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Jim Kelly's Good Side

Next week marks another celebration of Hunter’s Day of Hope (Valentine’s Day), and it got me thinking about Buffalo’s greatest quarterback.

I never had the experience of meeting Jim Kelly. I have no personal connection to him, his family, or anyone close to him, for that matter. I write this only as a fan. And like most people, I became a fan for good reason.

There’s really not much I can say about this Hall of Famer’s life on the field that hasn’t been said before—about the wins, the championship seasons, the come-from-behinds, and yes, those four Superbowls. And I really don’t think there’s anything I can write that can’t be read in the numbers that frame his NFL career—the completions, the touchdowns, and those 35,467 yards passing.

Let me repeat that last part again: 35,467 yards passing. That’s over 20 miles of his arm behind the ball; over 20 miles of his strength making it fly; pushing his team down the field and putting those points on the board.

And it wasn’t just his ability to throw that made him great, it was everything: his leadership, his charge; his tenacity on the field that easily could’ve placed him on the line alongside Kent Hull. Simply put, he was among the best there ever was, and he was ours.

Don’t get me wrong, I never viewed the man as a saint. In fact, quite the contrary. The negative talk that swirled during the 1980s landed at my family’s kitchen table, too, and none of it was a pretty. There was the haughty persona, the constant third-person references in his interviews, and his initial reluctance to play in Buffalo. And then there were the parties—lots of parties that spun the rumor mill near his Orchard Park residence and trickled through the area. He was a cocky young athlete with money to burn and a game to prove, but as the team starting winning, the stories were muted by the roar of the crowd. It’s not an unfamiliar scenario for sports fans—choosing to separate the man from the mission and the the job from the Joe. But what is unusual is the way this worked itself out in the legacy of Jim Kelly.

Instead of the sad but familiar story of so many of our athletes—the “role models” who end up behind bars or center table at steroid hearings as they and their careers get older—this one was different. Kelly was an athlete whose nobility rose alongside his years and statistics. Instead of a fall from grace, it was a rise into one. We watched a once reluctant player for Buffalo become one of us. We listened to him drop the third-person references and speak with humility. We watched season after season as he championed a true team—perhaps the most unified in all of professional football—as they reached new heights and handled the same old low. And we watched a party boy grow up into a man whose love for his family became a community example, and whose love for Buffalo Bills football became a beacon of hope.

And then there’s Hunter’s Hope. I don’t have any children, so I would never be so bold to speak to what it’s like to lose one. So again, I’ll refer to the numbers: $14 million raised for leukodystrophy and other diseases. Twelve years of championship charity. One family that has turned personal grief into goodness for others. And one Hall of Famer who has quaterbacked all of it with magnanimous dignity, and with a kind of strength that could never be measured in yards.

Jill Morgan

Angola



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