Community in Mourning, But Not Denial

MOUNT OLIVE, Miss. -- Steve McNair drew his final hometown crowd Friday. The line snaked around the funeral home, down the stretch of weeds alongside U.S. Highway 49 and up a hill into the setting sun.

Nobody wanted to be there. But it seemed everybody in Covington County showed up.

"It's not going to be a realization until I walk in there," Jackie Simpson said. "I know it's true, but I just can't believe it."

Was Steve McNair really dead? And how were people supposed to feel about it?

The sign on the church across the street gave the answer.

"We Are Called To Be Witnesses. Not Lawyers or Judges."

They came to witness the end of an American dream, not judge it. The rest of the nation has been doing enough of that.

From the hot air of talk shows to the cold anonymity of message boards, McNair's death reignited the debate over role models, responsibility and athletic idolatry.

He was a bum!

Steve McNair Foundation? Any time you hear Foundation, it means tax deduction.

Steve McNair got what he deserved.

On the other side, there was the John 8:7 crowd. Let he that is without sin cast the first stone.


We're all human. He made a mistake.

No, a mistake is forgetting your wife's birthday. It's something else when you pretend you don't have a wife and strike up an affair with a troubled waitress young enough to be your daughter.

"Maybe she was someone suicidal and he was studying up on that," theorized one babbling psychologist on CNN.

Or just maybe McNair was totally clueless until Sahel Kazemi put two bullets in his brain and two more in his chest last Saturday. She then positioned herself where she'd fall into his lap after shooting herself in the head, as if that's how she wanted to spend eternity.

Instead Kazemi fell to the floor. Her best-laid plans succeeded only in blowing a hole in McNair's legacy and sending his hometown into shock.

Half the businesses along Main Street had black ribbons on their doors Friday. The other half probably would have if their doors hadn't been boarded up years ago.

"We don't have anything big here in Mount Olive," Mayor Bob McNair said.

He's distant kin to the quarterback, though everybody around here is like family. About a third of the 1,050 residents are retired. Most of the rest work at the poultry plant in Collins or the sawmill or making paper products for Georgia Pacific.

When they get home, most conversations eventually turn to football. Either Southern Miss or Ole Miss or Jackson State or the beloved Mount Olive Attendance Center Pirates. That's why there were black balloons outside the city library on Friday.

"Nine of them," librarian Jaylyn Miller said.

That was McNair's jersey number. The fact it became famous reaffirms how just about anyone can make it big if they have the talent and determination. Even a kid from a place that makes Mount Olive look like Manhattan.

McNair grew up on a country road in the unincorporated wide spot known as Mount Pleasant. Hang a left off State Road 35 at the sign riddled with shotgun holes, then look for the little gray house with a big front yard.

It's one-third red dirt, one-third gravel and one-third grass, with a street light in the middle. McNair was one of five boys Lucy Mae McNair raised by herself.

She worked odd jobs and a steady night-shift job at Howard Industries, which made light bulbs. All her boys became country strong and city fast. The mayor was teaching at rival Collins High when he first noticed a young quarterback.

"We couldn't stop him from passing," Bob McNair said. "We couldn't stop him from running."

It became a common refrain over the next 20 years. Steve McNair was the only member of his graduating class of 42 to turn down scholarship offers from LSU and Mississippi State.

They wanted him to be a defensive back. He wanted to be a quarterback. The only school that guaranteed him a shot was Alcorn State. The rest is NCAA history.

McNair became almost a mythological figure. Almost nobody ventured to Lorman, Miss., to see him. But everybody heard about Air McNair.

"He put Alcorn State on the map," ex-teammate Doug Fitzgerald said.


The NFL found him. Houston made him its first pick in 1995 and signed him to a $28 million contract. McNair told his mother she was fired from her job and built her a mansion on a huge plot of land her father once sharecropped.

African-American quarterbacks were still suspicious novelty acts just 14 years ago. McNair had to deal with that. He had to deal with the pressures any rookie high-priced QB faced. He had to deal with becoming the face of a nomadic franchise.

