The Curious Case of Charley Pell

In a wooded area just outside of Jacksonville, Florida, a Buick that is not supposed to be there is parked at the end of a dirt road. After hooking a hose to the exhaust pipe, the driver chases a fistful of Sominex sleeping pills with a half-bottle of Vodka straight. His heart quickens and a platoon of sweat crawls down his forehead. He feels the hum of the car in his throat and checks the clock: 5:14 p.m. He slips into the back seat and lies down across the velour seats, as the carbon monoxide rushes into the car and a montage of his life’s images flashes through his mind. Charley Pell is preparing to die.Rewind a decade earlier. Well, let’s say a decade and a year, just to be safe. 1983. Charley Pell paces the sidelines as head football coach at the University of Florida, sporting his trademark diagonal-striped tie over a white short-sleeve dress shirt bloated with a pack of Vantage cigarettes. His Gators have just finished a stellar 9-2-1 year, culminating with victories over cross-state rival Florida State and Iowa in the Gator Bowl. Football was life, and staring down the corridor to the 1984 season, hope rang beautifully from the emerald, pigskin-mad eyes of Charley Pell.Rewind another five years. Pell and his wife Ward walk into the Florida athletic facilities for the first time, where they are shocked by an ambiance putrefying from neglect. Florida had just lured Pell away from a pretty swell gig at Clemson, where he directed the Tigers to an ACC title in 1977 and was voted Conference Coach of the Year in both ’77 and ‘78. “We go to Florida and the place is in shambles,” Ward Pell says. “There was an orange vinyl sofa with duct tape holding the springs in. Wallpaper was curling up at the corners. I thought, ‘what are we doin’?’ We go over to the dorm and the carpet is threadbare and urinals are pulled off the wall. The kids were sleeping in old Army cots. It was a nightmare.”Pell realized if he was going to build a football program to compete with the beasts of the SEC, it would take a massive facilities upgrade. So he collected the names of boosters, toured the Sunshine State on speaking engagements (where he cut the room up with his own brand of Pellish magnetism) and asked Gator bigwigs to empty their pockets. One such meeting occurred in Ft. Lauderdale with Wendy’s CEO Dave Thomas, who stroked a $50,000 check for the weight room. Through a connection, Pell also convinced Badcock Furniture to donate mattresses for the dorm. And then the biggie: Ben Hill Griffin’s $22 million gift to refurbish the stadium (which now bears his name). All of this occurred in Pell’s first year.“Charley built The Swamp,” Ward Pell says. “He built the skyboxes and South End Zone.”Pell’s son Carrick was just old enough to appreciate the orange-and-blue revelry, and as the prince he gained access to the stadium, hotels, and players in exchange for the duties of waxing helmets and tossing sweaty uniforms in hampers. “It was like I had eighty big brothers,” Carrick remembers. “My dad provided a platform for me that, for other kids, didn’t exist. I mean, Wilber Marshall was my babysitter.”It seemed like an idyllic time. But behind this façade was an ugly backdrop: in the fall of ’84, the NCAA dropped the hammer on Pell, his fine Florida team, and ultimately, his football career. The NCAA, as part of a lengthy, unrelenting, two-year sniffing around process, posted a thesis of 107 infractions on Pell’s door in September. Pell was fired later that night and offensive coordinator Galen Hall was installed as head coach. While Pell was dismissed to a life away from football, the Gators would march to Florida’s first-ever SEC Championship later that year.“It was tough,” Carrick recalls.Football was essentially all Pell had known since his days in Albertville, Alabama, where the black, pungent smoke of cotton mills lingered atop Sand Mountain. Life was already woolen and hard, but even harder for a family of ten like the Pells. So everyone worked.Charley began working at the tender age of seven, carrying water to sun-scorched workers, and later, he picked cotton and lugged concrete blocks to construction sites. There was little time for familial interaction, but what interaction did occur was often just as hardscrabble. Pell would remember his mother claiming her children “aren’t worth the salt we put in this cornbread”—words that would reverberate far into adulthood.