INTERCEPTING EX-ESKS WHO SPIRAL OUT OF CONTROL

Sunday, July 1, 2007 - 12:00PM

Bill Stevenson was fearless at guarding quarterbacks. But off the field, personal demons overpowered him. Now, ex-teammates want to help others who falter after gridiron glory fades

By Darcy Henton,
Edmonton Journal

EDMONTON - A year before Edmonton hosted the 2002 Grey Cup, retired Eskimo Bill Stevenson hocked his favourite championship ring for $200.

It was the one the former all-star offensive lineman won when his team edged Ottawa 26-23 in the 1981 Grey Cup in Montreal.

His daughter, Steffanie, paid $1,300 to get it back so he could wear it to the Canadian Football League Player Awards -- and she hasn't seen it since.

Her dad told her he lent it to a roommate, but she doesn't believe that.

"I know exactly where it went. It was payment for money or drugs."

Stevenson won a record seven Grey Cups in the CFL -- playing a direct role in more than half the Eskimos' total of 13 championships -- but the success he found on the field eluded him in the real world and life became a game that he couldn't win.

Walking away from football after 14 seasons, he struggled in his business and personal life, suffered through bankruptcy and divorce, and at times was forced to take refuge in shelters for the homeless.

He died this spring at the age of 55 in the kind of ignominious accident that his friends had been dreading.

Some Eskimos went on to become leaders in the community -- two serving as premier, one as mayor of Edmonton, another as lieutenant-governor of Alberta. But Stevenson embarked on a path of self-destruction that no one could comprehend.

It wasn't the life he wanted and he tried desperately to change it, but his demons, unlike the pass rush, could not be easily thrust aside.

William George Stevenson was born in High Prairie on Sept. 20, 1951, the first child of Molly and George Stevenson. He was a colicky baby, but Molly remembers his early childhood fondly.

"He was an easy kid to raise," she recalls. During his first years, his folks lived in Kinuso and Joussard -- small settlements on the southern shores of Lesser Slave Lake where his father worked in construction and drove trucks -- but George soon moved the family 250 kilometres south to Edmonton.

By the time Billy was six he had three brothers and a sister. They lived in a small house lacking water and sewer on the city's western outskirts, their yard backing onto empty fields at 156th Street where they would chase gophers with neighbourhood kids.

One morning on his way to school in nearby Winterburn, Billy took a side trip to the hospital. He was riding in the back of a neighbour's truck and leapt out while it was still moving, banging his elbow and head on the road. He later told his parents the neighbour had forgotten to stop to let him out -- so he jumped.

He plowed into sports with the same fearlessness, starring in basketball, soccer, volleyball, track and field and wrestling.

His coach at Hillcrest junior high school remembers his incredible athleticism. Ed Hancheruk said the boy, who was already six-foot-two in Grade 9, could clear a high jump bar set at five-foot-two with a two-step start.

"I have not seen that since," he said. "I probably never will."

Stevenson went on to become a high school basketball and football star at Jasper Place, coached by Eskimos legend Johnny Bright. After junior football with the Edmonton Huskies, Stevenson went to Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, on a football scholarship.

He was reluctant to go because his father had died in a wreck that year.

"I wasn't sure it was the right thing to do because of my dad not being there and Mom having to support everybody," he told The Journal in 1986. "But with me not being there, it was like another mouth not to feed. And I could get a college education I couldn't get up here because we didn't have any money."

Stevenson was in his fourth year, majoring in radio and television broadcasting, when he met Carol Newsum in 1973.

Although the 23-year-old office worker wasn't a football fan, she quickly became enamoured with the hulking 270-pound, six-foot-four Canadian who was captain of the Drake Bulldogs.

"He was so cute," she recalled 34 years later. "He was tall with green eyes, brown hair and straight teeth. He was such a happy, jovial guy. We started going out and he fell madly in love with me and I fell madly in love with him."

He was bright, well-read, loved westerns and was a good dancer. He was sentimental, compassionate and had "a heart of gold."

Carol's parents adored him.

Nine months later they were married in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa, and headed off to Tennessee in a new white boogie van with marijuana leaves stencilled on the side.

Although Stevenson was drafted in 1974 by the National Football League's Miami Dolphins, he signed with the Memphis Southmen of the new World Football League for $125,000 -- a huge sum at the time. Former B.C. Lions general manager Joe Galat, who coached him in Memphis, said he had never seen a big man so nimble.

"He could do backflips up and down the sidelines, like a gymnast," he told the Ottawa Citizen.

Carol said the couple loved Memphis. "It was like paradise down there. We were treated like celebrities. Wherever we went we were treated royally."

