npr | It's rare that a man makes it through life without being told, at
least once, "Be a man." To Joe Ehrmann, a former NFL defensive lineman
and now a pastor, those are the three scariest words that a boy can
hear.
Ehrmann — who played with the Baltimore Colts for much of
the 1970s and was a lineman at Syracuse University before that —
confronted many models of masculinity in his life. But, as with many
boys, his first instructor on manhood was his father, who was an amateur
boxer.
Ehrmann says of his father: "I think his definition, which was very
old in this country, was: Men don't need. Men don't want. Men don't
touch. Men don't feel. If you're going to be a man in this world, you
better learn how to dominate and control people and circumstances."
On
the football field, those lessons served Ehrmann well. But, as he tells
NPR's Audie Cornish, it was not the same case in the pediatric oncology
ward. In 1978, Ehrmann's teenage brother was diagnosed with cancer.
However tough Joe was on the field, he did not feel equipped to help his
brother or himself.
