In my mom’s mind, the burden was hers: “How can I make the subject more interesting and keep their attention?”
My mom wasn’t afraid to go against the grain of how things were usually taught if she could come up with a better way to reach and motivate her students. And when she did go against the grain, she always practiced it on us Dungy kids the night before. In football terms, we were her “scout team.”
My mom ultimately did find a way to reach many of her students. I have received countless cards, letters, and calls from an entire generation who took classes from Mrs. Dungy during her twenty years of teaching, starting in 1966.
I received a letter one day from a man in Detroit:
I took public speaking from your mother at Jackson High in 1979. I have gone on to a career in business, and my ability to get up in front of groups can be traced back to that tenth-grade class.
I think the only downside my mom found to teaching at Jackson High—and it was my fault, I guess—is that when I played football and basketball at rival Parkside High, she had to listen to her students talk about how they were going to shut her son down during any given game.
My mom always insisted on teaching at least one elective English or Public Speaking class. She believed that many of the kids in Jackson decided far too early in life to finish high school and then immediately get a job at the glassworks, the metal shop, or the prison. My mom was concerned—almost fanatical—about making sure her students saw the many different opportunities the world held before deciding to end their education. She used Shakespeare and anything else at her disposal to do it.
One student who took an elective from my mom has called me many times through the years. He had spent his entire childhood in the special-education track of the Jackson schools. Although in special ed, he was able to take public speaking as an elective. Somehow, early in the semester, my mom realized that this student had been mislabeled a “special-ed kid.” My mom did not rest until she got his counselor to place him in regular classes. Once he was reassigned, this student began to blossom, and eventually he went on to attend and graduate from Western Michigan University. He gives my mom complete credit for the career he has today.
A life changed.
Our home was a small, green two-story house with wood siding and a dirt backyard. Any grass bold enough to try to come up would be instantly trampled by all the neighborhood kids—and my mom—playing whatever game was in season.
I was in seventh grade before I beat my mom in a footrace. She and I often raced the sixty or seventy yards around the house. But until that memorable day in junior high, I had never once beaten her.
CleoMae Dungy was tall, athletic, energetic, and quick to laugh. But even as I remember that, my mind also sees her late in life, shrunken and withered, in a wheelchair from years of battling the diabetes that ultimately took her life in 2002.
My mom was born in Amherstburg, Ontario, and she played on Canadian junior basketball teams as a young girl. She carried the title of Most Athletic Dungy throughout her life. Between her love of basketball and serving as adviser to the cheerleading squad at Jackson High, she made sure we Dungy kids were exposed to all kinds of sports. All four of us—Sherrie, the oldest; the younger twins, Linden and Lauren; and I—always looked forward to Tuesdays and Fridays. On those afternoons, we rode on the activity bus to wherever Jackson High was playing, provided we’d been good that week and had completed our schoolwork.
In contrast, my father was more interested in individual sports. I think he was motivated by the desire to continually measure his progress—and by the idea that he could improve by an act of will. As a boy, my dad participated in boxing and track and field; throughout his adulthood, he still followed both regularly. Team sports, from his perspective, existed primarily for the life lessons they could teach his children.
* * *
My dad was usually a quiet, thoughtful man. A scientist at heart and by training, Wilbur Dungy loved to be outside, enjoying the scenery. Fishing allowed him time to contemplate, to listen, and to marvel at God’s creation. My dad used fishing to teach his children to appreciate the everyday wonders of the natural world God created—the sandy shoreline, the dark pine forests, the shimmering water, and the abundant wildlife. The lessons were always memorable, whether we caught a lot of fish or not.
Although we fished countless times together throughout our lives, one particular day stands out in my mind. It was a summer day in 1965. Summers in Michigan are beautiful, with comfortable temperatures and clear, blue skies. I was nine years old, and my brother was five. My dad had taken us fishing at one of the many small lakes around Jackson. On that day, my dad was teaching my brother and me how to cast. We were both working on it, mostly in silence, until my dad’s voice finally broke a period of stillness.
“Hey, Linden, don’t move for a minute, please.” I looked back and watched my dad move his hand toward his face. Calm and deliberate, he continued to speak.
“Now, Linden, always make sure that you know not only where your pole is while you’re starting to cast”—at this point, I realized my dad was working my brother’s hook out of his own ear—“but also make certain that you know where everyone else is around you.”
I learned something about proper casting that day, but I also learned something about patience. Years later, when I got hooked myself, in my hand, I realized how much it hurts. Remembering my dad’s patience that day when Linden’s hook was caught in his ear, I finally understood the importance of staying calm and communicating clearly.
My father taught physiology at Jackson Community College. Both he and my mom had advanced degrees from Michigan State: she an MA in English and he a PhD in physiology. But you’d have been hard-pressed to know that my dad was Dr. Wilbur Dungy. He always introduced himself as Wil, and that was how everyone knew him. In fact, after he had known my dad for eight years, my friend Lovie Smith, now the head coach of the Chicago Bears, ran across something that referred to my dad as “Dr. Dungy.”
