Monday, February 23, 1998

Hometown friends say they always knew new Cowboys coach was on the way up

By BILL NICHOLS / The Dallas Morning News

AMERICUS, Ga. - When they realized their son had vanished, the Gailey family began a frantic search of their rural neighborhood.

They noticed a crowd gathered by the water tower across Lee Street, where neighbors pointed fingers at the silhouette about one-third of the way up.

There stood Chan Gailey, 5 years old and looking skyward.

Forty-one years later, few people in this cotton and peanut farming town of 18,000 are shocked by Gailey's ascent.

While his recent hiring as Cowboys head coach surprised many around the NFL, townsfolk here learned early that if Chan Gailey had a destination, he made sure he arrived.

"He got far enough up that water tower that he created a lot of excitement for a small town," said Virginia Davis, who lived next door to the Gaileys at the time. "Everybody in Americus thinks the world of Chan. There wasn't anything he couldn't do."

Thus, people in Americus greeted Gailey's rise to one of sport's most scrutinized jobs with similar exuberance they give the nine-mile drive down Highway 27 to the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site in Plains.

The way Americus sees it, and the way many who came in contact with Gailey along his journey see it, this was bound to happen.

Gailey always seemed to be going places he was not supposed to be, with the deliberate determination to get there himself.

Before he bounced around the coaching circuit to become one of the NFL's most respected offensive coordinators at Pittsburgh, Gailey paddled to the middle of the lake in a fishing boat as a toddler. He made his way back, as his mother and father shouted instructions from the shore.

In ballroom dance competition at Americus High, Gailey not only stepped a good waltz, but he led his partner around the floor strategically.

"He made sure he was under the noses of the judges the whole time," said Gladys Crabb, his senior English teacher. "He knew where to go to win."

Soon after he got his driver's license, Gailey asked his parents if he could drive the car to a golf tournament over the weekend.

While he navigated the two-lane road in South Georgia late that night, the car broke down. The teenager hitched a ride on a logging truck, which dropped him off in Arlington, Ga., about 45 miles from home.

It turned out Arlington had few accommodations to offer, so Gailey threw his golf bag over his shoulder and sauntered into the police station.

"That town was about as big as this room," Gailey recalled from the Cowboys' complex in Valley Ranch. "The only hotel looked like the Bates Motel in 'Psycho', and they said it was either that or spend the night in jail. I said I'd stay in the jail."

Gailey's survival instincts formed from his activities in athletics and the Boy Scouts, family and friends said. He was always doing something and seemed prepared for anything.

They recalled a little boy with bright red hair and a large cowlick who dragged his baseball bat along wherever he went.

Before he could play organized football, he would wear his uniform, including shoulder pads, to the Friday night games.

"Just in case the coach needed him," said his mother, Helen Maddox.

At 15, he was playing golf when he noticed a boy, who was working at the course, crumpled in the creekbed, bleeding from a rattlesnake bite.

Gailey, an Eagle Scout, shed his shirt and tied it tightly around the boy's arm, scrambled to find a cart, then helped get him to the hospital.

"When he got home, he apologized for having blood on his shirt," Mrs. Maddox said.

Tom Gailey, Chan Gailey's father, served as a high school coach for eight years. He moved the family to Americus from Gainesville, Ga., when Chan was 5.

Tom Gailey was the dean of students at South Georgia Technical Institute before he started a furniture manufacturing business. He also chaired the city's board of education, served on the city council for 10 years and was mayor from 1990-93.

Gailey's parents divorced 20 years ago, and both remarried.

"When Tom and I told Chan we were getting married, he said, 'I guess that's all right, but she hasn't been through a football season yet,' " Gwen Gailey said.

Gailey reflected his father in that he was fiercely competitive in everything he did, friends and relatives say. His curiosity and analytical personality stemmed from his mother, who worked for 30 years as an elementary school teacher and librarian.

As a coach's son, he played football, baseball, basketball and golf with passion, lettering in those sports at Americus High. He also was active in the Baptist church.

Gailey was an overachieving quarterback who succeeded more on smarts and aggressiveness than talent. He had a strange affinity for the intricacies of football, even at an early age.

When Americus High coach Jimmy Hightower handed out the strategy sheets, many players gave a quick glance and folded them in their laps. Gailey buried his nose in the playbook.

"They'd give him a breakout sheet on the other team, and he wouldn't even look up," said Bill Ewing, the center on Gailey's high school team who now works for the Sumter County (Ga.) School District. "He was a student of the game."

Asked if Gailey was a great player, Ewing drew a long pause, waited for the students he was monitoring to get on the bus, then said:

"I thought he was ...good. Chan didn't have the arm to be a dropback passer, but he'd scrap you to the end. And his knowledge of the game, well, he was just so intense."

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AP-WS-02-17-98 2009EST BC-FBN-Weekend Topic: Going Gailey,Adv21-22,1st Add,1100 For release weekend editions Feb. 21-22 and thereafter AMERICUS, Ga. : just so intense."

