woes.

With hands like beef shanks, the man who once earned his living in the ferocious world of professional football gripped both ends of the veneered conference table the way he used to squeeze opposing quarterbacks.

But this time Roosevelt Grier’s words came with church-confessional quiet, a soft-spoken burst of wounded pride.

“I don’t know why it’s wrong for Rosey Grier to earn a living while everyone else is making theirs,” he said. “I’m not a wealthy man. Sure, I’m a well-known man. But I’ve got to put beans on the table like everybody else.”

Sometime next month, San Diego County officials are going to turn the tables on the retired 300-pound defensive tackle, who once sacked the likes of Johnny Unitas.

They’re going to sack Rosey Grier.

Citing both budget constraints and internal complaints over Grier’s $42.50 hourly salary for his part-time community liaison and trouble-shooting job, officials are giving walking papers to the 60-year-old former Los Angeles Ram, pop singer, actor and social activist.

“Sure, Rosey Grier is a household word who has opened a lot of doors around here,” county spokesman Bob Lerner said. “But times are tough. We’ve got social workers overworked to the point of exhaustion, probation officers with caseloads that have doubled and tripled.”

Officials say Grier, a special assistant to the county administrator, was among scores of county workers recently released by Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen, a move that saved taxpayers more than $1.1 million in salaries.

“To put it simply, when push came to shove, there was a point where you needed to cut the cord,” Lerner said. “And having Rosey Grier on our payroll was a luxury we just simply could not continue.”

Insiders, however, say Grier’s firing carried more political overtones than merely meeting a budget.

County Supervisor John MacDonald received calls and letters complaining about Grier, who earned from $40,000 to $65,000 a year handling county social works programs.

“There were labor groups, workers and citizens, most of whom felt that $50,000 was quite a bit of money for a part-time job,” said Nancy Allen, an aide to MacDonald. “So we turned the complaints over to county administration. And, in this case, I guess the squeaky wheel got the grease.”

Another county worker added, “We realized we could go out and get volunteers to do the things for which he was charging us an arm and a leg.”

Grier, who since 1990 has worked an average of 25 hours a week meeting with everyone from gang members to local politicians, said he would not be reduced to anger in responding to complaints against him.

But he acknowledged that news of the planned firing has hit him hard, like his sudden trade to the Rams from the New York Giants way back in 1963.

“It broke my heart to get traded from the Giants--and that’s how something like this feels,” said Grier, who wears an embroidered rose on his denim jeans and whose trademark goatee is now flecked with gray. “But I survived that trade OK, and I’ll survive this. I’m a creative person. I’m an idea person. I know how to put things together to make things happen. And that’s what I’m going to do now.”

Grier, an ordained Christian minister, plans on moving to Kansas City, where he says he will continue his crusade for the disadvantaged with a consortium of Midwestern churches and businesses.

And he has two books due out next year, one about successful minority entrepreneurs, the other a novel--his first--about family life in the ghetto.

His game plan, he says, will still include Southern California, where he’ll maintain part-time residency both in Los Angeles and San Diego.

“The county of San Diego is not my source,” he said. “God is my source.”

His latest job was one more way Grier has been using his celebrity status to open doors in disadvantaged communities--cutting through red tape for people with few resources, galvanizing youth to aim for success.

Grier, who prefers blue jeans and bolo ties to a business suit, might be on the telephone one day with a local mechanic to ensure that an elderly woman’s car was properly repaired. He has huddled with judges and attorneys about their roles in trying troubled inner-city youths. He has rallied funding and support from local business owners for public projects and has commanded the ear of politicians statewide.

Even the Oval Office was part of his turf.

“Everyone respected the fact that Rosey could telephone the President of the United States, and his call would get through the red tape,” Lerner said. “How many other people in local government could dial the White House and talk to the man in charge?

“When President Bush came to town last year, Rosey made a call to his camp, and, within an hour, he had a one-on-one meeting in that long, black stretch limousine. I don’t think we’ll ever have that kind of access again.”

Grier attended school assemblies and community center ground-breakings. He threw parties for elderly shut-ins and once offered 100 free tickets and transportation to local senior citizens who wanted to hear Nelson Mandela speak in Los Angeles.

And he hit the streets, rapping with gang members on inner-city corners and in neighborhood alleys.

“I liked talking to kids,” he said. “I’d stop them on the street, find out where they were in life, where they were going, what their feelings were.”

Those street encounters were never easy. Despite his size and easygoing gait, many youths ignored the former athlete until they discovered he was indeed Rosey Grier. Others ignored him even then.

Or they asked tough questions.

