They shuffled quietly into the First Church of Walter Payton on Saturday, about 15,000 or so honorary pallbearers helping each other carry a heavy load.
Grown men, tough Chicago guys any other time of year, had teddy bears jammed under their arms to donate to Payton’s charitable foundation. There were women wearing No. 34 Bears jerseys whom you didn’t dare cross on this day for fear of a stiff-arm in return.
The Soldier Field memorial service for Payton, who died Monday of liver cancer at 45, featured proclamations and speeches by politicians, former teammates and current Bears, but this was a day for the people. This was a day for coming to grips with the idea that a living legend was now a legend.
“You come for the spirit. That’s what I came for,” said Agnes Kennedy, 74, of the South Side. “I like what he stood for. He stood for most of the things that are good in an individual. He tried. Most people don’t.”
It had been billed as a celebration and, indeed, it was partly that, but it was also a chance for one more civic crying jag, one last convulsion by the faithful. Highlights of Payton’s career played out on the Jumbotron, and the 30-yard lines on the field had been changed to 34. It was a heavy reminder of what had been lost.
Rev. Jesse Jackson told the crowd that “a bright light burned out quickly, but, oh, how bright it was when it glowed.”
Payton had gone fast at everything else, from running with a football to racing cars to living life, so maybe it was too much to expect that he would slow down for this. He went fast at the end, full speed ahead into death, and it wasn’t the way he wanted it, not at all. He wanted more, and Chicago wanted more from him, the way we do from all our heroes, but this was something beyond a Hall of Fame running back’s sphere of influence.
This was about a liver that failed him. This was about an organ, it should be noted, that Payton had no control over. If it were as simple a matter as a muscle, well, Payton would have run up that pyramid-steep hill he used to train on and whipped the offending fibers into shape. But there are no fast-twitch muscles in the liver.
Payton did have control over how he would be remembered, simply because he had control over how he lived his life and how he played a game. All of it converged on a stage in the middle of Soldier Field on a cloudless Saturday.
“I’ve got a little girl, she’s 4 years old,” former teammate Dan Hampton told the crowd, his voice cracking. “Ten years from now when she asks me about the Chicago Bears, I’ll tell her about the championship and I’ll tell her about great teams and great teammates and great coaches and how great it was to be a part of it.
“But the first thing I’ll tell her about is Walter Payton.”
It was still hard for many of the fans to believe that the greatest running back in Bears history was gone. It was hard because there hadn’t been any real warning, and Chicago took this sudden-death loss very hard.
When Payton showed up at a news conference in February looking as gaunt as a hunger striker, death didn’t necessarily appear to be the most likely option. Not with Payton, not with our Walter Payton, who could bench-press 400 pounds on a whim in his prime and probably could have done more had he perhaps lifted weights regularly. But doctors later found cancer beneath the clogged bile ducts, and nothing could be done.
Right until the end, his spokespeople insisted little had changed in his condition–he was waiting for a liver transplant–and the city went about its business. But when Chicago received its figurative telephone call, it felt terrible.
“This is difficult, but I felt compelled to be here,” said Mario Smith, 32, a poet who works for a literary arts organization in Chicago. “This is where he did it. I’ve got to be where he did it.”
Soldier Field is where Payton unveiled his trademark stiff-arm. It was right out of Chicago’s heart, tough and meaty and nasty. This is where he would take your breath away by turning a corner holding the football one-handed. Running backs are taught to protect the ball, but there was Payton running left with the ball in his right hand, as if it were a compass needle telling him where to go. He led, we followed.
Payton fumble the ball? Hummingbirds and comets touch the ground more often. He protected the football when the time came, stuffing it into the crook of his arm and then giving would-be tacklers a stiff-arm that must have felt like a jousting lance.
This is where, given the choice of running around a defender or running through him, Payton often took the path of most resistance, just for the sheer physical joy of it. That’s our perception of Chicago, isn’t it, gritty and hard-bitten and not afraid to get a little dirty?
“I thank the city of Chicago for loving Walter as much as my family and I did,” said Payton’s wife, Connie.
Payton’s family–Connie, son Jarrett, daughter Brittney, brother Eddie, sister Pamela and mother Alyne, among others–each walked into the stadium carrying a single red rose, as did Payton’s former teammates. When the current Bears team walked onto the field, also in a parade of red roses, fans began chanting, “Beat Green Bay.” The Bears play the Packers at Lambeau Field on Sunday.
Payton would have liked that.
“Walter used to tell us this every week, `Play your (butt) off,’ ” Hampton yelled to this year’s team as fans cheered. “That’s all he ever wanted from us.”
Payton also would have enjoyed the crowd reaction when Cook County Commissioner John Daley, brother of Mayor Richard M. Daley, read from a proclamation and incorrectly said that Payton’s number was 33. Fans booed Daley, just as they had booed team Chairman Michael McCaskey earlier, although that was more out of habit.
The crowd’s laughs were appropriate–Payton liked his fun. Former teammates talked about the firecrackers he would blow off as pranks.
“We’re not celebrating his death,” former fullback Roland Harper said. “We’re celebrating his life because we all want to get there. He’s in heaven right now looking down on us saying, `Have fun.”‘
The crowd was estimated at 15,000 to 20,000, much smaller than city officials had anticipated. Local TV stations carried the 90-minute service live, and that, combined with warnings in the media about traffic congestion, might have kept more fans away.
But Smith, the poet, bought toy army men for Payton’s foundation–because, he said, the running back had been a warrior.
“I read in Sports Illustrated that he didn’t know what good his situation was going to do, but that he knew something good was going to come out of it,” Smith said. “I think what’s going to come out of it is that people are going to be better people. If they really loved him, they’d be better people.”