“Charley didn’t grow up in a loving atmosphere,” Ward says. “His mama and daddy were good people but were unaffectionate and unsupportive. They didn’t understand anything outside of hard work.”Pell didn’t go out for football until his senior year in high school, but the stout, work-built 169 lb. fullback performed well enough to garner the attention of Bear Bryant and his kennel of recruiting bloodhounds. As the story goes, Alabama recruiter Phil Cutcheon had his eye on Albertville’s star quarterback Dan Dickson, and Pell wasn’t even on the radar. “Dickson hurt his back, and Phil Cutcheon started looking at Charley,” Ward recalls. “And for whatever reason, Bryant took a shine to him.”Pell signed with Alabama and played a huge role in Alabama’s 1961 national championship team, Bryant’s first-ever at the Capstone as a head coach. In a one-platoon system, Pell played offensive guard and defensive tackle on a team that was devoid of superior talent, but compensated with an unparalleled exhibition of guts and gusto.“They didn’t weightlift,” Ward says. “But Charley got up to 189 pounds by his senior year by lifting concrete blocks in the summer. They were a team of rawboned talent and rawboned desire.”After graduation, Pell, with Bryant’s prodding, decided to go into coaching, and landed an assistant coaching job at the University of Kentucky under Charlie Bradshaw, another Bryant lieutenant. At UK, Pell was assigned a good-looking recruiting assistant named Ward Noel. “That was the fall of ’65, but we didn’t begin dating until the fall of ’68,” Ward remembers.At Kentucky, football came a distant second on the athletic totem to Adolph Rupp’s roundballing runts. Nevertheless, Bradshaw was fired in ’68 after a string of dismal performances, and his assistant coaches were forced to scatter elsewhere. Pell interviewed for the Jacksonville State (AL) job, but the powers-that-be weren’t too keen on hiring a 27-year-old bachelor.“That’s no problem. I’m planning on getting married soon,” Pell assured, even though he hadn’t even discussed matrimony with Ward. Despite the communication glitch, the beloved were soon married at the Methodist chapel on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta. Pell, secure enough now in wedded bliss, was hired and quickly turned the Gamecocks’ program around, improving from 3-6 his first season to 10-0 in 1970. That same year, the Pells welcomed a son, Carrick.Across five seasons at JSU, Pell was 33-13-1. In 1974, Pell was plucked away from the JSU coop by Virginia Tech’s Jimmy Sharpe (another Bryant disciple) to captain his Hokie defense. Three years later, Pell was installed as the headman at Clemson, where he quickly lead the upstart Tigers to their first bowl appearance in 18 seasons.Ward laments that Charley could not stay at a program for very long. “Charley was a builder,” she says. “He didn’t enjoy the labor of his love. He went to Florida because he wanted to be in the SEC and build his own program. I never felt that he enjoyed the rewards of what he built. I believe if he would have stayed at Clemson, he would have been a viable candidate at Alabama.”As fate had it, Pell was out of coaching within five years of accepting the Florida job. He tried to throw his hat back in the ring, of course, but no school would hire him after the Florida fiasco. The University of Louisville showed interest, but recoiled as the putrid fumes of NCAA sanctions continued to swirl. “We were ready to pack up and move to Kentucky,” Carrick says.Carrick watched his father, the former stalwart athlete and meticulous coach, descend into a Vodka-and-cigarette-tugging salesman, wheeling and dealing in real estate and insurance. Pell also tinkered with shopping mall development and even processed oil sludge. But while Pell found success in these endeavors, it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t coaching.“I don’t think it was the Xs and Os at all what my dad loved about coaching,” Carrick says. “He loved changing people’s lives. He took young men and made them champions. When he lost his way, there wasn’t anything else for him.”Thus Pell began a slow, decade-long descent into a dark emotional abyss. Ward says that coaching was a “mask” that allowed Pell to disguise the demons that had plagued him since his days on Sand Mountain. “Football covered it up,” Ward says. “In reality, he was very insecure. He wasn’t good in front of small groups or intimate settings, but if he had to speak in front of 10,000, he could get a check from all of them.”As the years went by, Pell continued to grow more and more emotionally detached from his family. The coaching ship had sailed and a few business deals went sour. “After that, he threw the wall back up,” Ward says. “He went into his own little world. He put his trust in people and got ripped off an enormous amount of money. It really devastated him. I think he was embarrassed and hurt.”Pell searched for purpose as his self-worth plummeted. Compounding that frustration, Pell’s father died as well as a good friend from Jacksonville State within a short time period. Pell turned inside the bottle instead of turning for help.