In East San Diego, a gang of youths complained to Grier that their backs were against the wall.

“What do you want us to do?” they asked him. “They’ve taken the water out of the local pool. They’ve taken the nets away from the basketball court. People won’t hire us, even if there were jobs. And yet you don’t want us on the street. So where do we go?”

Grier said he thought hard on that one.

“I told them they were right. We ought to have an answer for them. And they should have the nets and the water in the pool. But they should also have respect for their community and their country.”

The anger of the inner city has taken its toll on Grier. His big hands move rapidly when he says that the billions of dollars spent annually in America’s black communities remain there for an average of only seven hours.

The reason, he says, is that most businesses are run by white absentee owners who at closing time each day siphon the money out of the neighborhood where it belongs. Grier says the solution is more local black ownership.

But more must be done for the youngest ghetto generation, he says. In past years, Grier has managed two inner-city activist groups--Are You Committed? and Giant Step--and in San Diego has worked to establish a youth corps to offer job training to disadvantaged youths.

But perhaps most crucial to the survival of the inner city is the need to give black felons a second chance to make a success of themselves, he said.

“These people are a big part of the work force in the black community and yet nobody wants to give them a second chance,” he said. “Nobody. Unless, of course, you count the local pusher. He’s all too willing to give that man a baggie and tell him to go out and make some cash.”

When he meets with gang members, he never asks what crimes they’ve committed.

To him, it doesn’t matter.

“I don’t think there’s one person in our society who hasn’t made a mistake, not one,” he said. “So I don’t ask. It’s none of my business. I ask them, ‘Where do we go from here?’ ”

Brian Weaver knows all about what people like Rosey Grier can do for a man in need.

Weaver, convicted for gang-related crimes in Los Angeles, spent 42 months behind prison bars and had little hope of a job awaiting him when he got out. Then he saw Rosey Grier on television.

Rosey put him to work helping choose ex-gang members for a jobs program.

“He just accepted me,” said the 33-year-old father of two. “He talked to me and encouraged me. And he put me in a position of responsibility, something nobody had ever done in the past.”

After working with Grier’s activist group, Weaver moved on to sell real estate and now wants to produce programs for Christian television.

Rosey Grier, he said, changed his life.

“Rosey always used to tell me that I was special, that I was unique, that there was nobody else like me. He said my life had a purpose,” Weaver recalled. “Me, an ex-con. I never thought my life mattered.”

Grier said part of his ability to forgive comes from how he has managed his anger toward Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, the gunman who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.

Grier says, “He shot the man I loved.”

Grier was serving as an aide to the presidential hopeful when Kennedy was gunned down outside the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Grier recalled grabbing Sirhan’s leg and gun hand after the shots.

As the shooter struggled, Grier held his elbow against Sirhan’s nose. “I could have killed him right there,” he said, “like everyone else was trying to do.” Instead, he protected him from the angry crowd.

Now, Grier says he would not testify either for or against Sirhan’s right to be paroled from prison. “He has rights just like everyone else,” Grier said. “And politics should not enter into what happens to him.”

But he said he has forgiven Sirhan.

“If what I’m trying to do is real, making sure people can live together, then people like him must also be welcome in the world we create.”

The shooting changed him, he said, shaping him into the nonviolent man he has become.

In movie and television roles, he has rewritten parts rather than agree to fire a gun. He took up needlepoint and wrote a book on the subject, and later performed the song “It’s All Right to Cry,” a children’s tune about expressing emotions.

The young man reared in Depression-ravaged Benevolence, Ga.--one of 11 children of a peanut and watermelon farmer--graduated from Penn State University, joined the New York Giants in 1955 and never looked back on his poverty-steeped roots.

With the Rams, Grier joined Deacon Jones, Merlin Olsen and LaMar Lundy to form the famed “Fearsome Foursome” defensive line, creating the most formidable pass rushes of the era.

Grier says these days that he’s too wrapped up in his social concerns to spend much time weeping, and his needles have gone a little rusty.

He’s even changed his politics.

Rosey Grier has gone Republican. After Democrats refused to back his pet project to legalize prayer in public schools, he’s become a George Bush follower and a defender of Dan Quayle.

The social activist who was a pallbearer at Robert Kennedy’s funeral now gives Quayle advice on his public image.

“I told him I thought he was too tentative,” Grier said. “He’s the second-most powerful man in the entire world, and he has a right to stand up for what he believes in.”

Rosey Grier’s ready to tell the world what he believes. Including the fact that minority athletes have become too selfish and need to give more sweat and money back to their communities.

And, most important, that somebody needs to step forward and save America’s inner cities. So it might as well be Rosey.