Ramsey: DeBerry made players believe he was right there with them

Troy Calhoun had a plan. He didn’t have all the details figured out, but he knew how it would end.

He would escape the Air Force Academy.

It was July 1985. Calhoun was a freshman, and he was miserable. He marched all day. Upperclassmen shouted about all his shortcomings, and they shouted a few inches from his face.

He kept thinking about his friends back home in Oregon. They were sleeping late, enjoying inner-tube rides on the river while being lazy, free teenagers.

On his second night, Calhoun decided he would flee, but fell asleep before completing his escape route.

Still, he had no doubts.

“I was gone,” he said.

On July 8, 1985, AFA coach Fisher DeBerry walked into Arnold Hall to address his freshmen football players.

Calhoun, still plotting his escape, was convinced it would be final time he saw DeBerry.

DeBerry talked in his South Carolina twang, saying he knew how much his players were suffering.

Then he loudly offered his main point: It will all be worth it, he said.

You’re being given the opportunity to serve your country, and if you fight through these tough times, you’ll never be sorry.

Trust me on this one, men, he said, and remember I’m right there with you.

When DeBerry’s speech began, Calhoun had no doubt he was leaving. When the speech ended, Calhoun had no doubt he was staying.

“I knew he cared,” said Calhoun, sitting in the office once occupied by DeBerry. “I knew he cared immensely about people.”

DeBerry walked out of the AFA athletic complex after resigning Dec. 15, 2006, and has seldom returned. For 27 seasons — 23 as head coach — AFA football dominated his life, but now he’s busy with his children and grandchildren and golf and his foundation.

He plays golf at one home in Oklahoma and splashes in the beach at his other home in South Carolina. He did not see the 2008 Falcons compete, and he might not see the 2009 Falcons.

But his presence remains.

Calhoun employs a run-dominated offense that’s similar, if not identical, to Fisher’s. He talks with DeBerry several times a month. They stay away from the business of football, but DeBerry usually sneaks in one brief word of advice:

“You’ve got to run the option more,” the old coach tells the new coach.

A few yards down the hall from Calhoun’s office, AFA defensive coordinator Tim DeRuyter was thinking back to May 1980, when he was an outstanding student and properly violent linebacker at St. John Bosco High School in suburban Los Angeles.

Someone named Fisher from some school called Air Force arrived at St. John, and he wanted to talk to DeRuyter about playing some football.

DeRuyter had no interest. He planned to play at Princeton or Harvard.

“Never even heard of the Air Force Academy,” he said.

Those plans quickly changed. DeRuyter was used to California cool, a style that called for low emotion and low voices.

DeBerry seized DeRuyter’s hand as if they had known each other for decades. He talked at extremely high volume.

“It was a Southern drawl I had never heard before, except in the movies,” DeRuyter said.

DeBerry, who had just been hired as AFA’s offensive coordinator, shouted about the wonders of an AFA education and the fantastic transformation soon to happen to the Falcons’ losing football program.

It was completely over-the-top.

And it worked.

DeRuyter said no to Princeton and Harvard so he could say yes to DeBerry.

“I had never met anybody like him,” DeRuyter said, smiling as he thought back to the afternoon that altered his life.

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Contact the writer: 476-4895. Check out David’s blog, David Ramsey Says What?, at daveramseysez.freedomblogging.com