“He would be up at 5 a.m. drinking screwdrivers, and I thought he was drinking orange juice,” Carrick remembers.The downward spiral eventually bore out a plan, as Pell surmised that the best alternative was death. Over the span of a year, he devised a sure-fire way to leave this world, methodically plotting out the morbid Xs and Os of his death—the day, place, and means.“He plotted and planned down to the minute details,” Ward says. Pell cruised by cemeteries and critiqued obits. He bought Ward an anniversary diamond ring and surprised her with it two months early. He penned letters to his wife, children, and closest relatives and stuffed them into a box. Also included were instructions on where Pell could be found.The plan was to asphyxiate in his recently purchased Buick in late afternoon on February 2, 1994. Pell would drop the farewell box off at a local golf course where his friend and State Trooper Malcom Jowers visited frequently after work, drive to an isolated area, and kill himself.Just before 5 p.m., Pell left the box with Malcom’s wife Linda, who was the secretary at the golf course. Jowers arrived shortly thereafter, but did not open the box immediately. “I didn’t open the box until I got home,” Jowers recalls. “I put the box down and went and changed clothes.”Since Linda had informed him that Pell had been to Gainesville that morning, Malcom assumed that the contents in the box were caps or some other type of Florida memorabilia. “When I opened the box, I was startled,” Jowers says. “It was a bunch of file folders with documents. A wallet. I found a letter addressed to me with my name on it.”Jowers hadn’t had the slightest suspicion that something might be wrong with his longtime friend. “It was a total shocker to me,” he says. “I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. I had no idea it had reached this point with him. Once I realized what was going on, I called back up to my wife’s office to talk to Dr. Coppedge, who was the owner of the golf course. I said, ‘Doc, get down to the house.’”Jowers felt that Coppedge, an M.D., might save Charley’s life if they could find him in time. But Jowers also understood that Pell was well-organized and precise. “I thought he’d be dead,” Jowers admits. “He had it planned to a tee.”Approximately ten minutes later, Coppedge arrived at Malcom Jowers’ house, and the two men were en route.“Charley left a crude map, and I thought I knew where it was,” Jowers recalls. “In the meantime, I had called the highway patrol station, and I asked them to have a rescue unit in the area, in the event we found him alive and could rush him to the hospital.”When the contingent arrived, Pell was nowhere to be found. Several dirt roads shot off the main road, and the search party was getting worried as sunlight began to wane. “We finally huddled up, and then we heard a car engine idling in the wooded area,” Jowers says. “I walked back to the trail and saw his car. Charley was hanging on the side of the car, staggering. I approached him and said, ‘Charley, what in the world is going on?’ But I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I couldn’t make any sense out of him.’”Pell was not an ostentatious man, but he took pride in his belongings. Friends and family believe that he got out of the car because he did not want to soil his vehicle when he vomited. “Thank God he was OCD about that car,” Carrick says. “The fresh air hit him and that’s what saved him.”The three-man rescue team hurried Pell to the hospital, while Jowers stayed behind with the car. Linda Jowers would later inform Ward Pell about the grim events surrounding her husband.“It was a bad day, but it was a good day,” Jowers says. “Thank the Good Lord he was still alive.”But Pell didn’t feel the same sentiment. He woke up in the hospital in a rage, feeling as if he’d failed again. Within 72 hours, he was shipped to New Visions, a depression clinic in St. Simons Island, Georgia. He stayed for 21 days and was counseled by Dr. Bill Shivers, a Vietnam veteran and Clemson graduate. “It was an incredible facility,” Ward says. “He learned a lot about himself, issues he’d had his entire life.”Dr. Shivers found that Pell had been fighting a lifelong battle with depression, a condition that neither Pell, nor anyone in his family, had considered. “Charley always felt that he was inferior,” Ward says. “He had low self-esteem. He never had any self-worth, and the accolades masked that.”Carrick says that initially, he didn’t understand why his father would resort to such drastic measures. “I thought he was weak,” Carrick admits. “I was so angry at him for quitting. I guess that was my naivety. But once I started to get educated, started listening to him, it made sense. He beat himself up.”Soon, letters of encouragement began to pour in for Charley. “The mailman had to deliver the mail in mail sacks,” Ward says. “There were thousands of letters. He read all of them and responded to many of them.”Instead of sweeping his travails under the rug, Pell found purpose by becoming an advocate for a “silent army,” traveling coast-to-coast to speak out about depression.