Jason Kelce’s Retirement Address was regarded by some in and beyond the sports community as the best address ever given in Philadelphia by anyone. That is above and beyond high praise. If that is the case and I had been still teaching ethics at EA, I would want to play the speech for my students as well as tell them about the acclaim and ask the simply question, “Why?”
Kelce’s themes are what we covered in the course.
The overall address contained the truth that people don’t remember what you said as much as how you made them feel. It is emotion that truly changes people. Kelce has never forgotten where he came from. That always influences the important aspects of our lives whether we like it or not. His video starts on a playing field in his youth.
We all should have dreams and find our passion, but it must be combined with the hardest of efforts. Dreams can have high risk and high reward. It is a blessing to know what inspires you. The blessed find out!
He had a set of values that contained loyalty, patience, cooperation, and understanding. Values are like the steering wheel on the car of your life driving forward. Find them. Live them.
He found his niche in Philadelphia where the fans and he had a love affair. It was Philia love which is defined by passion created by a shared purpose, where his identity and the Eagles’ identity became one and the same. When the Eagles won, the people felt the win and vice versa. When passion arrives, reason leaves and we are left with pure love for one another.
I had a colleague in Chaplaincy at EA who was crazy about the Eagles and had a large eagle tattooed across his back. His answering machine still contains a voicemail that has one of the Eagles’ sports announcers describing him running down the field. Then you leave your message. How many clergy in our nation would do something like that?
During one season people gave up on Kelce’s playing ability except for one man, Jeff Stoutland. Research shows that you only need one person in your life that you can call at any time to get you through the toughest of times. One of the nicest notes that I ever received from an alumnus was, “Thanks for not giving up on me. Today I wouldn’t recognize who I was back then.”
Kelce celebrates the diversity of being a player on teams throughout his life most notably on the Eagles where black and white players and players of all sizes coming from different colleges and high schools in different locations is what made it such an important experience because it became a brotherhood with a shared purpose. I was talking to a former board chair at EA who was a graduate of the school and was the captain on a boat that would make over 100 trips up the various rivers into enemy territory during the Vietnam War. I asked him about his most valuable experience in life as he was the CEO of an international company. His quick response was being with people in that war from all backgrounds, races, classes, and parts of the country with the shared purpose of winning a war and staying alive.
There were many thank you(s) given by Kelce to all the people who helped him along his way to the moment of retirement. Kelce knew the secret which caused the most emotion in him to be a person of gratitude, the key to happiness and living the ethical life.
But there is one last thing that isn’t in his address. A hero becomes a hero by what they do when no one is looking. Heroes don’t need to take credit.
Joe O’Palla, Kelce’s trainer had a special role in Kelce’s life, and Kelce had a special role in O’Palla’s life. He taped Kelce’s ankles and thumbs every day for 13 years They were friends off the field as well having fun and sleeping on each other’s couches. Kelce didn’t need to be around the stars. O’Palla was diagnosed with cancer and underwent radiation and chemo. Kelce had a meal service provided to Joe’s family. He called frequently to check on him. No one knew about this. Joe O’Palla couldn’t tape Kelce for his last game at Tampa Bay and told Kelce that he regretted that he couldn’t be the last person to tape him.
Kelce offered Joe O’Palla to tape him before his retirement address which he did. Enough said.
When I finished watching Kelce’s address which is below, I thought of the words of Helen Keller, who because of an illness at 19 months was blind and deaf for her entire life. She learned to feel objects and associate words with them with the words spelled out on her palm. She worked tirelessly with her teacher, Anne Sullivan. Keller graduated from Radcliffe, wrote six books, and lectured with an interpreter. The movie and the play, The Miracle Worker, was the story of her life working with her teacher.
Keller’s words which summarize Kelce were written on a scrap of paper on my desk. “What we have once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose. For all that we love deeply becomes part of us.”
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