Friends to the End

Don Johnson straps on thick arm pads, sets his jaw and orders UCLA defensive linemen to charge at him, one after another. The assistant coach makes like an offensive tackle, thrusting his forearm into the face of each onrushing player.

It’s called the pass-rush drill, Johnson’s favorite time of day.

For a few blessed minutes, he can forget.

Practice ends and he retreats to his office, plops in the chair and stares at the photos of his son Duane taped to the computer. Before calling a recruit or studying game film, Johnson, 47, quietly sheds a tear.

Seventy miles away at Norco High, Mike Darr Sr. stands in a bullpen, giving a young pitcher his undivided attention. The assistant coach cherishes baseball practice.

For a few blessed hours, he can remember.

Darr, 46, cannot bring himself to return to work at the grocery warehouse that for so long enabled him to provide for his family while leaving enough time to coach his sons. He whiles away the morning hours in a living room filled with photos, clippings and baseball cards of his son Mike wearing a San Diego Padre uniform.

Finally it is time to leave for the diamond, the place he can feel Mike’s presence and the bond they shared.

*

The Johnsons and Darrs, families linked through two decades of good times and one night of unspeakable horror, are agonizing proof that children aren’t supposed to go before their parents.

Denial, depression and rivers of tears resulted from the deaths of inseparable lifelong friends Mike Darr, 25, and Duane Johnson, 23, in an auto accident Feb. 15 in Peoria, Ariz.

Their mothers still wait for them to walk through the door. Their fathers see glimpses of them in every player they coach. Their brothers, sisters and friends struggle to make sense of a tragedy that tore Mike from his wife and two young sons, and Duane from the cocoon of a loving family.

“The Darrs and Johnsons were so into their sons and active in their pursuits,” said Darrin Chiaverini, an Atlanta Falcon receiver who grew up in Corona with both dead men.

“The parents were always on hand. It’s a big void in their lives.”

Mike and Duane had spent the day moving Mike’s belongings into an apartment near the Padres’ spring training site. They worked out and went out for a late dinner and drinks with Padre pitcher Ben Howard.

On the way back to the apartment, Mike’s sports utility vehicle drifted into the dirt center median of the freeway. He overcorrected and the car rolled across three lanes and crashed through a fence. Mike and Duane, not wearing seat belts, were ejected and killed.

Howard, in the back seat wearing a seat belt, suffered only a bruised knee and minor facial cuts. Mike’s blood-alcohol level was 0.11, more than the Arizona legal limit.

The tragedy sent shockwaves from San Diego to Westwood.

Mike was a rising star, popular in the clubhouse, an opening day starter for the Padres in 2001. He was Corona through and through, having married his high school sweetheart, Natalie, then settling down to raise a family a cutoff throw from where he grew up.

Duane was a college football player and former Philadelphia Phillie minor leaguer, an ebullient brother and son whose radiant smile lit up a room. He was Mike’s constant companion, traveling to Padre games on airline passes from his mother, Deborah, an America West employee.

“Michael had charisma, you couldn’t help but look up to him, and Duane didn’t have a mean bone in his body,” said Chiaverini, who along with his twin, Ryan, spent countless hours at the Darrs and Johnsons after their own parents divorced.

“Duane was the fastest kid I’ve ever seen, faster than the guys in the NFL, a great athlete in his own right. But he was always the first to tell Michael or I how well we did.”

The families were neighbors, the dads coached the kids and the moms filled the homes with love. Mike had a younger brother and sister. Duane was the third of four children.

Sometimes there would be six teenage boys piled in a car--Mike and Ryan Darr, Donald Jr. and Duane Johnson, and the Chiaverinis. They were the best athletes, popular with girls, rollicking through what seemed a never-ending California summer.

“I started coaching those boys when they were young,” Mike Darr Sr. said. “All the kids played for me. Watching them grow up was what we did. It’s what the Johnsons did too. It’s what we all did together.”

From years of coaching, Mike Sr. and Don knew teens better than most dads. If they didn’t keep the group in line, nobody would.

