It was the summer of 1976 and Keith Moody, 23 and freshly graduated from Syracuse University, was so excited about having made the Buffalo Bills that he’d moved his wife and five children — aged 4, 6, 7, 13 and 14 — to the far end of the Thruway where his football future was just waiting to embrace him.
(Editor’s note: You might want to read the above paragraph again. We’ll wait for you.)
OK, are you back now? Good. There will be an explanation of how a 23-year-old could be the father of four girls and one boy, two of whom were teens, in just a little bit. But, first ...
Upon arrival out there in western New York with his brood, Moody — a product of Nottingham High School who went on to play for both Ben Schwartzwalder and Frank Maloney at SU — was initially mildly puzzled and then worried nearly sick.
You see, Keith had packed up all those various and sundry family members and had relocated them at the other end of the state, assuming all the while that because the Bills had drafted him, their intent was to keep him.
“I didn’t understand that if you were a 10th-round pick like I was, the odds were against you,” said Moody the other day. “I just thought, ‘OK. The Bills took me. I’m on the team.’ Then, when I showed up at training camp, there were probably 150 guys there. And I thought, ‘Wait a minute. Only 50 guys make the team. What are these other 100 people doing here?’”
So, Keith asked and he was told that merely being drafted guaranteed nothing but an invitation to make both the Buffalo club and the money that would follow. Moreover, he learned that only four of the draft’s 26 10th-round picks the previous year ended up sticking with the organizations that had chosen them.
“All of a sudden,” Moody remembered, “things got a little frightening.”
Which gets us back to those kids. If this gig with the Bills didn’t work out, what would happen to Donna and Mark and Sharon and Karen and Shirley? How would Keith make good on his promise to raise them, to nurture them, to protect them? Where would the Moody clan go?
What: The 23rd annual Greater Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame Induction Dinner.
When: Monday, beginning at 7 p.m.
Where: The Holiday Inn in Liverpool.
Who: Edmund Dollard, Larry Kimball, Keith Moody, Beth Mowins, John Sherlock, Kris Terrillion and the members of the Syracuse Senior Cyclones Softball Team will be inducted.
Information: Call 657-3718.
“My mother,” Keith recalled, “used to say to me, ‘The same heat that melts butter makes steel.’ So, I guess I was either going to melt or get tough.”
Truth is, there was no option. When Keith’s mom died during his sophomore year at Syracuse, he manned up in an almost unfathomable way: He adopted his three sisters and one brother, aged 2 through 10 ... he dropped out of SU to thus end his football aspirations ... and he got a job to support not only them, but his wife and their biological daughter.
And he did all of this at 19. Or that age when returning an empty tray at some burger joint is considered by some to bearing up to responsibility.
Melt? Not Keith Moody, who’d returned to SU (and to the Orangemen, for whom he played defensive back) after working for a year and realizing that carving out a decent living would be easier with a college degree in his pocket. Not Keith Moody, who would make those Buffalo Bills and stick with them for five seasons. Not Keith Moody, who eventually won a Super Bowl ring while running back kickoffs for the Oakland Raiders.
No, not Keith Moody, who will be enshrined in the Greater Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame — as part of its 23rd annual induction dinner beginning at 7 p.m. — on Monday night at the Holiday Inn in Liverpool along with Edmund Dollard, Larry Kimball, Beth Mowins, John Sherlock, Kris Terrillion and the members of the Syracuse Senior Cyclones Softball Team.
Amazing, it is. And it becomes even more amazing because Keith Moody — O.J. Simpson’s teammate with the Bills in Buffalo and Herschel Walker’s roommate with the New Jersey Generals in the USFL on either side of that Super Bowl campaign with Oakland — has been for these past five years the principal of Mountain View High School in Mountain View, Calif.
And on his watch over these past five years, Mountain View has had an average ranking of No. 344 in Newsweek’s annual ratings of the Top 1,500 high schools in America.
“I enjoyed the intensity of playing,” said Moody, who is 56 and has long since shepherded those five kids into adulthood, but still has a daughter (Amber) and a son (Keith) at home. “It is an adrenaline rush out there. And I did enjoy the hitting. I kind of miss that because I can’t hit people anymore. In administration, you have to be more diplomatic and work problems out through conversation and discussion.
“I enjoy helping out with my son’s Little League football team, but I don’t really consider myself in athletics. I’m into academics. That’s where I pride myself. Helping students do well. Hiring the right teachers. Getting our kids into good colleges. That’s become my game plan at this point in my life.”
Getting to that point? Well, there was that stint in pro football. Then, Keith coached at Brockport State for three years. Then, he got involved in the New York State Migrant Education Program working with at-risk youths in the Buffalo city schools. Then, he took a similar job in northern California. Then, he earned his Master’s degree in counseling and became a high-school counselor in Fresno. Then, he moved into education administration. Then, he became an assistant principal. Then, he was promoted to principal.
And now, Keith Moody is back in the town in which he was raised. He’s returned to Syracuse to listen to the applause that will greet his very proper induction in our Sports Hall of Fame.
And those kids under his roof? All seven of them? Each and every one calls him, “Dad.” Even his brother and sisters.
“I was always more father than brother,” Keith said. “If you ask them now, as adults, they’ll tell you they don’t call me their brother. It’s ‘Dad.’ It’s always been ‘Dad.’ They send me the Father’s Day things. It’s just the way it is. They’ve been wonderful all along. It’s a good story, I know. But they made it pretty easy because they were such good kids.”
Wonder where they got it, huh?