“We went all over the country, honey,” Ward says. “We were gone all the time.”Pell also made a courageous appearance on Oprah and was interviewed by Stone Phillips for a segment on Dateline NBC. When pressed by Phillips on the “selfishness” of suicide, Pell said that, at the time, he was convinced suicide was an “unselfish” act and that he felt “comfortable” with his decision. Little did he know that depression had exacerbated his woe.Though Pell had always demonstrated a quiet generosity, he realized that part of his rebuilding meant becoming more active in his church, St. John’s Presbyterian. There, he attended prayer breakfasts and the pastor, Dr. Ron Smith, helped him to flesh out his beliefs. “Dr. Smith gave Charley a workbook with an assignment. By the first week, Charley had already finished the book,” Ward says.“Faith was his weak link,” Carrick says. “If he would have found that earlier and stuck to it, if he would have had that North Star to keep him on track, I feel he would have been much more successful.”Pell, discovering a newfound calling, realized that he could impact others through his testimony, and even went so far as to give out his phone number as a lifeline for those impacted by depression. One of Charley’s friends soon phoned and said that Charley had saved his son’s life. “He said the son had a gun pointed to his head when he walked in the room, but he managed to stop it and get him into a facility for treatment,” Ward says.Carrick eventually forgave his father, and the pair had a few good years before Charley was diagnosed with lung cancer in September of 2000. “That summer, I remember we had a family football game, and it was a blast. I hadn’t laughed like that in five years,” Carrick says.Charley shunned aggressive treatment and focused on pain management for the last few months of his life. “He wanted to enjoy life,” Ward says.Charley Pell died at sixty years of age on May 29, 2001.A Celebration of Life service, attended by former players and teammates who shared stories of the short and incredible life of Charley Pell, was held in Gadsden, Alabama. Over 2,000 attended. “The stories were all the same, they just wore different jerseys,” Ward says. “They talked about him getting down and firing off the line and knocking the hell outta you.”Ward is now 68 and lives in Lexington, Kentucky. She has never remarried. “I’m not sure a man could put up with me like Charley Pell did,” Ward says. “It took me 32 years to train him.”After serving a tour with the Marine Corps that included the Gulf War, Carrick eventually followed in his father’s footsteps into coaching. Carrick is the head coach of the Babson United Rugby Club and a performance coach and elite trainer at TrainBoston in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He often thinks about the lessons he learned from his father. “Almost every lesson I learned about coaching I learned from dad,” Carrick says. “If he wouldn’t have told me to keep drivin’, pin your ears back, I wouldn’t have made it without that attitude. That was my fuel, man. Because of him, I am a far better coach than I would be otherwise.”In the United States alone, an estimated 25 million people suffer from depression, and suicides account for over 40,000 deaths per year. The untimely death of Robin Williams helped to sound the alarm about depression, but one must wonder how many people, like Pell, remain undiagnosed.Malcom Jowers says that if there is anything that can be learned from the Charley Pell story, it is that friends should be more alert. “You have to be sensitive,” Jowers says. “You have to pay attention. I wish I could have picked up on something. But Charley was just so easy to get along with. You have to look for signs.”Depression and attempted suicide could not dissever the Pell family. In fact, Carrick says that the family is closer than ever. “In the end, we came back together,” Carrick says. “We ended things on good terms. In a good place. But one of the hardest things is him not seeing me come into my own, finding my stride.”For Charley Pell, it took fifty years for the wounds to heal. “I don’t think parents realize that everything you say to a child is critical,” Ward says.Pell’s greatest adversary was not on the football field; it was within. By conquering himself and spreading his message to millions, there is no telling how many lives were impacted by Pell’s courage. Perhaps now, he is able to enjoy the rewards of what he built. 78