Book signing:
Who: Former Ohio State star Chris Spielman
Where: Books & Co., The Greene Town Center, Beavercreek
When: 7 p.m. Tuesday (line numbers begin at 6 p.m.; must show Books & Co. receipt for "That's Why I'm Here" to get a number)
Chris Spielman and his four children will start today with a Mother’s Day trip to Union Cemetery along the Olentangy River in Columbus.
“The ride there is sometimes solemn,” he said. “But the ride home is filled with laughter ... and peace.”
That’s because once they get to the grave, Stefanie Spielman’s spirit — everything she stood for and believed and celebrated — fills her family and transforms them once again.
“We’ll get there and pray, but we don’t talk to the grave, we look upward,” Spielman said. “Then the kids tell Mom what they’re doing. It’s not that she doesn’t already know, but it helps us.
“Maddie might tell her about the prom. Noah’s just turned 16 and he’s our church drummer. And Macy and Audrey, the two younger girls, have their stories. They’re playing lacrosse and softball and soccer.
“And then when we’re done, we’ll head back home. We’ve got soccer and lacrosse games after that. ... Life goes on.”
Stefanie Spielman wouldn’t have it any other way.
She was all about living, not dying.
Her husband shared some of those thoughts by phone Saturday as he sat through Macy’s softball practice.
Although he’s still got plenty of that Mr. Macho presence he had through his storied football life — he was on the Wheaties box as a prep player in Massilon, was an All-American linebacker and Lombardi Award winner at Ohio State, an All-Pro during his 11-year NFL career and now a popular ESPN football analyst — Spielman is very much a Mr. Mom in his Upper Arlington home.
Since Stefanie died of breast cancer in November of 2009, he not only has picked up many of her duties on the home front, but has taken on those she embraced in her very public, 11-year medical battle.
That saga is captured in the book — “That’s Why I’m Here: The Chris and Stefanie Spielman Story,” — he wrote with Bruce Hooley, the former Troy Daily News, Miami News and Cleveland Plain Dealer sportswriter who now hosts a show on ESPN 850 WKNR.
Spielman will be in Dayton at 7 p.m. Tuesday night for a book signing at Books & Co. at The Greene.
In the decade after her diagnosis, Stefanie was a charming and tireless spokesperson and fundraiser in the fight against breast cancer.
The title of the book came from a happenstance encounter she had with a woman at one of the functions she was at.
“Stef had slipped out into the lobby and this woman approached her somewhat cautiously at first,” Spielman said. “She explained how she had just been diagnosed and Stef asked her about her doctor and her family and her upcoming surgery. The lady poured some of it out and then said ‘I’m sorry I put this on you.’
“And Stef said, ‘Don’t you understand, that’s why I’m here.’ And after that the lady said she felt strangely calm as she prepared for her surgery.”
Tough times
From the time he was just a little fellow right through his head-knocking days with the Detroit Lions and Buffalo Bills, Chris Spielman made his name as a tough guy.
The first one to learn that was his grandma.
When he was just 5, she leaned down and opened her arms to give him a hug. He thought she was getting into her defensive stance — to tackle him — so he lowered his head and barreled into her.
Broke grandma’s nose.
In 1996, he played an entire game for the Lions with a torn pectoral muscle. Playing for the Bills two years later, he made a game-high 13 tackles even though he was experiencing numbness in his legs. Afterward he was found to have damaged two vertebra in his neck.
Yet he said when it came to toughness, he learned he had to take a back seat to his wife Stefanie, the girl he had fallen in love with when he was a 17-year-old sports star at Washington High and she was a 15-year-old cheerleader at a rival school.
“She was a girl that had a genuine confidence, a genuine presence about her,” he said. “When I think back about it now, that’s what attracted me to her most. And later on that certainly showed through in the way she handled herself with grace and dignity through that 12-year (cancer) experience. She had a way of turning something bad into something good. It’s something I had to learn from her.”
In July of 1998, Stefanie was three months pregnant with the couple’s third child when she noticed a lump on her right breast. She dismissed it as a cyst.
Later she miscarried and that’s when she told her doctor of her discovery. A biopsy determined a nonspreading form of cancer, but during surgery to remove the mass another pea-sized malignant tumor was found. Her right breast — and 21 lymph nodes — were removed and the rugged odyssey began.
It was during that time that Spielman was dealing with his severe neck injury and he remembers bemoaning their fate to Stefanie.
“We had lost our child two weeks before her diagnosis,” he said. “I didn’t know if I could return to football because of my injury and my mind-set was how unfair things were. I said ‘Why us?’
“She looked at me and said, ‘How can you say that? Why not look at all our blessings, all the good things, all the fun we have had? ... Why not us?’
“I felt ashamed. ... Right there, that was a life-changing moment.”
The two teamed up after that and took on the cancer fight. Four times Stefanie went through the rugged treatments and fought her way into remission. In the process the couple had two more children.
And many more great times.
Saying goodbye
Stefanie’s last big public moment came at Ohio State’s football opener against Navy in 2009. Chris was being honored at halftime for his induction in the College Football Hall of Fame and when the family took the field — Stef limited to a wheelchair — the entire Ohio Stadium crowd was riveted to her presence.
Although frail, she raised her arm above her and waved a fist to the crowd.
“I thought that was a very cool way of her to say goodbye,” Spielman said Saturday, his voice suddenly quiet and halting. “She was saying goodbye ... and thank you.”
Spielman said a day or two after he and his wife had gotten the news her cancer was terminal, he contacted Hooley with whom he had hosted a radio show.
“I said ‘Alright Bruce, let’s go,’ ” he said. “When you hear that news, you begin to reflect on your life and the cancer journey you’ve been on. For me, reflecting under those circumstances, everything became clear and I decided that was the time to write it down.
“The emotions were raw so the book would be credible and honest. We chronicled all our struggles, our mistakes, our triumphs. I wanted people to know we went through the same things you do. I’m not just Chris Spielman the football guy from Ohio State and the Detroit Lions and ESPN. I’m a guy who has all the same fears as you.
“Along the way I had tried to make all these deals with God. I had prayed for mercy and the healing of Stef. I didn’t get what I prayed for. Instead I got peace about the situation and mercy in the way my kids have been able to handle the loss of their mother.”
Stefanie is still very much alive in the Spielman household, Chris said:
“We talk about her every day and the kids hear about her all the time. Stef is significant in the community. There’s The Spielman Fund (the couple has raised more than $10 million) and today, for instance, we drove past the building (The Stefanie Spielman Comprehensive Breast Center) that bears her name.
“And we’ll hear songs on the radio and I’ll say, ‘Mommy loved that one.’ And the little girls go in and play dress up and wear her clothes. I don’t keep them for sentimental reasons, but because the girls like to wear them when they play.”
Maddie, who is now 18 and will attend OSU next year, has joined her dad in some of his speaking engagements, she wrote the forward for the book and she writes an Ask Maddie blog (maddiespielman.wordpress.com) for kids who have lost parents.
At his book signings and speaking engagements, Chris will take photos of breast cancer survivors with his cellphone and post them on Facebook as a way, he said, of giving hope to others fighting the fight:
“I want people to know good things happen to us, but I also want them to know bad things do too, so don’t be caught off guard. Be aware. Get checkups. And if you have faith stand firm in it. Be men and women of courage of strength. And above all, do everything with passion and love. If you do you can get through anything. I have.
“That’s the message of the book and the mission in my life. It’s part of my job now. It’s the promise I made to my wife.
“For me now — that’s why I’m here.”
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