The first year that sophomore Corey Burns played organized football, he was the new kid at Whitman-Hanson Regional High School. Through eighth grade, he had attended private school, and now he was just trying to fit in.
To that point, Corey's dad, Bernie, had not allowed him to play football, but the former Div. I player had taught his son a thing or two in the backyard. Without ever playing a game, Corey stepped onto the field as the best athlete on the team. One of his teammates - a bully, the head honcho - felt threatened. He didn't want the new kid messing with the pecking order.
One day at practice, Corey and the bully squared off in a drill. They laid down, helmet-to-helmet, with the bully holding the ball. When the whistle blew, they were to stand up and charge at each other. As the one without the ball, Corey had the upper hand.
The whistle blew. The boys scampered to their feet. They charged. And then -
"Everything that my dad taught me was what I did," Corey recalled last week.
"Corey cracked him," Bernie said Saturday.
He broke the bully's shoulder.
"That, right there, was the start of my football career," Corey said.
Bernie loves that story. He tells it to this day.
Change
Corey fit in just fine at high school. He played basketball, threw for the track team and was a stud linebacker. He had tons of friends. Everyone knew who he was.
"He was like the mayor of Whitman-Hanson," his mom Lynne said, sporting a Boston accent thicker than Corey's. "That's what we would call him."
But as Corey thrived, and as his older brother Clint excelled as a runner, there were troubling signs coming from their father. Bernie's eyesight was fading, and prescription glasses didn't seem to help. He started misplacing things often and jumbling his words. He took wrong turns in the car, and on one occasion he made a left onto the wrong side of the road.
Meanwhile, by the time Corey was a junior, he was being recruited by Div. I football schools. Despite recurring ACL injuries, the 16-year-old took official visits to big-name programs like Boston College and Holy Cross.
In June 2010, Clint won the state championship in the half-mile. A few days later, Bernie was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.
Given the already apparent symptoms, Bernie probably could have been diagnosed earlier. But the revelation still shook the family to its core. This was their father, their leader, their rock. This was the man who had built much of their home in Whitman, Mass. with his own hands. Now, although those same hands remained sturdy as ever, his mind was deteriorating.
"I cried for a whole weekend," Lynne said Saturday. "I didn't know what to do because he had been such a man's man, a leader, and I felt protected by him. I knew my life was gonna change."
As the disease began to strip Bernie of his basic abilities, Lynne filled the void. She did the bills. She brought Corey to football camps. She dealt with the doctors. She helped her husband get dressed.
At first, the family struggled to come to terms with the situation. Lynne was overwhelmed. Corey was upset. Bernie was afraid. But their Christian faith helped them move forward. Their church community offered support, and Bernie and Lynne performed daily devotions to keep themselves on the right track. Pretty soon, Bernie came to accept his condition.
"He knows it sucks," Corey said. "He knows, eventually, it's going to kill him. But he smiles every day. He makes jokes every day."
The summer of the diagnosis marked Bernie's last months working at the Brockton post office, where he and Lynne met and had worked for over 30 years. Corey took a job sorting mail so that he and his mom could look after Bernie, with Lynne working from early afternoon until night and Corey working from late afternoon until early in the morning. Lynne would bring her husband there, and Corey, during his break, would take his father home. After that summer, Bernie retired.
Now, Corey is always just an hour away at Tufts, and his uncle David - Lynne's brother - lives next door in Whitman and offers support. Clint, whom Corey talks to frequently and views as a role model, is less accessible: He's in the Air Force, working with the bomb squad.
Lynne is the glue that holds the family together. She continues to work as an expeditor at the post office - without that income, she would be unable to keep the home - and she keeps regular tabs on Bernie, who is 58 and needs almost constant assistance. Lynne prepares every meal for him. She calls him every few hours from work. At home, she writes messages for him on cards in giant letters.
"She's spread thin," Corey said. "She's kept the family running."
Bernie's Alzheimer's placed a great burden on Lynne's shoulders, and she rose to the occasion.
But it also did something else: It lit a fire inside Corey.
A Jumbo after all
Three years ago, when Tufts football head coach Jay Civetti and assistant Kevin Farr first met Corey at a camp at Boston College, they were immediately drawn to his demeanor. Between the lines, Corey was a brute, crushing ball carriers and making defensive plays all over the field. But because of missed time due to two ACL surgeries, the coaches didn't have much film to help them confirm their snap judgments.
After talking to Corey, they had all the confirmation they needed.
"Instantaneously, when I met him, I believed in him and thought his character was far more important than how he played football," Civetti said. "I was enamored by who he was as a person."
Several months later, when Corey and his parents walked into Civetti's office, Corey was wearing a Boston College hat. Civetti, a former coach at BC, prepared for the worst. But Farr told him the signs were promising, and Corey confirmed Farr's premonition: He announced he'd be coming to Tufts.
During his first week of practice, Corey was converted from a linebacker to a defensive lineman. With healthy legs, the 6-foot, 235-pounder with a menacing beard may have found a home at linebacker at a Div. I school. In Div. III, though, he belonged in the trenches, fighting for every inch.
"He'll break every bone in his body and keep going," defensive lineman Evan Anthony, who was Corey's freshman roommate, said. "He's a warrior. He's a mountain man. Nothing stops him."
Hence his nickname in the locker room: Old Man Burnsy.
"When I was an incoming freshman, I remember looking at his Facebook pictures, and he looked like he was 40 years old," sophomore tight end Xavier Frey said. "I thought he was gonna destroy me."
His freshman season, Corey recorded at least one tackle in six of the Jumbos' eight games, and he also threw for the winter and spring track teams. But as his family's financial situation worsened, the prospect of continuing to pay for a Tufts education no longer seemed feasible.
