Redskin Assistant Ron Lynn Draws Criticism, but After the Death of a Child, He Can Handle It
Cynthia Lynn, in labor before the delivery of her third son, Alec, heard the far-off radio, and with startled husband Ron at her side, learned of his firing as the Chargers’ defensive coordinator.
Seven months later, and two weeks after moving to Cincinnati--her husband already off to work at training camp as defensive coordinator of the Bengals--Cynthia Lynn was knocking on a neighbor’s door for help.
Ron Lynn, calling home to say good night to his family, reached a baby sitter, who told him that his wife and youngest son were at the hospital.
“Driving to the hospital, as terrified as I was in thinking what could be happening, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as what I was about to hear,” Lynn says now.
At the hospital, the Lynns were told that their baby would need to have all his blood replaced, and very possibly he would not live through the night.
“I remember literally praying: ‘Just give him the chance to take his first step and let him go and play outside,’ ” Lynn says. “That’s the way it should be for a child.”
Eight months later, after so many hopeful moments of remission--every one of them having been quashed--and 15 minutes past St. Patrick’s Day, Alec Patrick Lynn died of leukemia.
More than two years later now, Ron Lynn, one of those faceless, nameless assistant football coaches, is working this holiday as defensive coordinator for the Washington Redskins, preparing for a game against the Dallas Cowboys today that means absolutely everything.
On the wall in Lynn’s office at Redskins Park, however, hangs Alec’s smiling picture, along with the little Bengals’ baseball cap he had always worn, a family treasure and ever-present reminder of perspective.
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Three weeks ago, Cynthia Lynn, mother and chauffeur, drove 8-year-old Ryon to his soccer game, walked the sideline, rushed home to prepare lunch, and then made the mad dash to 6-year-old John’s game, encouraging and consoling as needed.
An hour later, the third quarter was just ending at RFK Stadium, and cars were already leaving the Redskin-Eagle game as Cynthia Lynn, wife and cheerleader, turned the family car into the parking lot. With Ryon and John in tow, she found their assigned seats and caught the first glimpse of her husband at work.
Those sitting around her had already focused their attention on the man directing the Redskins’ defense and began chanting, “Lynn must go!”
Cynthia Lynn remembers dropping her head and not wanting to look up.
“Is anyone else hearing this but me?” she said to herself.
“My gosh, it was the most terrible thing you can imagine professionally for your husband,” she says. “But no one around me was saying anything, either because they were polite or knew how stressful it must have been to me. The chanting continued, I looked up at Ryon and John, and they broke out in tears.”
Cynthia Lynn no longer walks the soccer sideline on Redskin game day with transistor to ear. Each time the TV is clicked on, she cringes at what might be heard. Even riding the RFK Stadium elevator filled with fans dedicated to the Redskin cause is no guarantee that she will be free from hearing a disparaging word. And Washington is 8-4.
“It makes me wonder if all this is worth it,” she says. “Ron picked a profession that has a trickle-down impact on the boys. I just pray that I’m handling it right and raising the boys to be strong and sensitive.”
Most NFL assistants work in anonymity, but the Redskins have played before 228 consecutive sellout crowds in RFK Stadium, making the man who is in charge of the league’s worst-ranked defense as recognizable as the jogger who lives up the street in that big White House.
“I was doing the breakfast dishes the other day and Ryon and John were playing a football game they have, and Ryon was mimicking a sports broadcaster and criticizing his own father: ‘That was a terrible call by Ron Lynn,’ ” Cynthia says.
“Kids are so impressionable. . . . Both boys have had some bad experiences at school with other kids saying, ‘My dad says your dad is not a very good coach.’
“There are so many things that have happened in the last four years, and so much out of our control. I’m still not dealing with everything very well at times, but when I’m down, Ron’s best and most repeated line is, ‘Cynth, did you wake up this morning? Did your sons wake up healthy? You got nothing to worry about. We’re going to be fine.’ ”
After the last four years, which have included professional turmoil, moving vans, the death of Alec and several other relatives, and Cynthia’s sister’s bout with breast cancer, these should be the best of times for the Redskins, Lynn and family, with Washington already having won more games--with four left to play--than in any season since 1992.