Stevenson played a season and a half before the league began to founder. Just before it folded, the Eskimos came calling. General manager Norm Kimball wooed the young Canadian defensive lineman with a generous salary to come back home.

"He was a coveted player and Norm Kimball wanted him badly and got him here," recalls Allan Watt, a former Eskimos public relations director who is now a vice-president of communications, broadcasting and publicity with the Edmonton Oilers.

Arriving in Northern Alberta in the late fall of 1975 was a shock for Carol, who had stayed behind in Tennessee to arrange transportation for their five horses.

The "little, bitty house" on an acreage south of Edmonton was a comedown from the fancy townhouse in Memphis.

"Bill sent me some pictures and I was just horrified," she said.

The couple bought a neighbouring acreage where they planned to erect a modular home, but the company went bankrupt midway through the project and the Stevensons ended up tenting in October until they could find someone to finish the job.

They lived among the cows in the pasture, slept on bales of hay and cooked strips of meat on sticks over an open campfire.

"It was like being back in the pioneer days," said Carol. "It wasn't the luxurious life I had dreamed a pro football player would have."

On the field, Stevenson found immediate success. He arrived in time to play the last three league games of the 1975 season and the playoffs under then coach Ray Jauch. A key addition to the defensive line, he helped the Eskimos to their first Grey Cup in two decades with a 9-8 victory over Montreal at McMahon Stadium in Calgary.

The team was back in the Grey Cup in 1977, but lost to Montreal 41-6 in Montreal. The lopsided loss burned Stevenson, then a member of the ferocious defensive line, dubbed Alberta Crude, that included Dave Fennell, Ron Estay and David Boone.

"We are the laughingstock of the country," Stevenson said at the time. "We're not going to be able to shake the feeling entirely unless we go back to the Grey Cup next year and stomp on somebody."

The next year, the Esks were back in the Grey Cup against Montreal and got their revenge. The 20-17 victory was the first of an unprecedented five championships in a row for the Eskimos.

Stevenson, wearing the No. 62 he'd worn in college, played a key role, but not on defence. Coach Hugh Campbell had moved the agile defender to his offensive line in 1978.

"It gave me an excellent opportunity to extend my career," Stevenson told The Journal. "Defensive linemen are notorious for not lasting that long because of offensive linemen cutting out their legs."

Stevenson shone in his new position. He was named a western all-star three times -- 1978, 1979 and 1981 -- and a Canadian all-star twice, in 1978 and 1979.

"He didn't get keyed up under pressure," said Campbell. "He just had a world of confidence and it was contagious. The guys around him were better because he was there."

The players liked Stevenson, who was a boisterous prankster in the locker-room but did his talking on the field with actions, not words.

Former Eskimos receiver Marco Cyncar called Stevenson "a big, strong teddy bear," but said he could be a terror on the field -- even in camp when challenged by former National Football League players.

"When they brought in former body builders or power lifters -- guys who were just monsters -- Billy would get a glint in his eye and go to town on these guys," said Cyncar, who played 12 seasons in Edmonton. "After practice these guys would be sitting on the sidelines covered in ice bags and that was just after a couple of sessions with Billy Stevenson."

But former Eskimos linebacker Tom Towns said Stevenson took his job seriously and would get very tense before games.

"We were always concerned if Billy didn't throw up before a game," said Towns, who now runs a city jewelry business. "We knew if he threw up, we were going to win."

Hec Pothier, the former Eskimos all-star offensive lineman, credits Stevenson with pushing up the value of Canadian linemen in the league because he proved they could play positions previously filled by Americans.

He said Stevenson was naturally strong and athletic, but didn't believe in working out between seasons.

"He used camp to get into shape," said Pothier, now a principal at a Mill Woods elementary school. "Billy did a lot of stuff that most of us had to train pretty hard to do, but he could just do it."

Pothier, who was Stevenson's roommate on road trips, said they had some fun, including the time they deep fried chicken wings for the whole team in their hotel room.

"Billy played hard and he partied hard," he said.

While the club was winning championship after championship, life was a big party for Stevenson. For a young man who hardly touched a drop of alcohol before he went to college, he developed an affinity for Baby Duck sparkling wine, beer and marijuana.

The players held what they called a team meeting at the Grand Hotel every Monday, but it was really a mandatory social gathering.

Stevenson, by his own admission, was usually "the rowdiest guy in the room," sucking back beers, cracking jokes and laughing his big, boisterous laugh.

"I'm definitely a free spirit and off the wall," he once told a reporter.

