As a young man driving the highways of the Midwest for his sales job, Brad Tyrer staved off road hypnosis with the radio, flipping the dial as he drove and tuning in whenever he heard his father’s name on sports broadcasts. “I can’t remember how many times I would be in the middle of nowhere doing my job driving and there would be a conversation about the NFL Hall of Fame people and they would say my dad,” Tyrer said. “He was like, ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing about him in the middle of Iowa,’ and they were talking about why he’s not in the Hall of Fame and it was just weird.” Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from the Washington Post. Jim Tyrer, a standout offensive tackle at Ohio State, played in the AFL for the Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs from 1961 to ’73 and spent one season in Washington before retiring after the 1974 season. He was a big part of that made those Texans/Chiefs offenses disappear when they won three AFL titles, lost to the Green Bay Packers in the first Super Bowl and won Super Bowl IV. A member of the AFL’s all-time team, Tyrer looked set to join eight former teammates in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which this weekend will hold its annual induction ceremony in Canton, Ohio. However, he did not have the necessary votes in 1981, the only time his name came up for a vote. Rick Gosselin, a 19-year member of the Hall’s senior committee and a former NFL and sports columnist for the Dallas Morning News, described Tyrer in an email as “the most qualified candidate in the senior pool. There are hundreds of players in that pool , and Tyrer is the only six-time first-team All-Pro. If you’re the best at what you do for six NFL seasons, you’re a worthy candidate for the Hall of Fame. More than worthy, in fact.” The story continues Then in the early morning hours of September 15, 1980, as three of their four children slept in their suburban Kansas City home, 41-year-old Tyrer shot and killed his 40-year-old wife, Martha. their bedroom before turning the gun on himself. “We all knew after that something was wrong,” said Jim Tyrer’s youngest daughter, Stefanie. “He wasn’t the person we knew… You feel like there should have been something you could have done or something you should have recognized. Even though I was 12 or 13, there’s still a little bit of guilt. Because we didn’t understand something or why didn’t we know more?… He probably didn’t understand what was happening to him.” —- What do they remember? If Jim Tyrer is never elected to the Hall of Fame, his legacy is secure in the lives of his children and Martha. To remind people of their father’s bravery, if nothing else, the children told their parents’ story, one intertwined with their own resilience and success, in an emotional documentary by director Kevin Patrick Allen. All these years later, their memories of the footage that woke them up and how they hid until they discovered the horrific scene can naturally bring tears. They remember Martha as a wonderful mother who watched all their games, with Jim doing the same as often as he could. But like so many former athletes in a story that is now all too familiar, Tyrer struggled to make ends meet after sports, finding himself struggling financially at a time when some professional athletes needed off-season jobs to make ends meet . “I was 17 years old,” recalled Brad, the older of the Tyrers’ two boys and a high school football player, the night before Sept. 14, 1980. “I was inside. I knew my dad went to work and I came home at night, but I didn’t know exactly what he was doing. The night it happened, I was in my room lifting weights really hard because I was trying to get bigger – I was actually measuring my biceps. “My dad came in, probably around 9, and basically had the conversation you have with your oldest son,” he continued, choking up a little. “He had the conversation with me as if he knew he would never see me again. At the time, it was very out of context and I was kind of focused on something else. Looking back, I remember that conversation very well. He said, “You have been a good son and I am proud of you. You must take care of your brother and sisters.” It was just seamless. I was like, “Okay, Dad.” It was probably a 20-minute speech, but I know he already knew he was going to do something.” Jim Tyrer had spent his last afternoon at a Chiefs game with 11-year-old Jason. The baby of the family, Jason Tyrer recalled that his father was tender but not overly affectionate until that game. “He didn’t really embrace us, but that game did. I got that kind of — it felt unusual, you know?” —- “Not half an inch thick” Jim Tyrer, who was 6 feet tall and weighed about 300 pounds, was known for his huge