Gailey was fascinated by drawing up plays and scouting opponents. He became Hightower's shadow, hanging on each word the coach said and always asking questions.

"He was the first in the locker room and the last to leave," Hightower said. "And he always had his head in the game. I never saw him flustered. He wanted to know why we ran this particular play against this particular defense. I could have coached 50 years if they'd all been like him."

Whether he was doing math homework, a school project, or getting ready for Friday night's game, Gailey made sure he was prepared. He made good grades, but was not an "A" student.

"He persevered," said Mrs. Crabb, his English teacher. "Anything he did, he made sure he did it well. Chan would go that extra mile. He didn't try to do anything halfway."

Gailey left Americus for the University of Florida hoping to make his mark in football, although the impressions his father and Hightower made kept coaching in the back of his mind.

Recruited as an option quarterback, Gailey never starred at Florida, as the Gators switched from the option to more of a dropback passing attack.

To remain a contributor, Gailey became the deep snapper and covered punts, in addition to playing backup quarterback.

In March 1973, he married his childhood sweetheart, Laurie Johansen, who lived down the street from the Gaileys and whose father worked with Tom Gailey in the furniture business.

For their honeymoon, they drove from Gainesville to Orlando to see Disney World.

The two seemed perfectly suited. She played basketball in high school, and the couple would attend each other's games, then analyze the contests afterward.

Laurie was as competitive as Chan, their parents said.

"They'd jaw back and forth about strategy," Peter Johansen said. "Sports brought them together."

Even after Gailey became a successful coach in the NFL, she would often question her husband's play calling. She still does.

"What were ya'll DOING ?" she would ask in the car on the way home.

They stayed at Florida after graduation because Gailey landed a job as a graduate assistant with the Gators.

Former assistant coaches who worked with Gailey said he was not consumed with becoming a big-time coach. He just wanted to be a coach and would go wherever the profession led him.

He worked in Florida for two years, then was hired as the secondary coach at Troy State in Troy, Ala.

Although he stayed only two seasons at Troy State, that job proved the impetus for Gailey's career.

"I think all of us had lofty goals," said former Troy State assistant Rick Rhoades. "But I think he had some patience. He did a good job of living in the present. And that's important in our business. He really stressed teamwork. We worked hard but had fun, and everybody felt they were in it together."

After he'd worked four years at Air Force as secondary coach and defensive coordinator, Troy State lured him back as head coach. His team won the Division II national title two years later.

He suddenly was a hot property. And it wasn't just his football expertise that led to his going to the Denver Broncos as an assistant, the World League of American Football's Birmingham Fire as a head coach, then to the Pittsburgh Steelers, where he coached receivers for two years before becoming offensive coordinator.

"Chan was all about integrity," said former Troy State athletic director Robert Earl Stewart, who hired Gailey. "His motto was, 'Do everything the right way.' Those signs hung all over the place here. Chan was such a team-oriented guy that we wondered how he would fit in with the pros, who didn't want to hear that rah-rah stuff and treated it like a business."

The values instilled in Gailey from growing up in Americus stayed with him on all his stops, friends and relatives said.

He taught Sunday school classes. He took an active role in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. At Troy State, pastor Ed Walters of the First Baptist Church walked the sidelines with Gailey on Saturdays.

On the long bus ride to Troy after a game in Mississippi, freshman quarterback Mike Turk awoke around 2 a.m. to find a light on at the front of the bus.

"Coach was up there reading the Bible," Turk said. "I said, 'Coach, what are you doing?' He said, 'I'm getting ready for my Sunday school session tomorrow.' "

Although strict, Gailey built strong relationships with his players because he treated them fairly and seemed to take special interest in them, former players and assistants said.

After Troy State won the national title, Gailey called a team meeting to tell the players they needed to decide what kind of championship rings they wanted.

Because of the school's limited athletic budget, the entire team could not get the most expensive rings. So he let the players vote if they wanted to let just the players who made the traveling squad get diamond rings, or let the entire squad get imitation brands.

The players voted to have everybody get rings.

The next day, Gailey ordered diamond rings for the seniors, who had endured two losing seasons before Gailey took over.

Gailey paid for those rings himself, Turk said.

A few days later, Gailey left for Denver to work under Dan Reeves, an Americus graduate who coached Gailey's Little League baseball team.

When he told the team he was leaving, Gailey cried. So did the players.

"He was the ultimate leader," Turk said. "The guy demanded everything you had, but he made you know it was worth the effort. He had a big impact on my life."

Turk now works as an assistant coach at Troy. In his office, he has a sign hanging over his desk that reads: "Do everything the right way."

That philosophy has guided Gailey through 12 titles on eight teams. People say he has remained virtually unchanged since his first job, stressing family and religion over his career.

Until Tom Gailey died of prostate cancer last July, Gailey called him before and after each game. They would talk for about 30 minutes, either about strategy or rehashing the game.

Tom Gailey knew strategy. He was the one who climbed up to retrieve Chan from the water tower.

"We never could figure out how he got up that high," Mrs. Maddox said.

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Distributed by The Associated Press