Roger Goodell's father: A profile in courage

Boys don't do this anymore, so this may sound strange.

Before drugs and porn and unconventional sex, we used to go down to the lake and see how many times we could make flat rocks "bounce" across the water. If you threw the rock right, you could get up to five bounces and a lot of thrills watching your rock skip merrily across the water. That's the way columns like this are born. The flat-rock of your brain skips across the ponds of possibility, touching down on disconnected things like bird-calls, abandoned values and show-business losers before sinking into a theme.

Bird-Calls! To achieve the top rank of Eagle Scout you had to earn the "Bird Study" merit badge. That required identifying 40 different kinds of birds in the field. That was a killer for us Scouts in North Carolina. There just aren't 40 different kinds of birds in North Carolina!

Abandoned Values! It would have been so easy to cheat. If we claimed we saw a red-breasted nuthatch, a white-breasted nuthatch and a brown-headed nuthatch on a bird-watching trip, how could they prove we didn't? The point is not that we never faked it, despite the frustration. The point is that we never once even thought about faking it, even though it would have allowed us to qualify for that top rank in Scouting a lot quicker. We just got up earlier and went on more bird-watches until we'd spotted a fair 40 different kinds.

Now then, "Show-Business Losers"! As producers of a New York radio talk show we were in daily touch with the losing-est of them all: angry, hungry, bottom-feeding publicity agents valiantly trying to get their unheard-of clients interviewed on radio shows like ours. And it was so easy to recognize their forlorn little bird-calls. While the true celebrities were appearing on major talk shows, those pitiful publicists would call us and say things like, "The people are tired of all these so-called stars. They want new faces!" My favorite bird-call from one of those bottom-feeding publicists was, "You producers think only inside the box. Did you ever think, for instance, of interviewing Frank Sinatra's cousin?"

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My honest answer was "No," but that explains the broad and deep smile that conquered and occupied my face for a long time just now when I decided to write, not about Frank Sinatra's cousin, but about Roger Goodell's father.

In 1968 Bobby Kennedy was murdered. New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller appointed former House member Charles Goodell senator to replace the fallen Kennedy. Meanwhile, in West Africa's Nigeria, the region of Biafra was in a secessionist uprising against the federal government, and the feds were using forced famine as a weapon against the Biafran civilian population.

Sen. Goodell teamed up with Israeli "peace pilot" and courageous do-gooder Abie Nathan to try to get food through the federal blockade into Biafra. I volunteered "tactical air support" through my radio show. Charles Goodell and I became old friends at once. Our political differences made that unlikely, but the pictures of hungry Biafran babies made it inevitable.

Goodell was appointed senator in 1968. He would have to run again in 1970. It would have been so easy – and, for most politicians, automatic – to spend that time reconfiguring his political profile the better to please his constituents. Charles Goodell was more interested in getting food to Biafra.

He made a four-day visit to that war zone, and I'm sure his advisers warned him the political payoff couldn't possibly be worth the personal peril of the visit. Sen. Goodell was scheduled to come to my radio studio as soon as he'd landed and cleared customs.

I was taping a broadcast in the afternoon to maximize chances of having the senator on fresh from Biafra. I heard the rear door of the studio open behind me. I couldn't see who it was, but my engineer could, and he looked as if a ghost had just entered. It was Sen. Charles Goodell in khaki fatigues, under-slept, under-shaved and underfed. He was underfed by choice; African military leaders, even on the losing side, tend to dine well until the end. The senator had been invited to dine with the secessionist leader Odumegwu Ojukwu in the Biafran high-command tent, but he politely declined, insisting instead on dining along with the common soldiers of Biafra. There's no record of any French chef sampling that fare and suffering an envy attack!

Biafra lost that war. Goodell lost that next election in 1970 in a three-way race. The Democrat, Richard Ottinger, also lost. The winner was Jim Buckley who ran as the candidate of the then-fairly-new New York Conservative Party.

Sen. Goodell died in 1987, unaware of the towering heights his son, Roger, would attain. At least where I come from, an annual wage of $44 million dollars qualifies as "towering," as does presiding as plenipotentiary over the empire of pro football.

Commissioner Roger Goodell's first duty, they all say, is to defend something called "The Shield," or the National Football League brand.

The Goodell Family brand will never need a stronger defense to prevail among any of us who witnessed hands-on and at close range Sen. Charles Goodell's towering acts of principle and courage in those late 1960s.

Media wishing to interview Barry Farber, please contact [email protected].