Sara White finds peace without Reggie

CHARLOTTE -- Death is not bad.

Sara White is telling you this while having lunch recently. Reminders of her work as a real estate agent come with several calls to her cellphone and a 20-second pitch to the waiter. The previous night she threw a surprise 18th birthday party for her daughter, Jecolia, a warm-up for the high school graduation fest she was planning.

Sitting alongside son Jeremy, 20, she is unwavering in her spirituality and hardly feeling sorry for herself in enduring the loss of a spouse.

She is talking about Reggie White.

"Some of my girlfriends have asked me, 'How can you be so happy?'" says Sara, whose late husband will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday. "It's because I appreciate every single day.

"Death is not bad. Especially if you have eternal life. Living a bad life is bad. People who are alive and not living, I feel more sorry for them than people that are dead. We are the ones suffering, because we miss them."

Reggie, whose community work and religious expressions were perhaps as large as his dominance as one of football's greatest defensive ends, died at his home near Charlotte on the morning of Dec.26, 2004. He suffered a respiratory attack caused by sleep apnea, a breathing disorder, compounded by sarcoidosis of the heart, an inflammatory disease. He was 43.

"He didn't wear his mask," Sara says. "That's why he had the attack."

Sara credits Jeremy, a journalism major at Elon University whom she playfully calls "Reggie Jr.," for helping her accept losing Reggie by interpreting events through religious connotations. Jeremy has written In His Shadow (Sports Publishing), which details life with his father.

"I didn't realize how big my memory is," he says.

Reggie, an ordained Baptist minister, distanced himself from traditional Christian churches during his final years. Sara says he was angry because he felt tenets of his religion were diluted by church leaders. This prompted him to travel to Israel, learn Hebrew and study the Torah. He became engrossed in a pursuit of the truth, Sara says.

"He was looking for the Father, and the Father said, 'Come home.'"

Says Jeremy, "If he had died at 90, he would've still been studying."

Other sensitive moments resonate with Sara, who married Reggie in 1985. She remembers reviewing the first phone bill after Reggie's death and noticing an abundance of calls over the span of several weeks.

"People were talking to me at the funeral saying, 'I just had a two-hour conversation with Reggie last month. I hadn't talked to him in five years,'" Sara says. "I thought they were lying to me. When I got the phone bill, I looked. They all told me the truth. Reggie was calling so many people; I think he knew."

'Bittersweet celebration'

The enshrinement in Canton, Ohio, marks the fourth major tribute, after ceremonies to retire his jerseys at the University of Tennessee, with the Philadelphia Eagles and the Packers.

"I think the Hall of Fame is just an official way of establishing what people already know, that my father is and will always be a legend," says Jecolia, who will attend the University of North Carolina. "I do hope, however, that it also establishes that he was a legendary person."

Each member of Reggie's immediate family will play a role in the induction program. Sara will give the acceptance speech. Jeremy will be the presenter. Jecolia will sing the national anthem. "This is pretty much the end of the bittersweet celebration of his life," Sara says. "I'm exhausted. It's very taxing, physically and mentally. You keep remembering, telling the same stories over and over."

Sara knows how special the Hall of Fame was to Reggie. After he ended a 15-year NFL career by playing one season with the Carolina Panthers in 2000, he became enamored with the thought that his Hall eligibility coincided with Jecolia's graduation.

"He said, 'I'd better be elected on the first ballot. They'd better not blackball me for the lawsuit,'" Sara said, referring to Reggie White v. the NFL, which impelled the liberalized free agency and salary-cap system that began in 1993.

"But I think most importantly, he was excited to be amongst the older Hall of Famers. People like Willie Davis, Joe DeLamielleure, Joe Gibbs. He wanted to be respected with the older crowd."

Despite accomplishments -- 198 sacks (second all time) and a record 13 consecutive Pro Bowl selections -- Reggie might be remembered by some for controversy.

In 1998, he appeared in a newspaper advertising campaign that denounced homosexuality and during a rambling speech before the Wisconsin legislature awkwardly used ethnic stereotypes about gifts of various races in trying to make a point about unity. "He felt that people took his remarks out of context," Sara says. "And what people forget or don't know is that right after giving the speech he received a standing ovation."

'Greatest man I've ever known'

Family and friends doubt that Reggie's legacy will be marred by the controversy.

"All I know for sure is the way I'll remember my dad," Jecolia says. "He will always be the greatest man I've ever known, a wonderful father, a minister who did a lot more than just talk the talk, an extremely talented football player... He always strived to make things better."

A decade ago, Reggie brought attention to a rash of church burnings that included his own in Knoxville, Tenn. He built a home for unwed mothers. He established the Urban Hope Entrepreneur Center, an entity that still exists in Green Bay and has taught hundreds with courses designed to build businesses.

Sara, still president of the board for Urban Hope, says there are plans to expand.

She is mulling other pursuits that exemplify the type of causes Reggie was committed to, such as establishing a fund to aid the most needy NFL retirees. "My goal is to find some of the older guys and support them monthly. Some people give you $2,000 and that's it. I want to find 10 guys who really need it and facilitate monthly checks to them."

Sara sounds a lot like Reggie, a visionary who lived to pursue big dreams.

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