Former Eskimos quarterback Tom Wilkinson said Stevenson was usually one of the last players to leave and would get teased later about how much he drank.

Nobody thought much about it at the time. It was just Billy having a good time.

Carol said the couple spent money "like it was water" in those days.

"That was quite the life. We would get this whack of money and we spent like madmen. If there was anything I ever wanted, Bill would just go get it."

If Carol saw a new pair of shoes she liked, she bought them, amassing about 250 pairs and 100 matching purses over the years.

She said her husband never kept track of how much money he had in his bank account and often had to go to Eskimos management for an advance when his account was empty.

Players got paid after every game, but Stevenson could never make it stretch from one season to the next. The team eventually put him on a year-round monthly pay schedule.

Aside from the show horses they brought to Canada, the Stevensons didn't own a lot of big-ticket items.

Bill, who wore a size 54 tall coat and size 16 triple E shoes, was comfortable in jeans and a golf shirt with a pocket on it. He wasn't into clothes or fancy cars. But he did have a weakness for money-making ventures that ended up costing him a lot of money.

"Bill was a real dreamer," said Carol. "He had a super-positive outlook on life. He never looked at the negative side of anything. If there was something out there to make money, he gave it a try."

There was a plan to open a stained glass window shop that never went ahead -- even though they had bought much of the glass and other supplies. There was another aborted plan to open a Grandma Lee's restaurant. Projects that did go ahead didn't last all that long.

A fried chicken restaurant, a couple of fitness centres, a seafood store, a game, a book of football poetry, an adult-living development and an assortment of other schemes sucked up every penny.

Former teammate Towns started calling Stevenson "Dollar Bill."

"He always took people at face value. He was just a big kid, trusting of everybody. He would say, 'Jeez, that sounds great!' Unfortunately some people took advantage of that and they got his money and didn't do anything with it."

Some said his generosity also hindered his ability to make a buck.

"Because of the type of guy he was, he never let any of his friends pay, so the businesses never worked," observed Wilkinson, who played 10 seasons with the Eskimos. "He bought for everybody he knew -- and he knew a lot of people."

Stevenson was forced to file for bankruptcy at the age of 33.

"I'm one of those financial geniuses who makes large investments for small returns," he would later joke.

He claimed he would have to play into his 40s to pay off his debts. Stevenson told the Ottawa Citizen near the end of his career that his financial troubles reinforced the value of family.

"I try to spend even more time with them now. Life is made up of a series of stumbles. I've had to overcome some big ones."

The couple raised two children: a daughter, Steffanie, the "training camp baby," born June 3, 1977, and a son, Tanner, the "Grey Cup baby," born Nov. 15, 1978.

Steffanie said her father was always at their birthday parties and loved to take them camping and boating.

"He was always around. He never excluded us from anything. He was just fun. How many people's dads can pick them up until they're 11 years old? I was Daddy's girl."

Schoolmates would ask for autographed pictures of her dad. She remembers drinking juice out of the Grey Cup at her folks' restaurant and being allowed to go onto the football field after home games.

"It was awesome," said Steffanie. "People would always say, 'You're the girl whose dad is an Eskimo.' "

By the mid-1980s, Stevenson's career was winding down, but he managed to hang on despite a virus infection in his heart in 1985 and a broken ankle in the 1986 training camp that kept him out of the lineup the entire season.

He was back for another cup run in 1987, carrying 300 pounds onto the field and earning a new nickname -- "Billy Bulk."

The Esks outduelled Toronto 38-36, winning on a last-minute field goal, and Stevenson walked away with his seventh Grey Cup championship, tying the record held by Toronto Argonaut Jack Wedley. Former Eskimo Hank Ilesic matched the feat in 1991.

In 1988, Stevenson packed it in after the club put him on the practice roster, but came back two months later when he was offered a crack at an eighth ring. When the Eskimos lost the Western final, big No. 62 retired for good.

He once said he used football as a shield from real life.

"The real world is not a lot of fun all the time," he told a reporter. "You have to hide from it sometimes. I know I'll have to go into the real world some day ... but I put that off as long as possible."

Carol said her husband was drinking more as his career wound down, but he kept it under control because he had to compete.

But when he retired "things went bad."

He took a job up north selling heavy-duty equipment, but the job required him to stay in hotels and spend a lot of time in the bar with clients. He also started smoking.

The financial problems worsened and his marriage felt the strain.

"It wasn't that he was mean or violent," said Carol. "He was always so happy-go-lucky. He wouldn't argue with me, but he would talk in circles. He was in total denial."

Carol said he also started drinking Silent Sam vodka because he thought no one would be able to smell it on his breath.

