Bleier: ‘We all have a story’
Steelers legend Rocky Bleier talks with Beating the Odds CEO Rocco Scalzi while Carmichaels Area High School Assistant Principal Ron Gallagher listens.
Rocky Bleier signs a football for the Carmichaels Area students while Chuck Baily watches on.
CARMICHAELS – Pittsburgh Steelers legend Rocky Bleier, whose football career was nearly derailed after he suffered severe injuries to his legs while serving in Vietnam, tried to inspire Carmichaels Area students with two words: Hope and opportunity.
“There are choices we have and the choices we make,” Bleier said. “A choice to be less than we’re capable … or doing more. There’s only one choice, and that’s to be the best we can be no matter what we do. Ultimately, we all have a story.”
Bleier was greeted with a standing ovation before speaking Friday afternoon to hundreds of Carmichaels students in the high school auditorium as part of the “Quarterbacks of Life” discussion he and Rocco Scalzi have brought to high schools across the country for the past 25 years.
Scalzi, who resides in Altoona, founded the Beating the Odds organization that promotes the speaker series and continues to work with local students. The foundation brought several high school students from Carmichaels, Mapletown, Washington and West Greene to Washington, D.C., earlier this year to participate in a simulated NASA mission to Mars.
“It’s the biggest reward when you see a young person facing challenges tell you this was important,” Scalzi said. “It gave them hope.”
Friday’s discussion with Bleier was meant to stir the imagination of students sitting in the auditorium and spread to the entire student body.
“That one kernel of hope has to start somewhere,” Bleier said.
For Bleier, that hope and opportunity took a winding and uncertain path.
Bleier was told in college he was “too short, too small, too slow to play football.” But he got an “opportunity” when he was taken by the Steelers late in the 1968 NFL Draft and given a shot to make the team. But before the end of the season, he was drafted again, this time by the U.S. Army, and was soon fighting in Vietnam. He suffered wounds to both legs and was hospitalized for several months while he recovered.
Bleier said he began questioning his future until he met a triple amputee recovering in the hospital bed next to him. That soldier’s positive attitude about his own situation made Bleier push aside his own doubts, even as his doctor questioned whether he’d ever play football again.
He explained to the students how just a few words – even from a stranger – can impact someone else’s life for both good and bad.
“He just sucked that hope right out of me,” Bleier said of his doctor’s assertion he’d never play football. “We can change someone’s life with a smile, a pat on the back or some encouragement.”
A few days later, he received that encouragement in the form of a letter from Steelers owner Art Rooney writing to him that the team “needed him” and wished the running back a speedy recovery.
“Somebody needed me,” Bleier said. “They didn’t really need me, but someone took the time to care. All of a sudden, that hope was restored.”
Bleier was given time to recover and eventually returned to the Steelers in 1972. He still had to fight for his spot on the team, but he overcame other obstacles and his own doubts over the next three years before being part of the Steelers’ first Super Bowl win in 1974.
“There are times we doubt ourselves, there are times we don’t think we can accomplish something … there are times when we want to quit,” he said. “But we all have one talent. We all have one that we must find and develop. It’s unique to what anyone else has.”
He said his was determination, which allowed him to take advantage of the opportunities as they were presented to him. Bleier now looks back at his life and reflects on each moment and person that made him into the person he became.
“We all have the power to make a difference, achieve, believe and accomplish something,” he said. “You have that power. It’s up to you to develop it.”