Three Little Wrestling Figures

I shared this story before but I wanted to again on what should’ve been my brother’s 46th birthday. 

If you knew Dave, you knew he had a lifelong struggle. There were stretches of time throughout that struggle when he would go weeks, months, or sometimes years, doing okay. Then there were other stretches of time when he suffered terribly. This photo was taken during one of those times.

His girlfriend at the time had kicked him out, so, Jamie turned our office into a makeshift bedroom and we took him in. Every night before her bedtime, Nina tiptoed across the hallway in her pajamas and crawled under the covers with him. I’d hear whispers about princesses and dragons and how Dave was going to help her conquer her fear of rollercoasters. She set up a couple of my wrestling figures near him (you could see them in the photo, on the nightstand) and explained that one day soon “Uncle Dave would be strong like them again.”

He was in pain. Not only the kind of pain that comes with addiction but very serious physical pain. An injury to his foot had become infected and at this point he had a portable wound VAC treating it. 

After a few days at our house, Dave insisted on packing up his stuff and moving back with his girlfriend. In the weeks that followed, the wound in his foot worsened and he found himself in a rehabilitation center. He and I would end up having a falling out (our last of many) and I swore I would never speak to him again. 

Nina missed her uncle and wanted nothing more than to bring him the wrestling figures he forgot on the nightstand. On a warm day in April, I reluctantly took her to see him. We were only there for about thirty minutes but Dave was his old self. He had the nursing staff and other residents laughing. He had Nina laughing. Before it was over, he had me laughing. We left the rehab with smiles on our faces that afternoon. Dave never would. He passed away there three days later.

I share this photo and story to honor Dave and show that even at his worst he mustered up enough strength to chat about tree frogs with his three year old niece. Underneath it all, that’s who he was.

I have no idea what his final moments were like at that rehabilitation center seven years ago. I never will. But, I take a tiny bit of solace knowing that when it happened, he had three little wrestling figures at his bedside. 

Happy birthday, my brother. Until we meet again.

Fly, Hammer, Fly

With the Birds facing Andy Reid’s Chiefs this coming Sunday at the big game, I want to travel back in time to October, 2011. A simpler time, when Barack Obama was in office, drunken aunts everywhere were singing about “Pumped up Kicks” and John Rodio, along with his nephew Paul and my father, Dave, were stringing up one of Rodio’s trademark white banners with black lettering (signs that were a staple at the Vet and the Linc after that) outside of the Eagles’ NovaCare training facility. This particular sign read ANDY THE TIMES…TO GO. (Reminding Reid, who was head coach of the Birds at the time, that Philly had seen enough.)

Eagles’ center and soul of the team, Jason Kelce, and then guard, Evan Mathis, didn’t take too kindly to the signage. Kelce and Mathis approached in a pickup truck and demanded that the fans remove their sign. Honestly, I’m not sure what came next, but the scrum was enough for news outlets to take notice and enough people to get to chatting about it, for it to become known as “Occupy NovaCare” or better yet, “Signgate.” Not surprising since both the “Sign Man” (Rodio) and the “Hammonton Hammer” (my dad) were already pretty well-known in the area for Rodio’s signs, my dad’s performance at Wing Bowl 97’, and their frequent call-ins to sports talk radio.

Cooler heads eventually prevailed. When the Birds finally got a dub after losing four in a row, Rodio and his comrades returned to NovaCare (albeit a bit further away) with a new sign reading THANK YOU AND YOUR WELCOME. Which, if I remember correctly, was an intentional gaffe to poke fun at all the Grammar Nazis who attacked Rodio for the first sign. All parties involved even posed for a picture, with Mathis playfully choking out Rodio while my dad tries to remove the huge man’s hands from his buddy’s throat.

In the weeks that followed, Rodio and my dad would land a show on radio station WNJC. It was the most excited I had ever seen my father. I designed a logo, along with tee shirts, hats, and magnets, and presented it all to him as a gift that Christmas. A little less than two weeks later, he passed away, before the first episode of the show ever aired. 

That following March, while exiting Wells Fargo Center after Monday Night Raw, my brother, Dave and I spotted two familiar faces flanked by fans. The hulking men, one bearded, the other with shoulder-length hair, towered over their admirers, smiling for photos and signing autographs. 

Dave and I waited patiently for the crowd to dissipate, then approached the men. By then, they looked exhausted, and a little bit annoyed. They almost blew us off entirely, until my brother shouted, “Our dad was Dave Rizzotte. The Hammer. One of the guys with the sign!” They stopped, glanced at one another, wondered where this was headed. We informed them that he had passed away, unexpectedly, of a heart attack. With tears in all of our eyes, they spoke kindly about our father, reminding us that although they had gotten off to a rough start, things ended well, and that the Hammer was a funny, charming guy. 

My brother and I spoke about the encounter often for the next couple of years. We spoke about how our father’s huge spirit blanketed Philly that night, as we made our way through the parking lot, reeling from the chance meeting with the players. We spoke about how tiny the world felt, how connected we felt to something bigger than us. It would end up being one of the last things we spoke about, on a sunny afternoon in April, three days before Dave would see our father again - way too soon.

This Sunday is a day for family and friends to gather and eat chicken wings and laugh at ridiculous commercials. It’s a day for extravagant halftime shows and occasionally shouting at the tv. Football, with all of its pomp and circumstance, and block pools, and signs…sometimes brings people together for the best reasons.