DeBerry has no regrets and a new pastime: leisure

GROVE, Okla. • Fisher DeBerry spends his retirement wedged between Patricia Island Golf Course and the aptly named Grand Lake.

The 17th hole is a few dozen steps from his front door. He’s even closer to his dock.

This setting explains DeBerry’s lack of regret as he prepares for his third season away from Air Force Academy and the team that defined his football life.

DeBerry, 71, enjoys a peaceful, permanent vacation in northeast Oklahoma, where he plays four or five rounds of golf a week alongside Lu Ann, his wife of 44 years.

And when he needs a break from golf, he travels to his beach house near Charleston, S.C.

He no longer faces the rigid, slightly insane schedule of a college football coach, but he still attacks life, which is no surprise to those who know him.

On this morning, Fisher and Lu Ann rose at 5:30, ate yogurt, cereal and fresh peaches, prayed and studied the Bible and played a round of golf before retreating from the afternoon’s 100-degree-plus heat.

He lives a little more than an hour’s drive from his six grandchildren, and plans a fall of watching junior high and high school tennis matches and football games. He’s so busy he might not watch the 2009 Falcons.

“And that hurts me,” he said.

DeBerry rarely dwells on his former life, but the idea of returning to the sideline recently invaded his mind. He had been walking in the South Carolina surf. He was wearing Crocs, T-shirt and shorts.

He had not called a recruit or planned a practice in months. He had not endured a loss since Dec. 2, 2006, when TCU trampled his Falcons.

Coaching?

He laughed as he reminded himself he surely did not miss coaching.

As he talked, DeBerry relaxed in an easy chair in a bare living room. Most of the DeBerry’s furniture remains in Colorado Springs, where the home he built in 1999 is for sale.

DeBerry talked in his distinctive South Carolina drawl, turned up a few notches on the volume dial. On his back porch, an American flag moved in a gentle breeze while hummingbirds drank from a feeder.

In 2002, DeBerry told The Gazette he might coach until he was 80, but he failed to arrive at 70. The grind of his profession, combined with three straight losing seasons, sent him marching to retirement.

And he’s fine with that.

“I turned it loose pretty well,” he said. “I knew it was time.”

He enjoys a new concept in his life: leisure time. He especially enjoys leisure on fall Sundays.

“I really hated Sundays,” he said, thinking back to 23 years of frenzied first days of the football week.

“Always thinking about the game,” DeBerry said. “Hurrying at church. Hurrying through watching films. Hurrying through meetings. Calling a couple recruits. And, boom, it was 11 p.m.”

He grimaced about the past and then laughed about the present.

“I love the freedom of spontaneously doing things,” he said, turning to Lu Ann. “She could tell time by everything I did. It was so structured.”

And yet …

He adored his job, finding endless fuel from the challenge. DeBerry sold his players, and himself, on the joys of competing as the underdog. He couldn’t compete for the nation’s top recruits.

He didn’t mind. For two decades, he built winners with parts ignored by the football powers.

Take, for instance, Jemal Singleton, once a 5-foot-9, 195-pound linebacker at San Antonio’s Taft High School.

Only one other school expressed interest in Singleton, and that was Cisco Junior College in the remote flatlands of West Texas.

Singleton believed he could battle against anyone, and DeBerry shared this belief. The once-unwanted Singleton started at tailback and served as co-captain of the 1998 Falcons, who finished 12-1.

“My story is the story of a lot of guys,” said Singleton, an AFA offensive assistant coach.

In his living room, DeBerry shook his head with satisfaction. He searched for, and found, players who had no idea what they could become.

Chad Hennings, known in high school as a wrestler, developed under DeBerry’s direction into the nation’s premier defensive lineman in 1987.

Quarterback Dee Dowis was frighteningly skinny, and even DeBerry wondered if he could survive collisions with college behemoths. Dowis finished sixth in 1989 Heisman Trophy voting.

“Lu Ann can coach great athletes,” DeBerry said. He glanced at his bride, who shrugged to confirm his words.

“The thrill was seeing guys from when they arrived to when they left. The great recruits, they had already arrived when they got to Texas and USC. The challenge was to get our players at a level where they could compete with anyone. The challenge was to make them believe, ‘Hey, you can whip anybody.’”

For decades, DeBerry told his players they were part of a formidable family. Loyalty, to him, was paramount.

DeBerry’s success — he twice won 12 games, he pulverized Army and Navy, he won seven bowl games — inspired Texas, Auburn, Clemson, Northwestern, North Carolina, Tulane, TCU, Colorado and Washington to consider him for coaching vacancies.

Only one offer truly tempted him. In the spring of 1989, South Carolina called with a mind-boggling financial package, and the Gamecocks offered a unique, tantalizing appeal.

“It was home,” Lu Ann said.

In the end, DeBerry couldn’t say yes. In his last speech to his 1988 team, he commanded returning players to prepare for 1989 “with a bigger commitment than you ever had before.” He promised his Falcons he would make the same commitment.

He couldn’t leave, not even to return home.

“It wouldn’t have been right for me to abandon my kids,” DeBerry said.

For decades, DeBerry and his Falcons thrived. In his first 20 years, he suffered two losing seasons.

Then, his formula failed. The recruits nobody else wanted played like recruits nobody else wanted, and DeBerry lost 23 of his final 36 games.

DeBerry never fully explained his departure. He says he “wanted to be with Lu Ann,” and his words are true. The couple are virtually inseparable. They even share a car, Lu Ann’s 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe.

“We don’t need another one,” DeBerry said. “We do everything together.”

But that’s not the complete story. After the 2006 season, athletic director Hans Mueh told DeBerry he needed new faces on his coaching staff.

For two hours on this Oklahoma afternoon, DeBerry had been laughing and shouting about good times on the edge of Colorado Springs.

His smile vanished, and the volume faded as he discussed the end of all the fun.

“I was told maybe we should make some changes,” DeBerry said. “I had worked 23 years building a family, and we had a strong family. We talked to players about being family.

“We had some misfortune, like any team, but I knew we had good people on our staff. It never bothered me when people criticized me or talked me down. That was part of the life of a head coach.”

His voice was rising.

“But don’t mess with my assistant coaches. Don’t mess with my family.”

He walked away from his team. At his final press conference, DeBerry battled tears and lost the struggle. He was not alone. Many in the big room were sniffling on a beloved coach’s last day.

Yet he’s not bitter. He remains a Fightin’ Falcon, through and through.

DeBerry rose from his chair, his big smile returning.

“Come here,” he said. “I want to show you my pride and joy.”

He walked to his garage door, opened it and pointed to a shiny golf cart, painted Falcon blue and featuring a big, bold AFA thunderbolt.

“This is it,” he said, patting the cart. “This is my baby.”

In the morning, Fisher and Lu Ann will again rise early, again pray to their Lord and Savior, again eat a healthy breakfast and again climb into this cart for the short ride to a sunny round of golf.

Fisher DeBerry loved coaching football.

Almost as much as he loves not coaching football.
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Contact the writer: 476-4895. Check out David’s blog, David Ramsey Says What?, at daveramseysez.freedomblogging.com