"I would say, 'Have you been drinking?' and he would say, 'No.' I would search the car and find an empty bottle. He was hiding it."

She always thought he would have made a good football coach, but he blew the only chance he had. He was helping coach a university football team in 1991, but lost the job when he kept the team bus waiting for him to come out of a bar before a game.

The drinking ultimately cost him his marriage.

"People would ask me, 'Why are you staying in this situation?' " Carol explained. "I didn't think I could escape."

"But the drinking separated us. I couldn't deal with the personality change and the money situation and all that kind of stuff anymore."

The couple separated in 1993, but remained friends.

Carol said she was relieved when Stevenson remarried in 1994.

"I thought if he wouldn't quit drinking for me, maybe he would do it for somebody else."

Marilyn Stevenson was thrilled when the boy she had known since Grade 1 phoned her to renew their school romance. "It's not too often you get to meet your childhood sweetheart again."

But the new relationship deteriorated quickly.

"I was just shocked and amazed when I found out the depth of his alcohol problem and inability to keep a job," said the mother of two. "It was very tough. I had to work twice as hard, supporting his lifestyle and drinking."

Her new husband didn't go to bars or parties to drink and controlled his drinking at family occasions. He did his heavy drinking alone.

"I would hear the car come up and he wouldn't come in for 20 minutes," she said. "He would drink the whole bottle and then come in."

Sometimes he would go to a nearby school to help coach high school players, but that too ended badly when he showed up falling-down drunk one time and embarrassed everybody, she said.

Marilyn left him in 1997 but agreed to take him back after he completed an alcohol rehabilitation program.

"I wasn't about to give up on him," she explained. "I loved him dearly, but I felt so helpless. I

couldn't help him. I could pay his debts and that's all I could do. I really felt sorry for him. It was such a waste."

The couple separated for good in May 1998 but Stevenson wouldn't agree to a divorce even after they were apart nearly a decade.

Marilyn said she hopes his story will send a signal to pro sports teams to address the problems in their players' lives.

"I'm glad it's out of the closet," she said. "People will discuss it and talk about it and see if there's something more that can be done for these guys by their families and friends and past employers and the Canadian Football League."

Psychologist Jim Battle says people are probably more aware of the problems athletes have after leaving sports because their issues are reported in the media, but he concedes athletes may experience more depression and suicidal thoughts than the general population.

"There's lots of speculation that sometimes it's more difficult for an athlete who has had the popularity and the income and all of a sudden loses the status and the financial position as well," said Battle, who played for the Eskimos in 1964 and 1965.

On top of that, former players often also have to cope with physical problems stemming from injuries, he said.

John Farlinger, an Eskimos safety from 1973 to 1978, said the switch from football to the working world is a tough transition, especially since playing in the CFL doesn't pay much more than any other job.

"How can you play the violent world of pro football and then just transfer out of that into a normal job? Football is not like checkers or tiddlywinks. You go out there to knock somebody's head off every week. How do you say: 'I'm finished knocking people's heads off and now I'm going to be an accountant?' "

Farlinger launched a successful travel business and did radio colour commentary for the Eskimos games, but it was a struggle to survive. "I could have starved to death the first five years."

Stevenson, who never finished his broadcasting degree, was ill-equipped to find employment that would pay him the same kind of money he earned in football and give him the same status.

Two decades of football had battered his body and he often limped from the ankle injury that still pained him.

He drifted from job to job, selling everything from real estate to vacuum cleaners to used cars before finally settling for manual labour. His last job was driving a forklift.

When he was down and out and had no place to stay, daughter Steffanie, who on Wednesday gave birth to her fifth child, would take him in. Her only rule was that he not drink in front of her kids.

One day when she discovered he had gone out to a liquor store and picked up a bottle, she threw him out.

She drove him to a downtown men's shelter, where he told her he had stayed previously, but she couldn't go through with it.

"There were bums sleeping all over the sidewalk and the front grass, waiting to go in," she said. "I just couldn't leave him there."

By then, Stevenson's life had evolved into a cycle of drinking, alcohol detox, rehab and relapse. He went through alcohol rehabilitation on at least four occasions. At times he slept in a Salvation Army shelter or shared an apartment with Milson Jones, another ex-Eskimo down on his luck.

Fearing that he would lose his seven Grey Cup rings as a result of his lifestyle, Stevenson gave them to his mother, Molly, for safekeeping. She stored them away in a safe deposit box, only taking them out when he wanted to wear one for a special occasion. He gave one to Marilyn as a wedding ring, but she returned it after the couple split up.

