There’s no quit in Joe
Ferguson scrambles to overcome cancer
, buddy@rustonleader.com
01-15-2006
Fourth-and-long in a driving snow storm and a game on the line in Buffalo had never been this tough. Not even close.
Joe Ferguson had thought he had been involved in plenty of “make or break” moments during his football career, extending from those all-star days at Shreveport Woodlawn High and later at the University of Arkansas and various stops along the National Football League circuit.
But cancer?
Those bruised ribs, shoulder separations or concussions as one of the game’s best quarterbacks ever now seemed like child’s play.
A mere ripple in the water.
The proverbial mole hill among the mountains.
But The Big C?
This was like being hit by a quarterback-seeking linebacker 10 times over.
“It was the furthest thing from my mind,” Ferguson said about that day in the spring of 2005 when he was diagnosed with having Burkitt’s lymphoma, one of the most aggressive forms of cancer. “It was frightening and scary. Never did I expect anything of this nature.”
One never does.
A terrible disease of this magnitude, one that brings major emotional challenges to family, friends and loved ones, doesn’t distinguish between those who have experienced good times and fortunes in their lives from those with far less.
Cancer can strike a famous athlete or celebrity just as it can the guy who works 9-to-5 on an assembly line or goes about his job far from the public’s eye.
The number of press clippings or sound bytes don’t mean diddley when the Big C comes calling.
It is an equal opportunity terror.
And while it might be a cliche, it DOES put everything in perspective.
“Football became so small,” Ferguson said in reflecting back on those days, weeks and months when he was undergoing treatments at Houston’s internationally famous M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. “Everything became small. You’re talking here about life. Nothing in football or what I had ever faced in athletics comes close in comparing to this. No challenge has ever been greater than this one.”
But for Joe Ferguson, a tough and competitive of an athlete as you’ll ever come across, the ultimate challenge of his life made it even more daunting and necessary to walk off of the field one more time as a winner.
Defensive players and their coordinators lost many a night sleeping during a superb 17-year NFL career when “Fergy” would rattle their schemes and roll up numbers that still keep him among the top 30 all-time ranked passers in four different departments (passing attempts, No. 21 with 4,519; pass completions, No. 28 with 2,369; passing yards, No. 9 with 29,817 and passing touchdowns, tied for No. 29 with 196).
He would bring the same want-to, never-say-die and let’s-get-it-done attitude to overcoming Burkitt’s lymphoma.
Comeback Player of the Year award?
With cancer, you’re talking about a Comeback for Life.
“You don’t have any other option,” Ferguson said. “You can go around the world searching for answers, but when something like this happens, you have no other choice but to accept it as a challenge and then go about trying to overcome it.”
Wife Sandy, a veritable rock of love and support and encouragement through all of this, termed her husband’s approach similar to when he was active in the playing arena.
“A lot of it had to do with coming up with a game plan, following through on it and trying to defeat it,” she said. “Joe is such a fighter. He was going to attack this just as he did when he was playing. He wasn’t going to quit. That is not in his nature.”
And here we are, seven months removed from when Joe Ferguson was given the “green light”, a thumbs up, that he had been cleared of one of the fastest acting forms of cancer.
“June 3,” Sandy said, looking at a calendar she had marked with the date when they received the good news.
It was on April 18, 2005 when Joe went to M.D. Anderson to get “a second opinion” after having gone through a physical checkup in Fayetteville, the city where he had starred as a collegian at the University of Arkansas and where he has worked in real estate with Lindsey and Associates.
The checkup was prompted by Joe’s concern about having “little energy” and “feeling weak” when working out or going about his usual, everyday routines.
He had just completed a season as the offensive coordinator at Ruston High School, where son Trey had been the starting quarterback in his senior year.
“I’d go running or something and just didn’t have much energy and was wondering why I felt this way,” he remembered.
That “second opinion” gained from the trip to Houston and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center revealed that Joe was extremely dehydrated and that it was “mandatory” that he be placed in the hospital immediately.
No ifs, ands and buts about it.
“I thought we wouldn’t be there long, but when the tests came back, they said it was an emergency and that we had to go in immediately,” he reflected.
Thus began the long stay in Houston, where one of the most popular and successful athletes in Buffalo Bills’ history, one whose name graces the franchise’s Hall of Fame and that of the City of Buffalo, would remain for what must have seemed like eons at times.
“I got tired of the medicine, I got tired of being in bed all of the time,” he said. “I just wasn’t used to being planted in one place and not being able to do what I wanted to be doing. That wasn’t me and it made it very difficult at times.”
After undergoing eight treatments at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Joe was housed in a hotel located adjacent to the Cancer Center. There, he and Sandy stayed for 60 consecutive days before returning home.
Chuckling at her husband’s oftentimes restless nature, Sandy said: “He had to learn a lot about being patient.”
And also compassion.
“I found out there were a lot of people much worse off than me,” he said. “I was very fortunate in that, because I had been involved in athletics and remained active throughout my life, I was able to get through this better than some others. The doctors told me that there was no doubt that it helped me tremendously.”
A strong, abiding belief in the Lord and what He has in store for Joe’s game plan for life was ultra vital in this comeback story.
So many individuals kept Joe Ferguson in their daily prayers, too. They became like a 12th Man for his spirits.
From long-time friends to former teammates, many of whom either e-mailed or called on a regular basis.
Sandy, son Trey and daughter Kristen were constant pillars of encouragement and love.
