By Mark Inkrott, former NFL tight end and business leader working at the intersection of agriculture, sports, and sustainability.
Recently I attended Coach Dick Strahm’s funeral expecting to celebrate the life of the greatest football coach I ever played for.
In addition to that, I spent the afternoon thinking about my grandfather.
On paper, they had very little in common. One coached football. The other was a farmer. They never met. Yet as stories about Coach unfolded that day, I couldn’t stop seeing my late grandfather.
During the service, our campus pastor at the University of Findlay shared something none of us had known about Coach. Every Friday afternoon, he quietly sat in the campus chapel to pray. He prayed for his players, our families, and his own family. Week after week. Every Friday, and he never mentioned it to us.
Every Saturday before kickoff, we gathered in the locker room, took a knee, held hands and prayed the Our Father. As young players, we thought Coach was preparing us for a football game. Sitting at his funeral, I realized he was preparing us for much more than a game. He was preparing us for life.
Hearing the story of Coach praying quietly alone in the chapel brought me back to my grandfather.
I can still picture his worn-thin green work pants, matching shirt, work boots and warm smile. Grandma was a mother of five and passed when she was only forty-four, and grandpa never remarried. He stayed on the farm, cared for his family and quietly kept moving forward. The only time I remember him out of his work clothes was for church and holidays.
Every Father’s Day, our family went to the farm. Folding chairs filled the front yard while cousins chased each other with water balloons and the adults caught up on another year of life. As a child, I thought we were simply celebrating Father’s Day. But looking back, I realize we were really gathering to celebrate a way of life, rooted in faith, family, and values.
Years later, after football had taken me away from my small town in Ohio, I’d occasionally stop by the farm without calling ahead. Before he ever spoke, his face told me everything. He was simply happy I had come for a visit. After Great Grandma passed, Grandpa spent most of his life alone on the farm, so company and conversations meant a great deal to him.
Coach had that same gift. Whenever we talked, he asked about my parents and my siblings before talking about football. He saw young men as sons first and players second.
Former players traveled from across the country to serve as pallbearers for Coach and his wife Ginger who ironically, but not surprisingly, passed on the same day of natural causes, just twelve hours apart at the age of 92. It struck me that Coach and Ginger had spent a lifetime carrying young men.
In the end, young men carried them.
