Re: The rest of the Story.
Posted by: root <root@...>
You should tell the REAL 'Rest of the Story'
(The following is from http://www.snopes.com/glurge/warner.htm )
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Kurt and Brenda did not meet while both were working in a grocery store,
so you can throw out all that bit about his mooning over her timecard.
They met in 1992 at a country bar while he was Northern Iowa's starting
quarterback. (After being cut by the Green Bay Packers in 1994, Kurt did
find employment in a grocery store, though: He stocked shelves at a
Hy-Vee in Cedar Falls for $5.50 an hour.) The next morning Kurt brought
Brenda roses and wanted to meet her youngsters. She'd told Kurt about her
children the night before, so there was no dramatic surprise when she
wheeled in a paraplegic son.
The Warners' was a lengthy courtship. They married in 1997 after meeting
in 1992 (not "a year later," as the e-mail has it).
Brenda (who is four years older than Kurt) had two children by a previous
marriage; however, the e-mail version has their birth order reversed. In
real life, Zachary is three years older than his sister, Jesse Jo. (More
on this seemingly picayune point later because it's pivotal to the real
story of Brenda Warner's life before Kurt.)
Zachary Warner (now 12) does indeed have serious physical infirmities,
but how he came by them is far more of a story than the Internet fiction
lets on. He was a perfectly healthy infant, not a Down Syndrome child.
When he was four months old, his father dropped him, and in the blink of
an eye, this previously healthy baby was suddenly clinging to life, his
grip slipping fast. He suffered severe brain damage, and both of his
retinas were ruptured. At the time, few thought Zachary would live, and
fewer still held out any hope he would ever see, sit up, read, walk, or
talk.
Zachary's recovery has been long and arduous, but he now walks and talks.
Though still legally blind, he can make out colors and shapes. No longer
strictly a special-needs student, he is integrated for half-days in a
regular seventh-grade class.
Kurt adopted Zachary and Jesse after his wedding to Brenda in 1997. The
Warners have since added two more children to their brood: Kade in 1998,
and Jada in 2001.
As for what sort of lad Zachary is and what kind of relationship he
enjoys with his adoptive father, this anecdote should say it all: After
the Rams victory in the NFC Championship game in 2000, 10-year-old
Zachary presented Kurt with a homemade card done in Rams blue and gold.
Inside, in childlike scrawl, it read: "You're as good a dad as you are a
quarterback!"
Zachary's birth dad could hardly be described in similar fashion. An
inability to come to terms with the injuries he'd visited upon his son
led to the breakup of his marriage to Brenda. He left her when she was
eight months pregnant with Jesse.
Over and above the numerous inaccuracies, the worst offence this
particular e-mailed glurge is guilty of is omission. Not content with
recasting the details of the Warners' lives (and the reality had the
fiction beat, remember), it leaves by the wayside horrendously large
chunks of a truly thrilling story of the sort one usually pays $9.00 to
see at the movies:
All the heartbreak Kurt endured trying to get into the NFL, and the many
setbacks he had to weather along the way. So many of our gridiron heroes
go in as highly touted draft picks it's sometimes hard to realize some
take a tortuous path to the pigskin paradise of the NFL. Kurt presented
as a free agent to the Green Bay Packers in 1994, was signed, then cut by
them that same year. In 1997 he had a tryout scheduled with the Chicago
Bears which fell through when an injury sustained during his honeymoon
rendered him hors de combat. (A venomous spider had bitten him on his
throwing elbow.) He had to muck about in the Arena and European leagues
before finally being taken on by the Rams in 1997 as their third-string
quarterback. In 1999 he stepped in during the preseason in place of
injured Trent Green and began almost immediately to rewrite Rams'
history.
Brenda's battle to make a life for herself and her two children after her
first husband deserted her. This former Marine had to return to her
parents' home when she was eight months pregnant with her second child
and with a brain-damaged child already in tow. She completed her nursing
training during this period, getting by with the help of food stamps and
student loans.
The death of Brenda's parents in Mountain View, Arkansas, in a tornado in
1996. They'd retired there just a year earlier.
Kurt's embracing of Christianity in 1996. (Although he was raised a
Catholic, he dates his spiritual awakening to those dark days in the wake
of the deaths of Brenda's parents.)
Kurt's throwing for a record 414 yards in his 23-16 Super Bowl XXXIV
victory over the Tennessee Titans and being named that contest's Most
Valuable Player. This new mark topped the previous record of 357 yards
set by San Francisco's Joe Montana in Super Bowl XXIII and capped an
astounding 4,353-yard, 41-touchdown regular season that won him league
MVP honors.
As you can see, falling in love with and then marrying a gal who had two
children, one of them a special needs child, was just part of this most
remarkable story.
In Super Bowl XXXVI, Kurt Warner led the St. Louis Rams in their quest
for another victory; although they came up just short, Warner was already
the stuff of legends. Deservedly
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