As Stevenson's life spun more and more out of control, his former teammates increased their efforts to help him. Spurred on by the suicide of David Boone in March 2005, they made a pact to try to reach out to teammates in peril.

"After his death we knew there was more reason for concern," said Farlinger. "We said this isn't going to happen again."

They started to look around for other teammates who were struggling and try to bring them into their circle. When 52-year-old defensive tackle York Hentschel had to be hospitalized last year, they rallied around him and his family to provide support until he died.

The Eskimos alumni asked Molly to take her son in to get him away from a drinking environment. Teammates who overcame addiction problems of their own counselled him.

"I spent hours with Billy on the phone the last couple of months," said one, who didn't want to be identified. "I saw some dark days and nights. I told him what I went through.

"For me, somehow, it just worked out. I had to make a lot of changes in my life and totally rewire my system. But it was a battle for Billy."

The meetings the alumni members had with Stevenson, his mother and ex-wife were often intense. Former Eskimos player Dan Kepley, who has conquered his own addiction problem and is now an assistant coach, was front and centre.

"We felt we were being too good to Billy," Farlinger explained. "We were helping too much. We read him the riot act. Everybody was crying. We said: 'Billy, do you want your mother to see you dying because that's what you are doing.' It was really tough."

Teammates reached into their own pockets to cover some of Stevenson's debts, just like they had done for Boone and others.

Molly said her son would do well for several weeks, then relapse for no apparent reason.

"He said himself he had no idea why he drinks. He said it's nothing anybody has done," she said. "I just can't understand how he let himself go like that after working so hard to be a good athlete."

In the months before his death, Stevenson was good company for his 75-year-old mother. They shared meals, watched television and worked on crossword puzzles together. But Molly worried about him because he still had heart problems and other health issues.

He had already seriously injured a shoulder when he stumbled on the 10 tiled stairs leading to the basement bedroom where he slept.

On March 19, 2007, the day he died, he had gone to his room to lie down for an afternoon nap.

When Molly returned from bowling, she went down to his room to retrieve his car keys so his brother could do some work on his car. Stevenson told her then that he wouldn't be joining them for supper.

Molly was on the phone to her sister about 6:30 p.m. when she heard a noise at the back door.

"All of a sudden I heard a crash," she said. "He must have gone straight down backwards."

She went to try to revive him, but it was no use. He lay motionless, blood from a head injury seeping onto the tile.

Molly believes her son was going out onto her deck for a cigarette, but fell backwards off the small landing at the top of the stairs.

The coroner told her that her son was impaired by alcohol.

Some of his friends and former teammates feel guilty that they didn't try to intervene in Stevenson's life a little sooner.

"If Billy had got that help 10 years ago, I think we could have got him through it, but it was a little too late," said Wilkinson.

Hugh Campbell puts some of the blame on himself.

"When I coached him I was the youngest coach in all of pro sport," he said.

"Maybe a more experienced coach would have done something earlier. I didn't realize the path he was on until his career was over, but looking back on it, the signs were there."

But alumni members who tried to help Stevenson and Hentschel hope that despite their inability to save them, they did make their teammates' lives a little better.

"All we've done so far is gone to three funerals. It's not a very good success rate, but I think we did make a difference," said Wilkinson.

The alumni wants to launch a formal support group -- the first in the CFL -- with funding to provide professional services to players and former players who need them.

"We'll get smarter at this and better at this and we will help more people and it will grow and eventually the guys going through this will have some solid support," said Farlinger.

He hopes to use Stevenson's story to get the attention of young players who may think they are indestructible.

"I guarantee you that if you're a defensive lineman and you think you're any good, Bill would kick your ass with one hand tied behind his back," he said, choking back tears. "He was the best -- and yet this happened to him. He had no weaknesses as a player and yet this happened to him."

As shocking and as difficult as it was, the way Stevenson died was probably for the best, friends and family say. His body was failing him and he wouldn't have wanted to fade away in a hospital attached to tubes and wires.

"I'm just grateful he wasn't driving a car and hurting people," added Marilyn. "He always drove. It never fazed him that he shouldn't be."

The Eskimos held a memorial for Stevenson in the Green and Gold Room at Commonwealth Stadium with former teammates coming from across the country to attend.

Old memories were rekindled with laughter and tears.

After the last of the guests had departed and the stadium went quiet, the family sprinkled the big lineman's ashes at midfield.

Steffanie says she'll likely cry every time she attends an Eskimos game, knowing a part of her father is on that field.

"He had such a great personality, but he couldn't get past the drinking. That was his downfall. He was such a wonderful person in every other way."