When the boys hung out at the Johnsons, they trod lightly around Don, an even-handed disciplinarian they nicknamed Pinky because his face would color when he got angry. Don looks menacing with his shaved head and lineman’s build, yet UCLA senior Sean Phillips calls him “an armored car. He’s hard on the outside and all the good stuff is on the inside.”

Darrin Chiaverini said, “He was strict with his kids, making sure they did the right things, and he was the same way with the Darrs and with me and my brother. I always thought of him as a father figure. And Deborah, she was like a mom to us. She holds that family together.”

When the boys hung out at the Darrs, they kept an eye on Mike Sr.’s baseball cap. They’d learned from years of sharing the same dugout that if it came off, he was about to blow his stack.

“Our house was a gathering place and Duane was a fixture,” Mike Sr. said. “When those boys were all together, they weren’t much trouble at all.”

Mike and Duane felt as though they had two sets of parents, two households they could call home. The families were so close they might as well have been under one roof. Often they were.

Don and Deborah Johnson took Mike into their home when he had serious drug problems in high school. Don would pick up Natalie, then Mike’s girlfriend, and attend counseling sessions with him.

By the spring of Mike’s senior year at Corona High, major league scouts were buzzing around the baseball field, and he was clean.

“[The Johnsons] picked me up from school, they really kept after me,” Mike told a reporter at the time. “If it wasn’t for them keeping me in line, I’d still be on drugs.”

Said Debbie Darr, Mike’s mother: “The Johnsons were a godsend to me and my family.”

That also was when Duane and Mike cemented their friendship. Duane was the same age as Ryan Darr, and Mike was the same age as Donald Johnson Jr. But it was Duane who shared his bedroom with Mike and held his lunch money so it wouldn’t be spent on marijuana or speed.

Duane didn’t mind--he owed the Darrs his life. Mike’s parents had rushed him to the hospital from an Angel game after he’d had a near-fatal asthma attack when he was 11.

Don and Deborah were in Camarillo, watching their oldest child, Denise, race against Marion Jones in a track meet. Debbie Darr rode in the ambulance holding Duane’s hand.

“The Darrs cared for him just like he was their son,” Don said.

The Johnson kids lived with the Darrs for several months when Don landed his first Division I coaching position at Nevada in 1995.

After Friday night Corona football games, where Mike was quarterback and Duane was a running back, the Darrs and Johnsons would pile in a car and drive all night to Reno to watch Don’s team play on Saturday.

It was like that with the Darrs and the Johnsons. They were partners in life, and, ultimately, in tragedy.

*

The Johnsons’ phone rang on Feb. 15 at 5 a.m. and a friend informed them that Mike had died in an accident hours earlier. Don and Deborah reacted as if they’d lost their own son.

A few hours later, they learned they had.

“We turned the TV on and there was a picture of the accident scene with the car turned over,” Don said. “They said there were two other passengers in the car, one a fatality. We were torn up about Michael, but as far as Duane went, the panic button didn’t set in quite at that moment.”

Duane had been living with Denise, 27, in Irvine because he was playing football at Fullerton College. Don called his daughter and she said Duane had gone to help Mike move into his apartment.

Don and Deborah jumped in their car and headed from their home in Marina del Rey to Irvine. Don’s cell phone rang. It was the Arizona Department of Public Safety, informing them Duane was dead.

“We drove to Irvine and Denise must have just found out because she had passed out right in front of the house,” he said.

UCLA coaches and their wives rushed to the Johnsons’ side. Cards poured in.

“It proved that our football team is a family,” Don said. “Some of the cards and things the players wrote floored me.”

Meanwhile, the Padres handled funeral arrangements for Mike.

“There is no better organization in baseball,” Mike Sr. said. “We couldn’t have asked for any better. They came in and comforted Natalie and the kids, they took care of everything.”

Almost. Duane, constantly at Mike’s side in life, was pulled away in death.

Duane’s body was not the one the Padres transported to Los Angeles the next day. In fact, his father was unable to get his son’s remains out of Arizona for 72 hours because state offices were closed for President’s Day weekend.

Duane’s funeral was not the one paid for by the Padres, not the one attended by two busloads of major league ballplayers, not the one covered by six television stations. His life was not the one saluted in newspaper columns.

