EDITOR'S NOTE: This profile on Dick Butkus was originally published on NFL.com on April 27, 2015. The original file is no longer accessible; in light of Butkus' death, we are re-publishing a version of it today.
Even during the short walks to grammar school from Dick Butkus' four-room house on the South Side of Chicago, he wanted to play football. His best friend since kindergarten registration -- then and now -- was already much smaller than Butkus, though, so Rick Bertetto and Butkus played on their knees, with a wadded-up piece of paper serving as the ball, drawing the ire of their parents because their pants were stained with grass and dirt every day.
"There was no doubt when we played in the park he was always the best football player," Bertetto said. "He worked at it. That's all his life was about. He bought a motor scooter from me and it stopped running. In a way, that's what he wanted. He built a leather harness and he would pull me on it, to make stronger legs. I don't know anybody in my life that was so sure of what he wanted from a young age."
On April 30, the NFL draft will alight on Chicago, more than 51 years after it was last held there. It will import from New York a red carpet and klieg lights and college players who -- unfathomably to Butkus -- may have helped each other prepare for the draft.
But the personality of football in Chicago is cloaked in none of the glitz that will shimmer at the Auditorium Theatre at Roosevelt University. It is distilled, still, in the man whose block in the working-class neighborhood of Roseland -- about 15 miles south of the venue -- abutted Fernwood Park, where all the kids played football and basketball and baseball.
Butkus, at 72, remains for football fans the personification of the snarling Bears middle linebacker. Fifty years after he was drafted and 42 years after his final season -- and despite a feud with the team that turned some fans (at least temporarily) against him -- it remains nearly impossible for Butkus to eat an undisturbed meal when he is in town, so he wears a hat and takes a seat at his table facing a wall. Ron Rivera, now the head coach of the Carolina Panthers, played for the Bears more than a decade after Butkus retired -- and he remembers walking into local sports bars and still seeing Butkus memorabilia everywhere.
But Butkus' renown in his hometown stretches much further back than 1965, when he joined the Bears. He is a man fully of Chicago, the youngest of nine children raised by an electrician father, Don, who had emigrated from Lithuania and spoke little because he was uncomfortable with his English, and a mother, Emma, who worked in a laundry. There were chickens in the front yard and there was one small bedroom shared by five boys. Butkus was so shy then that he walked with his head down; Bertetto was dubbed "Butkus' mouthpiece." But he grew up to deliver the teeth-rattling tackles that provided the look, feel and sound -- the ferocious attitude -- that resonate even today as hallmarks of the Monsters of the Midway.
"I always just looked up to my brothers and watched them play at the park at the end of the block," Butkus said. "It seemed like that's what everybody was doing. Having my older brothers talk about work ethic. My father worked, putting electric in the railroad, and he would do side electric jobs for people. ... I started out working as a furniture mover when I was 15. That's one of the toughest jobs -- I worked a lot with my older brothers. I couldn't get away with cutting corners. Just the general neighborhood; everybody had that work ethic."
Butkus' parents didn't understand sports, and his father couldn't understand why anyone got paid to play them. But from an early age, sports occupied a central role for Butkus. He often played on teams with older boys because those were the ones his brothers were on. He swam and played water polo at an indoor pool just a few blocks away. Bertetto said he and Butkus got in trouble for cutting out of grammar school so they could watch football games at nearby Fenger High School, a sports powerhouse, and for breaking into the school gym to play basketball at night.
One early job had Butkus scraping pans at a bakery. He would bring home bags of day-old rolls -- important in such a big family. But by the time Butkus was 10 or 11, he already was pushing a car up and down the street to build up his legs, said his older brother, Ron, whose own football career with the Chicago Cardinals was cut short by a knee injury.
By the time Butkus was in high school at Chicago Vocational, his talent was obvious to everyone, and his coach insisted that he had to start speaking, particularly in front of the team. Bertetto remembers Butkus concentrating on learning to speak with proper grammar (much later, he would study Shakespeare). He played fullback and linebacker then -- and even kicked extra points -- dominating the opposition at Gately Stadium.
"I started out working as a furniture mover when I was 15. That's one of the toughest jobs -- I worked a lot with my older brothers. I couldn't get away with cutting corners." -- Dick Butkus
Butkus chose to go to the University of Illinois in part because it took care of married couples, and Butkus was already dating Helen, who would become his wife. In 1963 and 1964, he was an All-American, and in 1964, he finished third in Heisman Trophy voting.
"Even at Illinois, he didn't speak well," Bertetto said. "At one point, they had beaten Purdue, and the coaches had told Dick he had to speak. They get him on a platform, and he was just being himself. He referred to 'we kicked their ass' -- not what the president of the university was looking for. Those types of things always appealed to Chicago people, though. His mannerisms, his ethnic background, his work ethic; he was a natural byproduct of Chicago. People always identified with that. He didn't play any games."
When he did play the games that mattered, Butkus was, of course, iconic, crafting an image as the meanest, most ruthless player in the league. He was selected in the first round of the 1965 draft by the Bears, one of Chicago's three first-round picks that year (Gale Sayers was taken one pick later). He was also drafted by the Denver Broncos, then of the American Football League, but Butkus signed with the Bears, gave his signing-bonus money to his parents and moved to a house on the South Side, only a few miles and just a step up from where he grew up.
Butkus' parents never missed a game.
"My mother, when he played for the Bears, we had to get there at 10:30 for a 1 p.m. game," Ron Butkus said. "We'd be the only ones sitting in the stadium. We would bring bagels and sandwiches. We used to hate to go, because she had to get there three hours early. One week, I had to do it. Then Don did it. Then Dave did it."