No big deal.

"He had the charisma. He had the looks," said Simpson, who became coach at Mount Olive after McNair left. "He had it all."

If only Kevin Dyson's arms had been a couple of feet longer, McNair would have been a Super Bowl champ. That last-play reach came up short in 2000, but McNair rolled on. He was co-MVP in 2003. His stats and toughness were comparable to Brett Favre.

He got the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award for his charity work. He became an icon in Nashville . If there was a character flaw, it was hard to find.

"We always talk to the kids about making memories," Simpson said. "During your life you make good memories or bad memories. It's up to you. Somewhere along the line, somebody got to him about good memories."

That's all McNair left around his hometown.

"I'm always Steve, the country boy from Mount Olive," he once said.

He put on football camps, paying for hundreds of kids from around the state to attend. He bought his old high school team new shoes every year. If Simpson needed money to charter a bus to take the team to the state playoffs, he'd call Lucille, who'd call Steve, who'd always have the same response.

"Sure thing," he said.

He gave his phone number to kids at his camp, telling them to call or text him if they needed help. There was no tax deduction in that.

When Hurricane Katrina left Mount Olive without electricity or water, a roaring sound came up Highway 149 toward Main Street.

"In roll these big 18-wheelers with anything and everything," Simpson said. "And Steve was the lead dog."

When the superstar could make it back for games, he hung out with the same guys he did when he was a nobody. Miller's daughter was a flag girl at Mount Olive and took her librarian mother over to meet McNair at a game.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," she said.

"It's an honor to meet you," he replied.

If McNair wasn't sincere, he sure fooled Miller. Multiply that encounter by a few thousand and you might begin to feel the impact last Saturday had.

Miller got a telephone call from her daughter.

"Did you hear about Steve McNair? He got shot."

"You've got to be kidding. Surely there's a mistake."

Miller ran to the TV.

"It was just heart-wrenching," she said.

It hasn't gotten any easier as the ballistics results came in. Then on Friday the New York Daily News reported McNair had a long-time affair with a stripper in Minneapolis.

It would have been so much simpler if the 36-year-old had died trying to rescue crippled children from a burning orphanage.

"A lady made a statement that, you know, I wouldn't say," Mayor McNair said. "But I can't deny she's telling the truth.

"If he hadn't been unfaithful to his wife, this wouldn't have happened. And again, you look at it and she told the truth."

And it hurts. It has devastated his wife, Mechelle. It has left four boys without a father. It has put an ambiguous end to a storybook life.

You can't defend infidelity. But it's not as if Steve McNair ever claimed to be Billy Graham. And if you're going to stone every man who had a mistress, just for starters you'd have to line up John Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr. and Prince Charles.

The difference is none of their lovers shot them in their sleep.

"The final act does not define the man," Fitzgerald said.

He was one of the first in line for Friday's viewing at Reeves Funeral Home. The doors were supposed to open at 6 p.m., but the family went in first and didn't leave until after 7. By then the crowd had swelled to 1,000 or 2,000 or maybe more.

"I don't know," said Police Chief C.E. Patterson. "But it's more than have ever been in Mount Olive at one time."

There will be thousands more at Saturday's funeral at Southern Miss' basketball arena. Then McNair will come home one last time.

He will be buried at Griffith Cemetery. It's really not much more than a big lot of grass beside U.S. Highway 84.

There's one lonesome tree, and the only thing separating it from the trucks whizzing past is a chain link fence. It's not the kind of place you'd expect an NFL MVP to end up, but it adds to the lesson in all this.

No matter where you're from, you can make it big. And no matter how big you make it, you can still fall.

Did McNair's final fall ruin everything that came before it?

"It's something you've got to accept and go on," Simpson said. "You sort of pick out what you want to remember."

If you pick out how he died, you'll remember him as a bum.

If you pick out how he lived, you'll remember him as a lot more.