SEEKONK -- The term "well known" is a handy synonym for famous. The reality is, being well known is an impediment to being known well.
The public's -- and the media's -- inclination when it comes to "celebrities" isn't to know them deeply. A quick synopsis will do. Is the person a good guy or a bad guy? A tough guy or a dope? Slap a label on and leave it where folks can see it so everyone knows forevermore who they're dealing with.
But a life is lived in layers. Good guy, bad guy, tough guy, dope -- some people are all of those before breakfast.
As we've seen in the last year, there's much more to Bill Belichick than the original packing slip indicated. The labels affixed to him -- dour, humorless, surly, selfish -- have slipped. And while he's not quite ready to be in the center on Hollywood Squares, the depth of the coach formerly known as "Doom" is forcing people to shed their perceptions.
Few are more generous with their time. In an interview with Sports Illustrated a month ago, Jim Brown said that Belichick "has contributed more to (helping affect social change in urban areas) than any black athlete in modern times -- financially, intellectually, every way. He's been in the prisons with me. He's met gang members in my home; he's met gang members in Cleveland. He's put up money. He's opened up areas of education for us very quietly and very strongly. Imagine what would happen if Michael Jordan did the same thing."
And few people are capable of delivering their message as compellingly. John Downing, the vice president of sales operations for Netsource, a high-tech company Belichick visited in April, says this about Belichick, the orator:
"We have used other speakers, and Bill was universally viewed as the best person people we had ever seen," Downing professed. "His message, his clarity, his style were very impressive. He was funny and personable. This is a sharp, sharp guy, and there's a tremendous amount of depth to him. Across the board, people found him to be very bright and very deep."
On Monday afternoon, Belichick was upstairs near the dining room at Ledgemont Country Club. The stream of people asking for pictures or autographs, shaking his hand or just hoping for a moment of conversation was steady. Belichick willingly played along, smiling, signing, talking. Everyone there played in a golf tournament that raised money for the Pawtucket Police Athletic League. Belichick has been the co-chair of the event for three years.
Nearby, his longtime friend, Bill Devereaux, a classmate at Wesleyan who grew up in Providence and now lives in North Smithfield, mulled a question. What sparks Belichick's involvement? The prison visits, the P.A.L. support, the March of Dimes commitment, the new commitment he made to the Roxbury (Mass.) Comprehensive Community Health Center, the work he and his wife, Debbie, did to prop up a charity to help homeless families in Cleveland. Checks would be enough. Use of his name would be plenty. But he doesn't stop there. He's gets his hands dirty, too.
"It's based on substance," said Devereaux. "He's not a politician, that's for sure. But he has other things in his life that have substance outside of football. And he is a person of substance."
His work with Brown, whose Amer-I-Can program for social change has been active since 1988, is proof of that.
"I'd visited several prisons before I went with Jim," Belichick said. "When I was with the Giants in the mid-'80s, I went to Sing-Sing. Each of the cell blocks had their own football team, and I went and talked football with them. Really, I didn't know what to expect, but what I found was people that were very personable, very communicative, people who looked you in the eye and that you were very trusting of. It wasn't like you saw some guy who had 20 tattoos on his arm and no teeth. You feel a real trust for them in a short period of time.
"Anyway, there were maybe 50 guys I developed relationships with," he added. "I went to the warden and said, 'What did this guy do?' So he pulls out a rap sheet with 50 convictions. Armed robbery, aggravated assault, assault and battery. And if a guy's been convicted of that many, how many has he done? These guys are professional criminals. That is their job and they're good at it."
Belichick's work with Amer-I-Can is ongoing. At one point in the conversation, he stops and asks, "Are you familiar with the program? Do you know what they do?" His tone signals there's passion there, a commitment to the cause.
In addition to prison and inner-city visits, Belichick has ridden with undercover DEA agents in Newark, N.J. He's taken the extra steps to see what urban life is like, and it's helped sociologically as an American and professionally as a coach in the NFL.
"Let's face it, 80 percent of the players (at the annual combine in Indianapolis) are from one-parent families," he pointed out. "I grew up in a two-parent family. I don't have a lot in common with a lot of them. There's a race issue, a family issue, an economic issue. A lot of these guys are from poverty-level families, and it helps to understand what they're going through and coming from. I haven't lived it, so it's not like I know it, but it gives you a little bit of an appreciation for what they're going through."
Riding shotgun with DEA agents was eye-opening.
"Enlightening?" said Belichick, who grew up in Annapolis, Md., went to Phillips Academy and then Wesleyan. "I could go on for hours. We'd drive up to a housing project in an unmarked car, a piece of crap that you probably couldn't sell for $50. There were about 20 guys sitting up there on a wall and the car stops and they scatter. How did they know it was DEA? They just know. (I wanted to see) what was going on in urban America and in the projects. Some of our guys are from there, and when you go out and start looking at the draft, you hear, 'This guy is from the project, that guy is from the projects.' I was lucky enough not to grow up that way, but it was interesting for me to see what it was like to live there."
There was talk last season of there being a "new" Bill Belichick. And maybe he had softened some since he started out, but the talk of him re-inventing himself had to somehow sting, as if what he was doing was contrived.
The reality is that, for a while, Bill Belichick has been living a life that's made an impact in locker rooms and board rooms, and prisons and homeless shelters. The "new" Bill Belichick people have seen in the last eight months or so was there all along. Too few ever bothered to look.