“Tony, is this right? I’ve talked with your father countless times over the years and spent many a practice with him. He’s a doctor?”
My dad didn’t have the financial means to attend the University of Michigan coming out of high school, so he started at Jackson Community College, which gave him the experience of learning in a college setting. He then went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. After earning his undergraduate degree, he joined the Army Air Corps. Then, after returning and teaching for a year at a segregated high school in Alexandria, Virginia, my dad went back to Jackson Community College, where he became one of the first African American professors in the state community college system. While working on his PhD at Michigan State, my dad continued to teach one class a week at JCC.
Although my dad always considered the University of Michigan his alma mater, those three years at Michigan State—while my mom and dad earned their advanced degrees—had a dramatic impact on me. We were there from 1963 to 1966, and while I vividly remember looking at microscope slides with my dad, I remember being just as enthralled by Duffy Daugherty’s Spartan football teams. Those Michigan State teams ultimately altered the trajectory of my life in an unexpected way.
As for the slides, my dad earned his doctorate by studying the effects of cigarette smoking on laboratory rats. He never did tell me how he got the rats to smoke all those cigarettes, but that wasn’t the point. I saw many slides of normal rat hearts and lungs, and I also saw stunning slides of rat hearts and lungs that had been exposed to and damaged by cigarette smoke. From the third grade on, I’ve never had any desire to experiment with any of that stuff—a valuable side benefit of my dad’s education. It also taught me something I have put to use as a coach: if I want my players to remember something, one picture isn’t worth a thousand words—it’s better.
We moved back to Jackson in 1966 after my dad’s graduation, and he resumed teaching full-time. His goal was to provide students who needed to start at JCC the
same eye-opening college experience he had enjoyed. Like my mom, he focused on squeezing every bit of potential from his students, especially those who were struggling. My mom and dad were a perfectly matched set.
My father often said, “If you’re going to be a good teacher, you can’t just teach the A students. A good teacher is one who helps everybody earn an A.” Note that he didn’t say he would give anybody an A but that he would help his students earn it. There’s an important difference.
I remind my assistant coaches of that approach every so often. My dad believed you can’t teach only one way with only one syllabus, because while some students might get it, others won’t. Students have different ways of learning and connecting, and it’s the teacher’s job to make sure they are all doing so. In the same way, coaches must help players earn an A—that is, learn the material we’re presenting—by communicating in a way that makes sense for each individual player. That’s one reason I’ve always hired coaches who value teaching and communication.
My dad was always fascinated by how and why things worked, but at the end of the day, he was most concerned with character. He believed that most of life was an object lesson, and he always found ways to pass those lessons on to his kids.
One day I was complaining to him about the unfairness of life. I forget the situation, but I know he agreed that I had been wronged. His response has stayed with me for many years, even though it took me a while to completely figure it out.
“When I was in the service,” he said, “they didn’t want to teach us how to fly planes, so we taught ourselves to fly.”
We. Blacks. African Americans.
Tuskegee is located about forty miles east of Montgomery, in the heart of Alabama. Founded by General Thomas Simpson Woodward in 1833, the town was allegedly named for a nearby Native American tribe, the Taskigis. Through the years, it has been best known for Tuskegee University, which dates back to 1881, and the school’s first president, Booker T. Washington.
In 1940, the United States Army Air Corps selected Tuskegee as the training ground for its fledgling program to train black pilots, who up to that point had been barred from flying in the military. This was the Tuskegee Experiment. Until 1946, when blacks were fully integrated into military training, Tuskegee trained roughly a thousand pilots, none of whom were shot down during World War II bombing runs in Europe. Tuskegee also trained all the support personnel that kept those planes operational throughout the war.
My father was part of the Tuskegee Experiment.
I never knew this until my dad’s funeral service in 2004, when someone shared the story during one of the eulogies. Why hadn’t he told me about Tuskegee? Maybe it’s because he believed the greater point was the lesson. What’s important is not the accolades and memories of success but the way you respond when opportunities are denied.
Because I was just a kid, I didn’t think to ask for more details when he said, “We taught ourselves to fly.” It sounded easy. The lesson, which I did not understand clearly until much later, was that you shouldn’t allow external issues to be a hindrance, whether those issues are based on race or any other factor. Things will go wrong at times. You can’t always control circumstances. However, you can always control your attitude, approach, and response. Your options are to complain or to look ahead and figure out how to make the situation better.
I use what I learned from that lesson daily—and almost minute by minute on game day.
* * *
My siblings and I learned about the unfairness of life in the Dungy household on a regular basis—or so it seemed to us at the time. My parents believed in treating us all as the individuals we were, which didn’t fully make sense to me until I became a parent myself.
I often got in trouble for getting home late. I might have a curfew of eight o’clock, and if I stayed out playing basketball until nine or nine-thirty, my father would reprimand me. But at least he always knew where I was. Not being where you said you would be at the time you said you would be there—that was a big deal in our house, as was not doing what you said you would do. I learned that pretty early. If you said you were going to do something, you’d better do it.
