Home >  Sports >  Notebooks

Sunday, September 29, 2002

Compiled by Ed Bouchette, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

Mike Webster's family should hear some facts before they continue to bash the Rooneys or the National Football League for not helping their father in his times of trouble the past decade.

Dan Rooney, the Steelers' president, did plenty to try to help him.

First, he helped him get $110,200 annually in disability pay through the NFL pension plan by privately lobbying the retirement board which includes three representatives from the players association and three from management. Getting approval for such a payout otherwise might have been difficult for Webster, who was not physically debilitated. He began receiving the money in November 1999.

Webster would have received the annual stipend the rest of his life.

"Everyone in the league and many former Steelers players know the Rooney family as one of the most caring and generous families in all of sports," said NFL spokesman Greg Aiello, who provided details of Webster's disability payment.

When Rooney learned that Webster had slept in the train station, he dispatched his aide, Joe Gordon, to the scene. Gordon, the team's former public-relations man and business manager, found Webster at the Amtrak station Downtown that summer day in 1996. He drove him to the Hilton Hotel, where Rooney paid to put him up for three months.

There was more.

"Every time Mike would get into trouble," Gordon said. "He'd call me.

Whether it was money or something else, I'd call Dan and Dan would say, 'Do what you have to do.' That was always his response."

That's why it bothers Gordon and others to see Webster's family criticize the Rooneys for supposedly not caring for their father.

The day after Webster died, a man who had been close to him called Gordon. There was no money to pay for the funeral. Gordon called Dan Rooney.

Done, he'd take care of it.

"Without any hesitation," Gordon said.

"There was never any question, not one second of hesitation and that's how he handled it in the past. Yet his family is so convinced we abandoned them."

Gordon and others tried to help Webster in many other ways, whether it was through business connections or setting up card-show signings.

Tunch Ilkin and Craig Wolfley, two teammates he once was close to, rented an apartment for him in Bridgeville. Webster never moved in. He also turned down many offers from other friends, and from Gordon and the Steelers through the years. Those friends aren't sure whether it was pride that prevented the Hall of Fame center from accepting such help or something else. He stopped returning phone calls to many of his friends, including Ilkin and Wolfley and a former agent/manager and close friend John Lestini, who tried to help him.

Kansas City Chiefs President Carl Peterson helped him out financially, but even he had trouble reaching Webster.

"When people tried to help him, he refused," Gordon said. "It was part of his personal independence. He didn't want anybody showing any pity towards him, he thought he could make it on his own."

Webster could have easily made more than $100,000 annually just by attending 20 card-signing shows. Hall of Famers are in demand at such events and each show would pay him a minimum of $5,000.

"A lot of people tried to help him," Gordon said. "To cut himself off from guys like Tunch, Wolf, Peterson. ... It's just a total tragedy."