There was a web site set up specifically for Joe by good friend Bob Loretelli, a high school principal in Modesto, Calif. The Bills also picked up on the project and have continued to maintain a steady contact base for any fans wishing to express their wishes and thoughts.
“Within a week and a half after it was set up,” Ferguson recalled, “we got over a thousand e-mails wishing us the best, many from all over the world.”
Some were from U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Fans in Japan e-mailed and so did countless number of Bills’ fans.
And there were phone calls from former teammates in Buffalo, from Joe DeLamielleure and Reggie McKenzie and from O.J. Simpson to J.D. Hill.
Joe was loved by his teammates because, as DeLamielleure emphasized, “he was a player’s player. All the guys knew that about him.
“He was never the real vocal or cheerleader type, but he was the guy we were all looking to for leadership,” said the eight-time All-Pro offensive guard and only native of Detroit to ever be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame (2003). “Joe was tougher on himself than anybody else.”
One other thing DeLamielleure and the other Bills liked about “Fergy” was that he was easy money.
“He did everything well, but he was really bad in booray,” he laughed. “We all hated to see him leave Buffalo because we were making so much off of him.”
But on a serious note, DeLamielleure said that it’s not surprising that his long-time good friend and former teammate has stared The Big C squarely in the eye and is beating it.
“I never knew of anything that could keep him down,” he said. “It’s so much about attitude. Joe has a beautiful wife and kids. He’s got a lot to look forward to in his life.”
There’s a photograph that Joe still has depicting him and members of the Bills’ offense celebrating O.J.’s 2,000-yard rushing season in 1973.
Save for the two players (Bobby Chandler, Jim Braxton) who have since passed away, every teammate in that photo personally called Ferguson.
“And one day, who walks in to the hospital but Conrad Dobler,” chuckled Joe about the infamous, ‘bad boy’ of the NFL during the late 1970s and early 1980s and an ex-teammate with the Bills. “He stopped by to check on us. We hadn’t seen him since we left Buffalo.”
The chemo treatments, as they do with all patients, took their toll on Joe. His hair and eye brows, they disappeared. His energy was sapped. His weight dropped nearly 40 pounds.
If that wasn’t enough, he also developed pneumonia during one stretch of recovery.
“You go through something like this and it takes a lot of perseverance and a lot of love and support from family, friends and others,” said long-time friend Bert Jones, the former Ruston High/LSU/NFL star who flew Joe and Sandy from Houston last spring so they could attend son Trey’s graduation at RHS. “It takes a little bit of it all because it’s a long, tough struggle.
“I am so proud that Joe has made it this far. He’s a good guy with a wonderful heart. He’s got a strong personality, a lot of perseverance and a lot of faith. I don’t think there’s any question that, having been the competitor he was as an athlete, has helped tremendously in facing this challenge.”
Echoes brother-in-law Joe Raymond Peace, a former head coach and player at Louisiana Tech:
“Just his competitive nature and wanting to always win the battle has definitely helped. This took a lot out of him. Honestly, there were times when I wasn’t sure if he could get through it. I wasn’t sure if he could beat the chemo. It’s been a battle and a fight all the way. He had no energy whatsoever at times. He lost a lot of weight. But when he came back from it, he began working out a little and building his body back up.”
Ruston High head coach Billy Laird, who hired Ferguson on as offensive coordinator immediately after getting the Bearcats’ job two years ago, said that “it doesn’t surprise me that he’s beaten it.
“Not with the attitude he has. There’s no doubt that all of those treatments have been very tough on him and weakened him, but it’s going to be a matter of time before he gets back to where he was. No way Joe is going to let it whip him.”
On a regular basis now, Ferguson exercises. He’ll walk around the Ruston High School track and up the steps, not all that far away from those places on the practice or regular fields at James Stadium where he once helped aspiring quarterbacks become better at their crafts.
“He was a great coach and of tremendous help to me,” said Ben Alsup, who was ranked No. 1 in passing among northeast Louisiana players as a junior at Ruston High this past season. “It really bothered me when I first learned about what had happened to him. It broke my heart. I was really down about it.
“I just appreciate what coach Ferguson has meant to me. He taught me the values of hard work. When he was here with the quarterbacks, we were always the first one on the field and the last to leave.”
That’s vintage Joe Ferguson, who has always been renowned for his bare knuckles’ work ethics.
“When he was at Woodlawn, Joe was always the first one to come out on the field and the last to leave,” said A.L. Williams, the former head coach for the Knights and later at Northwestern State and Louisiana Tech.
“He is the hardest worker I ever coached. If he felt like he hadn’t had a good day throwing, either in a game or practice, you were going to see him the next day working out.
“Because of that kind of attitude, I never had any reservations that Joe could whip this thing. He’s such a fighter and competitor. No question, he could beat it. But I also knew that he had never been through a fight like this one before in his life. This would be the toughest one he had ever faced.”
With the cancer cleared up, intermittent checkups at M.D. Anderson are now on the new year’s schedule for Joe.
“We’ll go back March 1 and have one every three months,” he said. “If all goes well after a year, then we would go back every six months.”
Meanwhile, Joe Ferguson continues his work in real estate for Lindsey and Associates, enjoys more quality time with his family and—of course, maintains his clock-like workout routines with walks up stadium steps and around the track and weight lifting exercises.
“Oh, it’s definitely changed me,” he said of the battle against cancer. “I’m much more relaxed now. Things that I used to get stressed out about or worry over, that’s changed. It really makes you stop and think and appreciate things a lot more.”
And as he made another walk around the Ruston High track, he looked off in the distance and observed:
“The trees, they seem a lot greener now.”
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