Standing On Her Shoulders
Larry Fitzgerald goes into the Hall of Fame this weekend. The best of him was never the catches. It was a promise to his mom.
For seventeen years, when number 11 went up to get the ball in the desert, an entire stadium roared the same name. Laaaarry. This weekend, Larry Fitzgerald walks into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, first ballot, an Arizona Cardinal for every one of those seventeen seasons. Second only to Jerry Rice in catches and receiving yards in the entire history of the game. But if you want to understand the man, you have to put the stat sheet down.
The numbers are staggering...
1,432 catches
17,492 yards
11 Pro Bowls
And Larry will be the first to tell you that none of it is the point. Go back to 2003. He is a young man at the University of Pittsburgh, and his mother, Carol, is dying of breast cancer. She is forty-seven years old. Before she goes, she asks her son for one thing.
CAROL FITZGERALD, TO HER SON
“Son, education is the one thing nobody can ever take from you.”
She made him promise to finish his degree. Then she was gone, at forty-seven. He carried that promise the rest of his life.
He kept it. He went back and earned the degree. And then he built the rest of his life around her.
His foundation poured into the fight that took her, a million dollars to Banner MD Anderson, and the breast center there now carries her name: The Carol Fitzgerald Breast Health Center. The NFL gave him the Walter Payton Man of the Year, the league’s highest honor, the one for character and service, not stats. Seventeen years of greatness on the field, and the thing he is proudest of happens off it.
Our newsletter has a name for this:
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
Larry never once forgot whose shoulders he was standing on. The catches will fade from memory. The records will fall someday. What lasts is a promise kept to his mom, and a name on a building that helps other families fight what took her.
That is legacy. Not what you pile up. Who you carry forward.
STANDING ON GIANTS.
“Her children arise up, and call her blessed.”
(Proverbs 31:28)
THE RESUME · FADES
THE LEGACY · LASTS
Let's Play To Win: Name Your Giant
This week, name the person whose shoulders you are standing on, a parent, a mentor, a coach, the one who believed in you before you believed in yourself. Then do two things. Tell them, if you still can. And carry it forward by building somebody else up the way they built you. Carol gave Larry a why that was bigger than football. The bigger the why, the easier the how. Find yours, and honor it.
Congratulations, Larry. Arizona is proud of you, and not mostly for the catches. Let’s get after it in life, family, and business. AND LET’S PLAY TO WIN!!!
Lots of love, Nate
