NFL / Jets coach overcame long odds / Edwards weathered racial prejudice in drive to the top

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2003-01-10 04:00:00 PDT Seaside, Monterey County -- Long before he became head coach of the New York Jets, long before he defied racial barriers as one of only two African American coaches in the NFL, Herman Edwards was a military kid dreaming of a life in football.

He learned structure and attention to detail from his father, Herman Sr., an Army sergeant based at Fort Ord. He gleaned determination and orderliness from his mother, Martha, a spunky woman from Germany. And he learned how to deal with people by watching the way his parents withstood scrutiny as an interracial couple in the 1950s and '60s.

Now, more than 30 years after he graduated from Monterey High School and more than 15 years after the end of his playing career, Edwards returns to Northern California in the cauldron of the NFL playoffs. His Jets meet the Raiders on Sunday in Oakland, with the winner advancing to the AFC Championship Game.

Edwards, 48, a charismatic and dogged leader in his second year as Jets coach, is the face and voice of his team. He has received widespread credit for keeping the Jets afloat this season, as it clawed back from a 2-5 start to reach the playoffs.

The roots of Edwards' rise to prominence rest here in Seaside, a middle- class, racially diverse community on the Monterey Peninsula. Look no further than his upbringing, how the life experiences of his parents shaped him, to understand his journey.

Edwards recalled one example of his father's influence. He was 7 or 8 years old when they were driving through Fort Ord, on a street with nobody else around. Bugles blared, as they always did at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

The car suddenly stopped. Herman Edwards Sr. began to get out to salute the flag (or salute to the northeast if no flag was in sight), per Army protocol. His son reacted with youthful skepticism.

** FILE **New York Jets head coach Herman Edwards watches his players during training camp at Mitchell Field in Hempstead, N.Y., Wed. Aug. 28, 2002. On some NFL teams, coaches bark and players strut. Egos clash like cymbals. A sack is cause for a dance. A touchdown is time for an autograph show. Edwards is not of that world.(AP Photo/Ed Betz) less ** FILE **New York Jets head coach Herman Edwards watches his players during training camp at Mitchell Field in Hempstead, N.Y., Wed. Aug. 28, 2002. On some NFL teams, coaches bark and players strut. Egos clash ... more Photo: ED BETZ Photo: ED BETZ Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close NFL / Jets coach overcame long odds / Edwards weathered racial prejudice in drive to the top 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

"There was no one on the road, so I said, 'No one's going to know,' " Edwards said in a phone interview this week. "And he said, 'Son, you get out of the car and you salute the flag. This is the right thing to do. You will know.' I got out of the car."

Another time, young Herman swept the backyard to earn his allowance. He puffed out his chest after what he thought was a job well done, until his father pointed to all four corners of the yard.

"He always told us to do the corners," Edwards said. "He said the details were important."

Herman Edwards Sr. met his future wife at an American base in Germany not long after the end of World War II. He was a black American soldier; she was a white German woman who had been working on the base.

They got together at a time when interracial marriages -- and Germans, for that matter -- were not exactly embraced in the United States. Martha Edwards said they had to send paperwork to Washington for permission to get married. They also signed a piece of paper acknowledging their marriage would not be legal in the South.

The challenges did not end when they moved to New Jersey in 1953, after their wedding. Martha and Herman Sr. were renting a house before they moved onto the Army base. One day, some black people across the street screamed at her to go home, saying she had no business marrying a black man.

Then, soon after they bought the house in Seaside in 1960, Martha Edwards discovered their next-door neighbors, an older couple from the South, had circulated a petition. They wanted residents to persuade the real estate agent not to sell to the Edwards family.

Martha Edwards says she never confronted the couple, never made an issue of the petition. A year or two later, the man next door praised Martha for the way she raised her children and apologized for initially having a bad opinion of the family.

Therein rests the kind of lesson that served Herman Edwards well, the kind that helps him supervise the disparate personalities and backgrounds on an NFL team.

