There used to be a social-work theory that deeply dysfunctional families would unconsciously appoint one child as a “survivor”, the individual to be pushed away from the interconnected generational drama as a living side bet, or at least to write the obituaries. If Buzzfeed‘s Joel Anderson is correct, Michael Sam Jr. might be one of those survivors:
In a yellow-walled room in a Texas nursing home this July, a man in a wheelchair watched a flat-screen TV. He saw Michael Sam Jr. kiss his boyfriend and hug his small team of supporters — agents, coaches, and Pro Football Hall of Famer Jim Brown. The first out gay player drafted into the National Football League strode to the stage to receive ESPN’s Arthur Ashe Award, an honor previously bestowed on Muhammad Ali, Pat Tillman, and Nelson Mandela. It was the climax of a star-studded evening in Los Angeles meant to announce Michael Jr.’s arrival as a national icon.
Michael Jr. thanked his agents, his publicist, the couple who welcomed him into their home in high school, supporters from the University of Missouri, and top officials with the St. Louis Rams, the team that had drafted him only two months earlier.
Finally, he gave a brief nod to his roots. “To my mother, a single mother who somehow raised eight kids. I love you dearly.”
Back in his cramped room at the nursing home, Michael Sam Sr. picked up his battered, flip-style phone and found his son’s number. He left a message.
“So that’s what you’re going to do?” he recalled telling his son. “After all I’ve done for you?”
Since Michael Jr. publicly announced he was gay in February — just days after he let his father know by text message — Michael Sr. has been vilified in the press. In the New York Times, Michael Sr. came off as a callous homophobe when he said, “I don’t want my grandkids raised in that kind of environment. … I’m old school. I’m a man-and-a-woman type of guy.” When the ESPN documentary declared that Michael Sr. had “abandoned the family” and left his mother to raise Michael Jr. and his seven siblings on her own, Michael Sr. seemed the archetype of the intolerant and absent black father.
In none of these accounts did Michael Jr. come to his father’s defense. “I’m closer to my friends than I am to my family,” Michael Jr. told the Times.
But the father-son story of Michael Sr. and Michael Jr. is more than a conflict over whether Michael Sr. loved and supported his son. It’s the tale of man who’s been reduced to a caricature but whose actual life was shaped by the loss of child after child, some to death and some to crime. The rift between Michael Sr. and his youngest son started long before Michael Jr. came out and stems in no small part from those family tragedies…