Of course, our parents gave us the latitude to learn those lessons. They trusted us in a lot of ways that parents aren’t able to today. When my parents were getting their advanced degrees at Michigan State in East Lansing, our family lived in the married-student housing units on campus. My parents usually allowed me to play basketball with local high school kids or even Michigan State students, even though I was still in elementary school. They didn’t need to be there—it was a different era.
Initially, I could play at the elementary school until the streetlights came on. Later, they’d let me play with some of the high school kids at MSU’s intramural building even after dark. My sister Sherrie often got upset because I usually stayed later than I was supposed to and didn’t seem to get in as much trouble as my siblings did for the same infraction.
The problem I faced—which my dad understood—was that because I was so little, I rarely got picked for a team. The winning team stayed on the court to face the challengers, comprised of the guy whose turn it was to be captain (he had “next”) plus four guys he picked. If my team lost, I’d have to wait until my “next” came up and it was my turn to pick a team. Those were usually the times I came home an hour late, and my dad never seemed to get too mad.
After we moved back to Jackson, where I attended junior high and high school, I began playing ball with guys who could drive. We’d drive to Ann Arbor or East Lansing (both about a half hour away) to play at the intramural buildings at the University of Michigan and Michigan State. During that time, I formed a lot of friendships with guys I would later play against in high school. When I got old enough to drive, I’d go anywhere I could find an open court and a game.
It was during this time that I became friends with Bob Elliott from Ann Arbor, who later played center for the University of Arizona and the New Jersey Nets. He’d call the house with a cryptic message—“They’re playing in Romulus (Michigan, home of Detroit Metro Airport, an hour from Jackson)” or “Meet me at the MSU IM (the Michigan State intramural building)”—and I’d tell my mom I was going to play as I headed out the door. She always gave her blessing. She never thought I’d get into trouble; as the cheerleading adviser, she watched all the high school basketball games, so she knew most of the guys I was playing with.
In the summer before our senior year, Bob put a team together, and we played in the high school division of the summer league—the most competitive of its kind—at St. Cecilia Catholic Church in Detroit. A different division, open to players at every level, including the NBA, played later on. Those of us playing in the earlier games stayed to watch the likes of Dave Bing (who played in the NBA for twelve years), George Gervin, and others. Gervin was at Eastern Michigan at the time, and while most teams were pretty loaded with all-star lineups, he had surrounded himself with his high school buddies. But he carried them to wins most nights by scoring fifty or sixty points himself. When you’re the “Iceman” and go on to be third all-time in NBA season scoring titles, you can surround yourself with just about anyone, I suppose, and still win.
Bob Elliott and I have remained great friends ever since those days of barnstorming any and every game we could find. But in today’s world, I can’t picture allowing my high school son, Eric, to drive from our home in Indianapolis to Lafayette or Bloomington by himself. I don’t think he’d even ask. Times were different then, which was good for a gym rat like me.
As a kid, I wasn’t too much of a discipline problem, though I did end up sitting on the couch, not allowed to go out and play, more often than I would have liked. For me, that was much worse than a spanking. Usually my mom and dad were calm and gave us the whys and hows of the situation before they took away privileges.
All four Dungy kids were disciplined in different ways. My folks knew that certain things would change my behavior but not L
inden’s. So even though I’d moan about it, they did whatever they thought would work best with each child. My parents always looked at every situation individually, regardless of what seemed fair to us. That’s something that took me a while to appreciate, but learning to view each situation by itself has helped me in coaching. I know that I can have blanket rules, but blanket rules don’t always fit every individual. I need to treat everybody fairly, but fair doesn’t always mean equal.
I apply that lesson quite frequently with players. Some guys can handle more responsibility, while some aren’t ready. A rookie might simply get an explanation from me, while a veteran making the same mistake might get “torched.” The veteran should know better, while the rookie is just learning.
To whom much is given, much is required—whether it’s privileges, responsibilities, or material items. And if God has given you a lot of ability, I believe you should be held to a higher level of expectation.
It’s hard to overestimate the importance of the lessons my parents taught me—lessons that have molded and shaped me. The necessity of persistence, the value of education, the fun of athletics, and the importance of living up to your potential. However, there is one gift they bestowed that I would place above all the others: faith.
My grandfather on my dad’s side was a minister who occasionally taught courses at Detroit Bible College. Two of my father’s brothers became ministers as well.
As a kid, I understood that Sundays meant good eating. When I was three, my grandparents moved from Jackson to a two-story home in Detroit. Their church of about one hundred and fifty met on the first floor, while my grandparents lived above the church on the second floor. Each Sunday, about halfway through the service, we could smell the dinner that my grandmother was cooking upstairs. We’d wait for the service to end and then slip up the side entrance to their rooms for Sunday dinner. My grandmother always greeted us with excuses ready: “I couldn’t find my best knife” or “I couldn’t find my shortening, so I used something else” or “This rhubarb pie has been in the freezer for two weeks, but we’ll try it.” Regardless of the excuses, Sunday dinner was always good.