head that caused his teammates to jokingly refer to him as “The Pumpkin.” Teammates “would joke that Martha would hire his head to the kids on Halloween,” Dave Hill told the Washington Post in 1980. Ben Davidson, the Raiders’ formidable defensive end, once joked that Tyrer was “basically wearing a big red dustbin. a helmet.” In an era when shortstops couldn’t use their hands and there was little awareness of the dangers of concussions, repetitive head trauma and chronic traumatic encephalopathy — or CTE — the head was a weapon Tyrer wielded fearlessly in 180 straight games. Stefanie, a pediatric surgical nurse at a Kansas City hospital, was a week shy of her 13th birthday at the time of the shooting. She remembers her father’s special, huge Ohio State helmet, one with his name on it because it no longer fit. Tyrer was never diagnosed with CTE, which was not recognized by scientists until 2005 and can only be determined post-mortem. Tyrer’s autopsy notes that “no congenital abnormalities were found” in his brain, but “the more we learn and the more we know,” Stefanie said, “I’m definitely comforted by what I really think happened to him.” Tina Tyrer Moore, the oldest of four children who were in college at the time of her parents’ deaths, has one of his old helmets. The lining, he said, “is not half an inch thick.” Brad doesn’t recall specific conversations about whether his father suffered a concussion, but he did recall “quite a lot of talk about ‘head pain,’” and it seemed like the pain had to do with helmets that were too small to fit on my dad’s head. . ” he wrote in an email. “Because they couldn’t get an outer helmet shell big enough, I kind of remember them removing material from the inside (padding and suspension) to make more room inside.” Tina remembers hearing her father complain of headaches and also consulted a doctor. Brad remembers “a lot of talk about my dad’s head hurting … but the thinking was that it was due to a tight helmet, not a head injury.” —- Coping with tragedy Martha’s parents, Truman and Lucille Klein, moved in with their three grandchildren, who were at home after their parents’ deaths, and provided love and security. Tina returned to the area, leaving the University of Missouri to be near family, and became a successful hair stylist. Truman, a Purdue engineering graduate, was the example the kids needed to overcome the tragic loss. He had lost both legs and an arm in a car accident as a young man and became an inventor appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board. The Clines were the epitome of resilience, giving a message that “we have to keep going,” Brad said. Now a 59-year-old businessman and father of two living in Louisville, Brad briefly focused on football and, days after his parents died, returned to the field at Rockhurst High, a Jesuit all-boys school. is traditionally a Missouri football power. Led by quarterback David Cone, the four-time World Series winner, the team had state championship aspirations that year, and Bradt felt like he belonged on the field. Days later, he kicked what turned out to be the game-winning goal in a game against Shawnee Mission West. A born-again Christian, he made his own peace with the worst night of his life just days after it happened. “After the funerals, everyone came to our house and it was just packed,” she said. “Everyone was there… [Chiefs owner] Lamar Hunt and his wife, a lot of players and their wives, all kinds of people gathered in that house. To get away from everyone, I went outside and sat on the concrete slab of the porch. I put my head down and whimpered when God came to me and said, “I’m going to it. Why are you sad? You had two great parents for 17 years. You know nothing. You have nothing to be sorry for.” And it was like a light bulb went on. I was at peace then and there with it.” Jason, who went on to play for two state championship teams at Rockhurst, played football at the University of Kansas. The father of three boys, he owns a flooring company in the Kansas City area. —- Moving forward The circumstances surrounding his death and his wife’s murder changed the trajectory of Tyrer’s Hall of Fame. His chances remained slim until this year, when the Hall’s Board of Trustees increased the number of senior inductees from one to three due to a backlog of candidates whose careers ended more than 25 years ago. For the 2023-2025 classes, up to three inductees can be selected per year, and the selection committee recently selected only wide receiver Otis Taylor, from the same Chiefs teams, to advance to the next round of voting. A few years ago, Tyrer’s four children sorted through their father’s belongings and were reminded again of what a great player he was. They shared their story in the documentary, but it’s…