In the spring, Lynne called Civetti to report that Corey would not be returning to Tufts in the fall. He went on a recruiting visit to Wheaton College in Illinois, another Div. III program, and called Civetti before he left, while he was there and on the way home.Civetti, in accordance with Div. III rules, could not get involved in the family's financial aid negotiations, but he helped point them in the right direction. Ultimately, their aid package was restructured, allowing Corey to stay.
"Corey's a deeply religious person," Civetti said. "I think some prayers were answered."
His parents are thrilled with the result.
"A Jumbo after all," Bernie said, smiling from ear to ear.
Something new
On Saturday, standing across the street from Ellis Oval at the Jumbos' pregame family tailgate, Clinton Burns III - known to all as Bernie - talked about football. He wore a Tufts University hat over his big, bald head and a brown Tufts Football polo over his broad shoulders. Slowly, but with relative confidence and ease, he explained why last year's season finale at Middlebury was a turning point for the Jumbos.
"They went in there, and they were supposed to get blown out, and they had them on the ropes if it wasn't for that fumble that went about 15 yards," he said, his massive blue eyes widening. "I really believe they're gonna turn it around this year."
For a team that's endured a lot of pain in the last three years - namely a 26-game losing streak that refuses to end - it's fitting that Bernie is its greatest believer. His personal battle began around the same time as the Jumbos', and somehow, he has remained upbeat throughout the process.
After a tough defeat, Bernie is always the first one to find Civetti and offer words of encouragement.
"Here's a guy who, on some days, wakes up and doesn't know where he is, or who he is, or who his family is," Civetti said. "And he comes up to me to say, 'Hey, you keep fighting. You keep these guys going. You're getting there.' There's nothing like that."
After last season, Civetti mentioned to Corey that the team ought to honor Bernie on a game day. Corey approached men's tennis head coach Jaime Kenney, who leads the Fan the Fire initiative, and the plan took off from there.
"I wanted to do something to show that it's not just him fighting by himself, not just my family standing behind him, but that there are more people who care," Corey said. "I'm not that type who wears it on my sleeve. I just asked what I could do."
The Alzheimer's Association showed up at the game, and Fan the Fire handed out purple shirts to match the ALZ.org bracelets Corey wears around his wrist and in the shoelaces of his cleats when he plays. Even better, Bernie got to stand on the sideline during the game, making it easier for him to see the action - and identify his son - despite his impaired vision.
Leading up to Saturday, only one question remained: How well would Corey play? Sitting in their West Hall dorm last Wednesday, his sophomore teammates envisaged what was to come.
"I'd say, absolutely, 100 percent chance he has the game of his life," Anthony said.
"But he was giving 110 percent the last game," Frey noted.
Then linebacker Matt McCormack chimed in.
"He's gonna give more this week," McCormack said. "He wants this one. I think we're gonna see something new."
Like father, like son
Before Corey started playing football, he was a baseball player. Every day after school, when Corey was between ages nine to thirteen, Bernie would take Corey to the park and throw him hundreds of pitches of batting practice.
In their hometown, it was common knowledge that the coaches' kids usually made the Little League All-Star team. But Bernie didn't want Corey to have anything handed to him. He wanted his son to work his tail off to become a better hitter. And that's what Corey did.
Over the years, Bernie developed a nasty knuckleball - one that Corey never could touch - and the week before Corey returned to Tufts this fall, he took his dad out to see if he could still throw his signature pitch.
"He still had it," Corey said. "He's lost a lot, but that was one thing: He still had that."
Corey may never be able to throw a knuckler - not to mention a Frisbee, which Bernie can still sling behind his back like a pro - like his dad can. But as Alzheimer's takes Bernie's mind, his spirit will live on through Clint and through Corey.
"I would do anything in the world to be more like my dad," Corey said.
In so many ways, he is already carrying the torch.
"Corey is one of the more caring, loving, understanding people I've ever been around in my life," Civetti said. "The one consistent about Mr. Burns - and you can see it in Corey, too - is that he has a tremendous appreciation for human beings and for wanting to make the world a better place."
Making a memory
With the game scoreless late in the first quarter on Saturday, the Polar Bears were driving into Jumbos territory. On 1st-and-10 from Tufts' 27-yard-line, Bowdoin quarterback Mac Caputi dropped back to pass and fired one over the middle. It was tipped at the line.
Corey, wearing a brace on his right knee and the No. 96 his dad had worked hard to memorize, got a piece of it. The ball shot straight up in the air, and Corey held out his hands, waiting for it to land. Despite multiple banged up fingers, Corey came down with the ball. He fell to the ground, squeezing it with all his might. Interception.
He sprinted back to the sideline, fists clenched, ready to celebrate with his teammates. Lynne leaped up and down. Bernie clapped.
Corey is not the type to seek attention, but on this day, he was playing for more than just himself.
"If there was one day that I would want [the spotlight], it would be there, with my dad there," he said Monday. "That whole day was showing him that there are other people there to fight for him. To put myself out there, in that moment, just to show him that I was fighting - it means the world to me."
The Jumbos ultimately lost the game, coming up two yards shy of the fairy tale ending they had envisioned. As the Bowdoin players celebrated, Corey jogged over to the sideline and hugged his dad. He told him he was sorry the team didn't win. He told him he would always have his back.
Then Bernie told Corey what he's been telling him forever.
"Keep fighting," he said. "Never give up."
On Saturday, the Burns family won the fight.
"I very truly feel that Alzheimer's was defeated," Corey said. "My dad got a memory. A memory was developed in his brain, and I don't think any disease will be able to take that away. That day was too big for him to ever forget."