But because of the defense’s shaky showing at critical times, the radio talk shows and boo birds are calling for Ron Lynn’s dismissal.
“Ron Lynn’s the right guy to have in that situation because some people wouldn’t be able to handle it,” says San Francisco 49er linebacker Gary Plummer, who played for Lynn in San Diego and with the Oakland Invaders in the USFL. “I know Ron, and as long as the Redskins win, he doesn’t care about the stats and the criticism. He might even be glad it’s all coming down on him because it takes the pressure off a young team.
“Come on, after going through what he went through as a parent, anything that he faces in football pales in comparison.”
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Ron and Cynthia Lynn, rocked by Alec’s leukemia diagnosis on the birthday of Ryon, their oldest child, began taking turns sleeping at the hospital. Cynthia was all worn out after keeping up with their two other boys all day long, and Ron was up at dawn and back after dark, having done all that was necessary to prepare the Bengals for competition.
“The pain is still there, and honestly, I don’t know how we got through it,” Cynthia says now. “He’s still a big part of our lives; we wonder what he would have been for Halloween, who his little friends might have been. I know the ‘what if’ game is sometimes bad to play, but I think it helps to talk about it.
“I don’t know how Ron did it. I still remember watching Ron as the doctor told us the first time about Alec. Ron just collapsed. Put his head into his hands and said, ‘Oh, my God.’
“But God blessed Ron with a strong personality and a sense of humor and he carried our whole family through it, and a lot of other difficult situations. I know it still gets to him. I’ve caught him. I’ve seen him in reflective moments with little kids, hugging them a little tighter and rubbing a youngster’s head a little longer. Let me tell you, on birthdays, anniversary dates we’re in tears--he just won’t show it to others.”
Instead of tears, Lynn displays a self-effacing sense of humor. He makes a quick stop in the mail room on the way to his office with a visitor, and says, “This is where I will be working next, the way things are going.”
So honest that some say he can never become a head coach, Lynn irritated the Redskins when he arrived by telling them, “If you had played well [they wouldn’t have fired popular Richie Petitbon as head coach, and] I wouldn’t be here.”
Maybe more than any other assistant coach in the NFL, Lynn presents himself for media grilling in the locker room after a losing game for as long as the questions keep coming.
“Ron’s a remarkable person,” Cynthia says. “I couldn’t go in the treatment room, so Ron would have to hold Alec down when they would do the spinal taps. I just couldn’t do it. It breaks my heart to even talk about it.”
Alec’s leukemia went into remission, but then there was bad news after Thanksgiving, and then again after the first of the year.
“He was a trouper,” Cynthia says. “He almost made it--they say it takes 14-18 days after receiving bone marrow, but the accumulation of chemotherapy and everything else put too much stress on his kidneys and heart.”
When it came time to bury their child, the Lynns had to take into account the nomadic life of an assistant coach, and so they chose Cynthia’s hometown of Reno.
“The holidays are tough, and his birthday is obviously hard,” she says. “But we try to celebrate and take the boys to the zoo or make it a family outing. A couple of years ago, we rented a room in a hotel that had a pool for the kids. We’ve adopted animals at zoos in his name, and planted trees everywhere we’ve been. There’s a tree in Reno, in Cincinnati. . . . Alec’s soul is in heaven, but he’s still with us too.”
Alec would have been 5 on Dec. 23--a day after the Redskins end their regular-season schedule against the Cowboys--a day on which Lynn and family might be celebrating his first playoff opportunity in 11 years in the NFL.
“This stuff, this football is such small potatoes comparatively,” Lynn says while walking off the Redskins’ practice field.
He has just finished challenging his defensive linemen to get up the field harder and faster, but now his eyes are glistening.
“It is as terrible a thing--I just can’t imagine anything worse than losing a child,” he says. “You talk with people who have lost children, and it doesn’t matter what age. It doesn’t matter if you’re 60 and your son is 40, it’s not right, it’s not the natural order of things. I mean you never want your children to experience pain. . . . It’s just awful.
