Our Kids Played Youth Sports Together…Here’s What I Learned About Tom Brady
He’s got rings and records, but Tom Brady’s most lasting legacy might simply be his decency as a parent and a person.
Dear Tom,
I feel like we grew up somewhat in parallel. While you were coming of age in your first Super Bowl at age 24 in New Orleans, I was exploring my independence on a post-high school gap year in Israel. Amid my memories of that traumatic year — which began with 9/11 and was punctuated with dozens of terrorist attacks during the Second Intifada — watching from Jerusalem (at 4 a.m. local time) as the Pats won their first Super Bowl was indescribable. Two years later, I was in Houston together with my Dad, a three-decade season ticket holder, to watch the Brady Bunch win another ring. Over the last 15 years, I have continued to watch you win Super Bowls — together with my own children. These inter-generational memories that parents made with children and children made with grandparents while watching you play for two decades form the bedrock of families and are foundational to our collective memory.
As you kept playing and the Pats kept winning, we both grew up. We moved to homes in Brookline. Your son Benny and my son Amiel were born weeks apart, and later they welcomed little sisters. I watched Gisele post about her foray into parenting and felt a special “mom” kinship with one of the most beautiful moms on earth.
I was one of many who admired your play on the field in the role as Pats captain but one of very few who had the opportunity to marvel at your conduct off the field in another sacred role: that of dad to Jack, Benny, and Vivi.
For multiple seasons, our sons played hockey together on the Brookline youth hockey team. Like all the other parents, you brought Benny up the hill to the outdoor Larz Anderson rink and waited outside in the wind and biting cold, standing on the snowy practice ice, as the kids skated under the stars. After practice, you lined up with other parents to bring a bumper to the storage shed — just another hockey dad there to help. I remember a Sunday night hockey game in late January, just hours before the Pats boarded buses to fly out to Houston for Super Bowl LI. You were there, like any parent grabbing some last-minute quality time with your son before the demands of the workweek crept in on Monday. When our sons played on the same Little League team a few months later, there you were again, casually watching on the grass with your dog, no security, no big fuss. Simply being a dad. While the adults didn’t bother you, I noticed that you never left the kids hanging. If a kid approached you, they got the mega-watt Brady smile and a “How ya doin?”
You are so many things, Tom: star athlete, husband, dad, son and brother, record holder, six-time Super Bowl champion, four-time Super Bowl MVP, beloved son of New England. But possibly what’s most impressive is that you are simply a mensch: a decent, kind human being, a leader and role model for our children.
After all the championships, come-from-behind wins, records, and rings, it might seem surprising that anyone would think your most precious legacy is your simple civility. But in this day and age, celebrity is cheap and civility is sparse. You are someone who never makes parents worry about having to turn the TV or radio volume down when sports news comes on fearing that our children may hear something inappropriate. You keep your cool at press conferences, even after tough games, and always focus on how you can work harder and do better. Even as you rack up yardage and break records you are quick to praise the contributions of teammates and the play of opponents. As New England parents, what more could we possibly ask?
So, Tom, whatever the future brings, please know that what you have here in New England is more than legions of dedicated fans and admirers, but an entire generation of parents who raised children in parallel to you and feel blessed to be able to hold you up to their kids as a role model of decency, resilience, persistence, and kindness. Decades from now, when my grandkids ask me about what it was like to live through the era of the great Tom Brady, I’m not going to tell them about passing records and rings. I’m going to tell them about the dad in a big down coat and wool hat who stood next to me on a freezing night at Larz Anderson rink watching his kid discover the joy of sport — a joy that you, Tom, instill in so many of us grateful fans. On behalf of the parents of New England, from the bottom of so many hearts: Thank you.