Reggie White was not only a great NFL player, but a great man, which is something quite different.

Reggie White was not only a great NFL player.  There have been many great football players.  Reggie was a great man, which is something quite different.  For that, and because of the affection we shared for one another, I want to eulogize him.

Offering a eulogy at a funeral is an almost universal ritual throughout western culture.  The poet T. S. Eliot observed that the word ‘culture’ is derived directly from the old English word for religion—cult.  Today, of course, the word cult has acquired sinister overtones but the word was originally used to refer to faith and religion.  Eliot’s point is that our western culture owes far more to its Judeo-Christian Biblical origins than most of us suspect.  For instance, the West adopted the rite of eulogizing our dead from the Biblical account of Sara’s death.  The twenty-third chapter of Genesis describes that Sara died in Kiriath Arbah, which is Hebron in the land of Canaan, and how, “Abraham came to eulogize Sara and to mourn her.”

How did Abraham eulogize Sara?  Ancient Jewish wisdom has it that King Solomon recorded Abraham’s eulogy for his beloved wife in the last twenty two verses of the Book of Proverbs beginning with the words, “A women of valor, who can find?”

In eulogizing Reggie, I can do no better than to paraphrase Abraham.  A man of valor who can find?

Reggie played football for fifteen years acquiring a reputation as a formidable defensive end for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Green Bay Packers.  He was honored as the National Football League Defensive Player of the Year twice and was elected to the Pro Bowl for a record thirteen times in a row.  Reggie surprised everyone when he signed as a free agent with the Packers in 1993.  Only a few of us knew at the time what his real motivation was.  He wanted to be in a city in which he could make a difference ministering to black youth.  Yes, Reggie White was an ordained pastor and an incredibly effective one at that. 

There have been many great football players, but I feel no call to eulogize great football players.  However, I do feel an urgent call to eulogize great men for we need to acknowledge great men, and a eulogy is how we do that.  Eulogizing the departed is not for their benefit.  They have been gathered home to their Father in heaven and need little from us.  Eulogizing them is for the benefit of the living and the listening.  By eulogizing great men we try to inspire ourselves to keep alive a little of their greatness for another generation.  We recount the elements of their greatness in order to learn for our lives.

Reggie White’s greatness was not that he was a football player.  It was not that he was an exemplary husband and a fantastic father.  It was not that he was a relentlessly honest businessman neither was it that he was a powerful pastor and compelling beacon of faith.  Reggie White’s greatness was that he was all of these things together.  Each element of his greatness dovetailed with the others in a seamless symphony of integrity.  Nothing he did on the playing field tarnished his role as a father, and nothing he did off the field tarnished his reputation as a husband.  Yes, he was a giant of a man physically, but he was just as much of a spiritual giant.  The one complimented the other.  He saw no interruption in the continuum of his life because there was none.  Unlike lesser men he had the courage to say true but unpopular things; things we all needed to hear.  Who will do that now?

We became friends when he contacted me after reading my book, America’s Real War.  One of our conversations covered the Biblical ideal of specializing professionally but never personally.  Reggie loved the idea that while we are each obliged to find the one area in which we can best serve our fellow man, thereby lending moral legitimacy to our efforts at earning our daily bread, we don’t turn our career into our entire identity.  While becoming the best professional we can be whether it is as an athlete, an auto-mechanic, or an oral surgeon, we also work at expanding our lives intellectually, emotionally, physically, with our families and friends, and, yes in developing our relationship with God.

Reggie did all of these things, and in so doing inspired not only the black youth of Wisconsin, but everyone everywhere including an Orthodox rabbi in Seattle who will painfully miss his friend, the great man, Reggie White.  May God bring comfort and condolence to Sara, Jeremy, Jecolia and all other family and friends.