“But he will always live in our hearts. He was just a smiling, neat, fun kid--even in the midst of everything when the chemo wasn’t taking its toll--he was a bouncing, happy guy. I remember one time getting the call from the hospital because he was in such pain and crying, and when I showed up and he saw me, he just broke out in this big grin.”
In Lynn’s mail this week, he received a letter from a parent of a child stricken with leukemia, who was aware of some of the work the Redskins’ coach has done for the leukemia foundation. He wanted to thank him, after advising him of his own child’s death.
“The thing is, we’re not unique,” Lynn says. “A lot of people--too many people--have gone through things like this. Most of the kids on the hospital floor that had gone into remission had all relapsed, and have since passed away. You share something with those parents and you just hate the day you walk by and the room’s empty.”
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Ron Lynn, the chemistry major at Mt. Union College in Alliance, Ohio, bucked family wishes that he become a doctor, choosing to coach football. He spent 17 years in the college ranks before joining the Oakland Invaders in 1983, and then the Chargers in 1986.
“There are some Sundays when I wonder if I made the right choice,” Lynn says in customary good humor.
In San Diego, where he had inherited the league’s worst defense, Lynn used to joke about having to leave the press box after games wearing a fake nose and wig to escape the wrath of Charger fans. But he interjected his aggressive “Go get the quarterback!” philosophy and boosted them to No. 5.
He had the credentials to become a head coach, but being stuck in a losing and chaotic organization, which the Chargers were before General Manager Bobby Beathard’s arrival, derailed Lynn’s rise to prominence.
He improved Cincinnati’s defense in his two years with the Bengals, 1992-93, despite the obvious off-field distractions. Whether it was the drive twice a day past Children’s Hospital that took its toll after Alec’s death or the chance to join Norv Turner’s staff in Washington, Lynn rejected a Cincinnati contract extension.
The Washington newspapers ran a quote from an unidentified general manager: “Norv hired a friend to be his defensive coordinator. He should have done his homework.”
And Lynn laughed.
“I would hope he would hire someone he knows,” he says. “But we really weren’t close friends beyond competing against each other.”
Ernie Zampese, a former coach with Lynn and now the Cowboys’ offensive coordinator, had been Turner’s mentor and recommended hiring Lynn. Turner, impressed with Lynn’s resiliency, and knowing the Redskins would require a patient leader to turn around a dreadful defense, concurred with Zampese.
Despite early protestations from players partial to Petitbon, who had been Washington’s defensive coordinator before succeeding Joe Gibbs as head coach, veteran defensive back Darrell Green spoke up: “If you don’t like Ron Lynn, there’s something wrong with you.”
Although the Redskins are 11-5 in Lynn’s last 16 games with less than intimidating talent, the fans have been outraged by the team’s No. 30 defensive ranking, and have singled out the defensive coordinator.
“I know I’m sensitive, but to be truthful, it has gotten to me,” Cynthia says. “Our priest taught me with Alec’s death the practice of acceptance, but it’s difficult.
“We have talked to the boys. They know the reality--you don’t win, you get fired. David Shula’s kids and the boys were buddies and the boys wanted to know where the Shulas were going to live and what were they going to do now that Mr. Shula was fired.
“Their life should not have to revolve around things like what we experienced in the stadium a few weeks ago. I didn’t have that pressure and stress as a child.
“But no matter what has happened, we have never said, ‘Why us?’ This is life, it’s a mystery, and as a family we have so much to be thankful for at this time of year. A great husband, great kids, my mom and dad. And no matter what’s said because of football, it cannot be associated with Ron Lynn the man, the father, the husband. They don’t know him, they don’t see him with his children.
“It’s a tough business, but while things sometimes appear pretty bleak, I see how positive this experience can be for my children. The boys see their dad and his consistent outlook on life: You lose Sunday, and Monday morning you get another chance, you work hard and you come back. It’s all about life going on. It’s like Ron, who says over and over again, ‘We’re fine.’ ”