"They taught me a lot about people, about how to communicate," Edwards said of his parents. "Don't go by what people look like or where they came from. My whole upbringing was like that."

Edwards encountered obstacles of his own during a playing career that included stops at UC Berkeley and San Diego State and a coaching career that included three seasons at San Jose State. Off the field, he once was refused admittance to a nightclub in Monterey because of the color of his skin.

On the field, his quest to become a head coach met long odds. There had been only four African American head coaches in the NFL's modern era: Art Shell, Dennis Green, Ray Rhodes and Tony Dungy, Edwards' mentor during his time as an assistant coach.

In both realms, on the field and off, Edwards quietly went about his business. He ignored the nightclub host who discovered Edwards was a pro athlete and called to invite him back. And he was undaunted by the difficulty of becoming a head coach in the NFL.

"You're looking at a guy who made it into the league as a free agent," Edwards said. "That (the paucity of black coaches) never clouded my determination. I knew if I worked hard enough, it could happen."

Herman Edwards Sr. never saw his son become a head coach. Or scoop up New York Giants quarterback Joe Pisarcik's fumble and dash to a game-winning touchdown in the "Miracle of the Meadowlands." Or play in Super Bowl XV against the Raiders. Or become a father himself (Edwards and his wife, Lia, have one son).

In March 1978, after the first of Edwards' 10 years as an NFL cornerback (nine spent with the Philadelphia Eagles), Herman Edwards Sr. told his son he was going to the store.

Martha Edwards believes her husband's diabetes caused him to faint at the wheel. His car hit a fence, and his head hit the steering wheel. Edwards, home at the time, took a call from the hospital telling him of the accident. He reached the hospital in time to hear his father urge him to take care of his mother and sister. Shortly thereafter, Herman Edwards Sr. died.

The Edwards' other child, Irvina Perez, draws a line from her father's absence to her brother's unwavering ambition.

"My dad didn't see half the things I wish he could have seen," said Perez, who is four years younger than Herman. "That's why I think Herman wants to make sure he fulfills all the dreams my dad could not see."

So when Edwards became the Jets' head coach in January 2001, he called his mom in Seaside. She still lives in the same small house on Highland Street, the house where Herman and Irvina grew up just a few miles from the ocean.

Martha Edwards cried tears of joy when she heard the news. Then, after she got off the phone, she stopped at a nearby florist on her way to the cemetery, right up the hill from her house. She often visits her husband's gravesite, but this visit was special.

"I had a very emotional conversation with him," Martha Edwards said Tuesday,

sitting in her living room. "I told him, 'Your son made it. He's a head coach.

With your help, that's what he became.' "

Football was always what Edwards wanted. As a kid, he washed dishes at the officers' club at Fort Ord. On Sundays, the dishes sometimes began to pile up, because Edwards would sneak away to check out the NFL games on television.

He told friends and family, "You'll see me play on TV one day." And he did, working his way from undrafted longshot to playing in 135 consecutive games for the Eagles.

"I was driven to do this," Edwards said. "It was my passion."

His passion still bubbles forth, sometimes quite publicly. Back on Oct. 30, three days after the Jets blew an 18-point lead against Cleveland to fall to a 2-5 record, Edwards briefly bared his soul during a routine news conference.

Asked about the possibility of his players' giving up, he flew away on an emotional tangent.

"Not on my watch, they won't do that," Edwards said angrily, his voice rising. "That's inexcusable, unthinkable. You don't get to quit. Someone told me a long time ago that ain't even an option."

He was referring to his father, of course. And the Jets heard the message. They have won eight of 10 games since then.

By now, Martha Edwards, full of vigor at age 77, has learned to share her son's passion for football. Her house includes understated but unmistakable signs of Herman's success -- the Jets sticker on the mailbox, the 1980 game ball from an Eagles-Giants game sitting atop the television, the painting of Edwards intercepting a pass intended for Jerry Rice.

She often goes to the Monterey Marriott to watch Jets games on television. Sunday she will head to Oakland to watch in person, mindful of not angering Raiders fans but still very much in her son's corner.