Being John Elway Not as Easy as You Think

Two hours before the NFL announced that John Elway would join Barry Sanders, Carl Eller and Bob Brown as the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2004, we sat together reminiscing.

Can’t wait to do the same thing with Kevin Brown some day.

It has been quite a journey. I knew Elway and his girlfriend before they married, and then divorced. We drank together on a night out at training camp, the young quarterback miserable because he could not meet Coach Dan Reeves’ expectations. We ate together at Wendy’s, the poor sportswriter buying when the $5-million quarterback never made a move for his wallet.

There was the time he lined up behind a guard thinking he was the center (and now they have a football field named for him at Granada Hills High.)

There was “The Drive,” and there was also the time he lost the Super Bowl -- time and time again, in fact, until he took a whirlybird spin in the air and forever emblazoned himself in football memory as a two-time Super Bowl champion.

I had the chance to know his best friend, his father, Jack.

A few years ago his twin sister, Jana, offered the best insight I’ve ever heard about her brother: “One of the happiest times I’ve ever seen him was one Halloween. He was wearing a mask, so he could do anything he wanted. He came up to me and said, ‘Jana, I’m having the greatest time. Nobody knows who I am.’ ”

Both Jack and Jana are gone now.

It has been almost 21 years since we met, Elway, a shaggy-haired kid wearing a camel-hair blazer, full of promise and appearing at a hastily called 10:30 p.m. news conference announcing he was a Bronco.

“I look back and see pictures of that coat and eesh,” Elway said.

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HE’S WEARING a fine white shirt, tie and suit now for the Hall announcement. Twenty-one years ago he received a police escort to get a training camp haircut, but now it’s disappearing on its own. “I better get a deal with Propecia,” he said.

The TV is on as we chat, and how appropriate that it’s an ESPN account of his career, the perfect backdrop for a day that’s all about coming full circle.

Sure, in the beginning it was a struggle. Elway or Dan Marino? He couldn’t win the big one, couldn’t get along with Reeves, but in the end who wouldn’t want to be John Elway -- two Super Bowl rings, a pretty wife, four kids, supportive parents, two protective sisters and now this ... a Hall of Fame exclamation point.

But in the last few years he has continued to be sacked. He learned his sister, born 11 minutes after him -- “The doctor said I was obviously no gentleman” -- had lung cancer. “She was such a good sister,” he said.

Jana’s illness hit Jack particularly hard, Elway said. “We were working together for the Broncos’ draft, and I was with him every day that last month. That was great, but I took him to the airport, and boom, I wake up one morning a few days later and my mother is on the phone.”

A heart attack claimed Jack two months after he learned his daughter was ill. “He was my mentor,” Elway said. “I think about him every day.”

Elway had agreed months earlier, on my request, to fly to L.A. for a charity golf tournament. Just days after burying his father, he honored that commitment, as if there were ever a doubt, considering the way he’d been raised.

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HIS SISTER’S fight with cancer continued. Elway had the money to find the best medical attention, but he said, “it was out of my control.

“It was an uphill battle, but we always thought Jana would be OK. One day they took her for an MRI, and she was gone. She died in the MRI tube.... I never got to say anything to her. It was such a surprise.”

Life at home began to unravel. Janet, his college sweetheart and then his wife, left him. It became front-page news in Denver. They reconciled, then Elway left, and now they are divorced, the kids spending one week with mom, the next with dad.

“It was the same with the divorce -- it was like I had no control,” he said. “All the attention -- it’s something my wife got tired of. Being out in public and having no privacy had a lot to do with it, but it wasn’t something I could control.

“It’s embarrassing. You feel as if you failed because you couldn’t make it work. But the thing I feel the worst about is breaking up the family unit.”

Jessica, his oldest, has a basketball scholarship to attend Stanford. Jordan is a high school field hockey/lacrosse player, Jack is an eighth-grader still trying all sports, and “Ju-Ju is daddy’s little girl,” he said.

He owns Denver’s Arena Football League team, remains interested in being part of a team in L.A. if the NFL returns, but calls the Hall of Fame “the final-final to his football career. It’s time to move on to the next challenge.”

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IT HAS been great to watch, the Elway X -- the mark left by the ball on the chest of a receiver trying to catch one of his bullets -- the classic way he’d spin out of trouble, roll to his right, plant those pigeon toes and fire a dart 70 yards down the field, the comebacks. Thanks for the memories.

He was rock-star popular in Denver, “But I never felt comfortable with that,” he said. “The way I look out of my eyes at myself is not the way people look at me. And that’s weird.”

When introduced to the Hall of Fame crowd, his voice cracked. He said his father would’ve been his presenter. Now he might have his children say something, or maybe his mother or Bronco owner Pat Bowlen.

“Coming out of all that has happened, I’m confident things are going to get better. I know it’s up to me to make that happen,” Elway said.

“My perspective on life now comes from Jana. When she’d be laying there, she’d say, ‘John, I just want to live.’ When you have someone say that to you, it makes all the other crap going on not as important. That’s what I keep in mind now.”

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns, go to latimes.com/simers.