“The Padres should have shipped Duane’s body back and the funerals should have been held together,” Darrin Chiaverini said. “They didn’t know Mike and Duane were as close as they were.”

The Padres never sent condolences to the Johnsons. No flowers. No card.

Don suspects that team officials, fearing litigation, instructed the Darrs to avoid talking to the Johnsons. However, a Padre spokesman said the team did not provide legal counsel to the Darrs.

The Padres forbade Howard, the survivor, from talking about the accident. This continues to bother Don, who simply wants to know as much about his son’s death as possible. Did something on the car malfunction? Was there horseplay? Did Mike fall asleep at the wheel?

Don wrote a scathing letter to the Padres, but he hasn’t put it in the mailbox. He said he has no plans to sue.

“You sit there at the funeral and see Michael’s wife and two young kids, and realize they weren’t responsible for what took place,” he said. “We haven’t had any legal recourse, and if there were, we wouldn’t take any.”

“You tell them not to drink and drive. You tell them not to get in the car with someone who was drinking. There is no blame to throw. Two young men are deceased. And money can’t bring them back. Money can’t satisfy the pain.”

*

Debbie Darr has a picture of Mike next to her bed. Deborah Johnson can’t yet bring herself to pull out photos of Duane.

Both families turned to their church for answers that still don’t come easily.

The closest the dads get to their deceased sons is the playing field. Coaching is therapy.

Knowing Deborah needed his comfort, Don contemplated quitting. Eventually, he realized that life goes on.

“I have a wife, a mother who lost a child, and I didn’t want to go back,” he said. “Then other coaches’ wives came to the house, and [UCLA players] would call. That’s when we realized you have to still live your life.

“Duane loved football and I asked myself, ‘How would he feel about it?’ I decided he would want us to get our lives back on track and at least pretend we were normal people again.”

Bruin players have developed a more personal view of their demanding coach with the gruff exterior and soulful eyes.

“He holds it in tight, he has to be the stone of his family,” Phillips said. “But I’ve seen him walk over to the stands during practice to sit and cry. His son played football and every time he comes on the field or turns on a tape, he is reminded.

“It’s taught us to live life to the fullest. You never know when you’ll be called. Love your family and let them know about it.”

Mike Sr. was dealt another blow this summer when the best pitcher he’d ever coached at Norco, Darryl Kile of the St. Louis Cardinals, died at 33 of a heart attack. The Darrs had moved to Belmont Shore but returned to Corona to be near Natalie and their grandchildren, Michael, 7, and Matthew, 3.

After having not coached the last several years, so he would have time to watch his son’s big league games, Mike Sr. needs to feel a pitcher’s mound under his feet and hear kids chattering around the infield.

“That’s my way out; get out on the baseball field, forget all the stress and worries,” he said. “I don’t compare my son with anybody. He was his own individual. But I can recognize talent and that’s what I’m going to do now.

“When the high school season ends, I’ll take my grandsons and start all over again. Michael was in T-ball this year and we went to every game. I take him to the batting cages. You live through your grandkids now.”

*

Don and Deborah, Mike Sr. and Debbie, they all want the same thing, for their families to join again, to dare to laugh and cry and bring a semblance of closure to the most horrendous year of their lives.

“We went through Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and we still have Thanksgiving and Christmas to get through,” Don said. “We’ll do the best we can.

“But to really get through the grieving process, we need the families reunited again, the Darrs, the Johnsons, the Chiaverinis. That’s the way Duane would have wanted it.”

The Johnsons’ anger at the Padres is awkward for Mike Sr. and Debbie. But Don visited the Darrs recently and his daughter, Denise, took her children to visit Natalie’s children. The Darrs’ daughter, Angi, and the Johnsons’ youngest daughter, Leanna, are close.

“Don and Deborah are the best friends we’ve ever had,” Mike Sr. said. “We aren’t going to lose that relationship.”

The heartache will never disappear, but perhaps by leaning on one another, these two families linked by friendship and fate can make it through. Their common ground begins on a pastoral hill overlooking Corona, where the gravesites of Mike and Duane are side by side.