Memory Remains

The stroke had left Lee Mobley in a wheelchair for the last eight years and incapable of speaking for the last six. So his son knew it would eventually happen--he knew his father would soon be gone.

But when it happened, John Mobley, the Denver Broncos’ star linebacker, still wasn’t ready.

Emotionally, he had tried to steel himself for this day since his mother took him out of high school typing class in the fall of 1990 to tell him something was dreadfully wrong with his father. Yet it still was a shock when Mobley learned six weeks ago that the most important person in his life had finally succumbed to the ravages of a massive stroke.

Mobley was in Denver on his way to the airport when his mother, Eva, told him that his father had died at age 68 at the Naaman’s Creek Convalescent Home near the family’s residence in Chester, Pa. John was about to go to California to film a television commercial with teammate Terrell Davis when he heard the news.

“When my mother told me, I just lost it,” Mobley said in a recent interview at the Broncos’ training camp facility. “I threw the cell phone against the windshield, and the guy who was driving me didn’t know what was wrong. I was so choked up I could barely talk. I just told him to take me back home.”

Once Mobley got to his house in suburban Denver, he walked into a bathroom and wept uncontrollably.

“I guess maybe part of me secretly hoped he’d walk out of that home he was in,” Mobley said. “So for all those years, I kept holding out hope. Then, when it finally hits you, it’s like you don’t believe it. You don’t want to believe it.”

John, the second-youngest of eight children, was closer to his father than any of his siblings.

He doesn’t know why he had such a connection with his dad, and he never sought out an explanation for it. They simply had a unique attachment the rest of his brothers and sisters never enjoyed.

The relationship was forged over a lifetime of precious times spent together. Lee, a welder and part-time minister before the stroke, would often hitch a pop-up trailer to the back of his station wagon, pack John and his younger brother into the back seat, and drive into the backwoods of Virginia to find a campground. Or he’d take the entire family to a nearby amusement park. Then there were the fishing and hiking expeditions. And most of all, there was sports.

These were Lee Mobley’s gifts to his children, but it was John who accepted them more than the others.

“He’d always have us active, trying to keep us away from the streets, and he did a good job by showing us different avenues to try to get away,” said Mobley, who grew up in an economically distressed suburb of Philadelphia. “He always made sure I had a football or a baseball bat in my hands. And once he got me into something, he wouldn’t let me quit. He made me promise that I’d stick with it.”

Mobley stuck with football, and would eventually turn into one of the top players in the country, even though he was virtually unheard of until his senior season at Kutztown (Pa.) University. Mobley was the Broncos’ first-round pick in 1996, and has quickly turned into a dominating player.

And Lee Mobley has been with his son every step of the way, even though he has been unable to speak since 1992. He could still give his son the hand signal that meant more than words.

“Dad couldn’t talk, but he still gave the ‘thumbs up’ sign,” Mobley said. “I can remember him doing that in my Little League championship (football) game. We were down by three points in the last minute, and they kicked off to us, and I ran that kickoff back to like the 3-yard line and we scored a touchdown to win. He came down from the stands and gave me the thumbs up. Just seeing his face on the sidelines, screaming, the jubilation on his face, the pride he had in his son, I can just picture that now.”

There would be one more dramatic “thumbs up” from Lee Mobley before he died. Last September, John flew his father to Denver for the Broncos’ home opener against the Kansas City Chiefs. It was one of the most emotional moments of John’s life.

“Just to have him here, it was like he couldn’t believe it,” Mobley said. “He came over to the house, and he looked around as if to say, ‘Is this yours?’ It was nice for him to finally see that his little boy did something good.”

Lee Mobley was buried with his son’s No. 51 Broncos jersey in his casket.

“I’ve dedicated everything to him,” Mobley said. “Every time I sit down and pray at night, I think about him. I just want to make sure now that I don’t disappoint him.”