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Memories of Derrick Thomas
Feb. 6, 2005
Bringing people together
Most people know Luther Campbell as the front man for the Miami rap group 2 Live Crew, famous for their raunchy lyrics and explicit stage shows. Fewer people know he was dear friends with Thomas, and fewer still know Campbell coaches a Miami-area Pop Warner football team.
The death of his friend inspired Campbell to return to coaching youngsters in the game he grew up loving. Just months ago, when his Liberty City Warriors advanced to the Pop Warner national championship game, Campbell felt Thomas' spirit. He feels it often.
“I started back coaching football again,” Campbell says. “I know he had a lot to do with that.”
Campbell, like many of Thomas' eclectic group of friends that included country star Hank Williams Jr., is left with only memories of his friend. One of his favorites was of joining former Chiefs coach Marty Schottenheimer for a tour of the Miami hospital where Thomas lay paralyzed.
“That was his thing,” Campbell says, “bringing people together. I would have never met Marty in a million years.”
A second family
Thomas knew Ray Keller as Pops. He called Keller's wife Mom. When Thomas arrived at the University of Alabama, he was a boy in search of something. The Kellers were boosters and often saw him.
On one road trip, the Kellers' daughter saw Thomas by himself in an arcade. She was 9, furiously stuffing quarters into the machines. She introduced herself and, later, went upstairs to talk to her parents. She had seen something that the adults had missed.
“Mom and Dad,” she said. “I met the loneliest person I've ever seen.”
Next time the girl saw Thomas, she asked, “Why don't you come and meet Mama and Daddy and you can be part of our family?”
He did. Thomas would spend off-seasons in Hollywood, Ala., at their house. The Kellers went to the Pro Bowl in Hawaii each year as baby sitters, and they still keep in touch with several of Thomas' kids.
When Thomas died, something in them died, too. A year later, the Kellers went back to Hawaii and stayed in the same hotel. It was their way of saying goodbye.
The power of the music of the night
Carol Coe won't forget taking Thomas to “The Phantom of the Opera.” The former politician and Thomas were close, and they went to England together once. Thomas took her to Wimbledon. She insisted on a play. They decided upon Her Majesty's Theatre, near the Piccadilly Underground stop.
“You know, he had never been to the opera?”
You know the part when the chandelier falls? Well, Derrick jumped from his seat and was about to do God knows what when Coe stopped him. At intermission, she laughed, he ran to the bar and knocked back a double Hennessy to calm his nerves. On the way out, he bought the compact disc.
An opportunity he couldn't pass up
Bill Cowher, the Chiefs' defensive coordinator and linebackers coach from 1989 to 1991, and Thomas had a weekly ritual in which they would toss a football before pregame warm-ups.
When Cowher returned to Arrowhead Stadium in 1992 as the Pittsburgh Steelers head coach, Thomas saw Cowher emerge from the tunnel and tossed him a football.
“It was like, ‘Hey, just because you're their head coach, it doesn't mean we can't throw the ball to each other,' ” Cowher recalls. “I threw it back to him, and I said, ‘We can't do this because you're the opponent today. We're not on the same team.'
“But every time we came back to Kansas City, we'd throw one pass to each other.”
Always wanting more
Chiefs President Carl Peterson, disappointed that Thomas did not work out at the annual NFL scouting combine in 1989, put him through a grueling workout on the University of Alabama campus before the club drafted him in the first round.
“He worked out with about three other linebackers,'' recalled Cowher. “We put them through a bunch of drills, and he just kept going and going. I looked back, and I said, ‘That's about enough,' and Carl says, ‘No, I want to see more.'
“So we kept doing more, and all of a sudden another linebacker dropped out and was about dead, and I looked back at Carl, and he said, ‘More.' Then another linebacker dropped out, and I said, ‘Carl, I've been through linebacker drills, I've put them through defensive back drills,' and he says, ‘No, I want more.'
“Finally, the other linebackers couldn't take any more. It was a hot day. I said, ‘Carl, I don't have any more drills.' He said ‘OK.'
And Derrick looked at me and grinned, and said, ‘Coach, are you done? Don't you have any more?'
“I kind of chuckled because I know it was making Carl very mad because he was trying to make him get so tired. Everyone else around him was sick, they couldn't breathe, and Derrick kept on going, and he wanted more.''
Two Thomases, as close as brothers
Sometimes, Broderick Thomas misses Derrick Thomas so badly he can't hold back. Like the time not so long ago where he ran into former linebackers Ricky Jackson and Lawrence Taylor.
Broderick Thomas and Derrick Thomas always idolized the two. So it hit him in the gut, watching the two players kibitz, as he had dreamed of doing into old age with Derrick Thomas. Broderick Thomas got mad and asked Taylor, “How is it you and Ricky still get a chance to be brothers and my boy's gone?”
The two Thomases went everywhere together — the fights, the big games, charity events.
Broderick Thomas had been invited to Kansas City the weekend of the fateful wreck. He had always spent the playoffs palling around with Derrick Thomas. That year, an injury kept him at home.
“That was the first time I wasn't,” he says. “That always scares me. Well, the good Lord said it wasn't time for me to go.”
from Kansas City.com
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