Butkus was not the first great Bears middle linebacker, just the greatest. Bill George preceded Butkus, who recalled that when he was first drafted, all he heard about was George. But Bob Wetoska, an offensive lineman for the Bears then, also remembers George's reaction to Butkus.
"He said, 'As soon as I saw Dick Butkus walk on the field, I knew my time with the Bears was up,' " Wetoska said. "The guy was a vicious competitor. The guys hated to practice against him. He always had a knee problem, and when he came to the Bears, (coach George) Halas would never let him scrimmage. I thank God for that. He probably would have killed everybody."
Instead, Butkus became a first-ballot Hall of Famer and a fierce competitor in everything. Bertetto said that when Butkus was with the Bears, he kept a pool table in the basement at home. One day, when Bertetto beat him and told Butkus he had to pay up, Butkus grabbed a piggy bank in anger and threw it on the table. Even today, when they play golf, Butkus will make a comment just as Bertetto is about to swing, trying to gain an edge.
Butkus' bad knees forced him to retire after nine seasons, and a subsequent feud with the Bears over his contract caused a rift with fans. The standoff was ultimately settled, however, and Butkus is back in the Bears' fold. From his home in Malibu, California, he remains deeply loyal and connected to his roots. He watches the Bears and the University of Illinois (he has tried over the years to convince players to go to Illinois, and he's frustrated when others say the school is located in a cornfield), and he said he wishes he could watch his high school play on television, too. He recalls the time he confronted Halas, telling him that he didn't think Halas wanted to win anymore. When Halas stood up, Butkus thought "Papa Bear" was going to take a swing at him.
The man who was so reticent growing up that he needed a spokesman is now blunt about his feelings on the Bears and players in general. He is particularly incredulous that the young players he sees at awards banquets exchange phone numbers so that they can train together for the NFL Scouting Combine.
But not surprisingly, it is the Bears who still churn Butkus the most. He talks to current chairman George McCaskey and Bears president Ted Phillips occasionally, including during the most recent coach-hiring cycle, when Butkus heard they were considering interviewing a coordinator candidate that Butkus didn't like. With characteristic bluntness, he told McCaskey that he hoped Chicago didn't hire that coach because when he got fired after just one season, that coach would still be receiving checks from two other teams.
"I get disgusted, like a lot of people," Butkus said of the Bears. "They let it slip away when they let (former coach) George Allen go. Tradition-wise, the Bears always had adequate middle linebackers to carry on that tradition of being a rough-and-tumble team. We never won s---, but I talked to guys at the Pro Bowl, a lot of opposing coaches, and we had their respect. People want the Bears to be the Monsters of the Midway. I don't know if God can get the Bears to get back to the Monsters of the Midway if you don't change the players' attitude. This year was nowhere close to it."
Butkus still keeps track of the winners of the Butkus Award -- given to the best college linebacker in America -- like the Carolina Panthers' Luke Kuechly. But the player Butkus most enjoys of the current crop -- a fact that will surely prompt thoughts of a cross-generational dream matchup -- is Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch.
"He runs like he's into it," Butkus said. "I admire that."
Butkus moved to Malibu to pursue his post-retirement acting career -- even his friends still marvel at the incongruity of Butkus in Hollywood's play area -- but his twin passions now are two projects rooted firmly in football. "I Play Clean" is a campaign to raise awareness of and bring an end to the use of steroids by high school athletes. And the Dick Butkus Center for Cardiovascular Wellness, a California-based organization with a screening program designed to identify those at risk of heart disease and cardiac death, is largely the outgrowth of Butkus' own experience nearly 14 years ago, when he received a heart scan in exchange for recording an advertisement. The scan showed blockages, and two days later, Butkus had bypass surgery. He was told by the surgeon that he "had one foot on a banana peel and one in the grave. Thirty days and it could have been over." Butkus is in a constant search for support from teams and the NFL for the programs, and he wants to reach retired players who need the scans.
Butkus returns to Chicago often for visits, and he used to occasionally contemplate having another home there. When he and Bertetto go out to eat, Butkus hands Bertetto cash to give to the waiters and cooks, with the instruction, "Go take care of the working people." He incessantly asks cab drivers how they are doing. He is a strong union backer.
Butkus remains uncomfortable with the celebrity that still surrounds him. Ron Butkus became a truck driver, and he was shocked when he realized people in Mississippi and Alabama knew of his brother, too. Bertetto said Butkus loved it most when the two of them had motor homes -- because it allowed him to get away from people.
"To this day, he can't get over that people still think he's something," Bertetto said. "He says, 'For chrissakes, I'm an old sucker. When are they going to give up?' "
A look at the calendar of events in Chicago surrounding the draft makes it clear Butkus is still very much something. There are two "I Play Clean" events -- including one at Halas Hall -- that week, and Butkus will present the Sports Legacy Award to a coach or volunteer who has made an impact in youth sports.
But, of course, the centerpiece of the weekend will be the draft. The Bears, desperate for help all across the defense, select seventh in the first round. Though this will be the 50th draft since Chicago drafted Butkus, whoever lines up on defense for the team next season will still be playing in the long shadow Butkus continues to cast on the Bears. The meanest man in football might also lend the most enduring identity.
"Let's say, one of them," Butkus said, amending that designation. "I guess I remind them of the way the Bears used to be. Surely there were other players that could be said about. The more exposure you get, the more you're on the tip of everybody's tongue. After I finished, I broadcast games, the exposure from commercials, people can remember you. If I was dead and gone, it wouldn't be the same."
