This is a Christmas story that starts with a quarterback in his house, and a man in his backyard. Everyone knows the quarterback – spoiler: it’s Jeff George – but the man in the backyard is a stranger. He’s fishing on the lake behind George’s house in the early 1990s. Didn’t ask. Just shows up and starts casting lines.
He’s about to a hook a big one.
The man’s name is Lucious Newsom, and he’s one of those people who holds your community together, whether you’ve heard of him or not. He’s a retired pastor – well, he was 35 years ago – and he strikes up a conversation with Jeff George, quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts (well, he was 35 year ago), and pretty soon George is acting like he’s a reporter or something, firing questions at Lucious Newsom.
You’re trying to feed how many people?
You’ve been doing this how long?
The Lord’s WHAT?
It goes like that, and pretty soon the quarterback is asking to join Lucious Newsom’s army of volunteers. The quarterback – this is Jeff George, remember – is in the early days of one of the most star-crossed careers in local history. Two-time state champion at Warren Central, national player of the year, rewrote the state record book for passing and set a few national marks as well. Goes to Purdue with all the hype in the world, gets hurt, loses his coach, gets out and goes to Illinois. No. 1 overall pick of the Colts in 1990, plays here from 1990-93, then bounces around the NFL until he retires in 2006.
To know Jeff George – and everyone around Indianapolis knew Jeff George in those days – was to have an opinion on his transfer from Purdue, his holdout with the Colts in 1993 that marked the beginning of the end for him here, his journeyman career that followed. A 1991 IndyStar story started with this:
“Love him or hate him…”
Nobody in 1991 knew about the man on the lake, or what happened next – indeed, what is happening even now. Nobody knew about Jeff George’s friendship with Lucious Newsom, because George wasn’t talking about it. To this day he’d rather not talk about the Thanksgiving turkeys or the Christmas van, the trips to the food banks and homeless shelters. He loves to talk about Lucious Newsom, though, the stranger who showed up in his backyard with a fishing rod.
Newsom died in 2008 at age 93. Well, that’s the age that was reported. George isn’t so sure.
“He was in his late 80s or early 90s, but nobody really knows exactly how old he was,” George says now. “I think there’s a lot of unknown about Lucious, but everybody knew him around Indianapolis.”
Funny how that works, isn’t it? There’s a lot of unknown about Jeff George, too. Even if everybody knew him around Indianapolis.
Jeff George, the Christmas QB
They call him the Christmas QB, and yes, Jeff George feels sheepish about it. But you know how the world is today: If you’re not first, you’re last – and if you’re not marketing with a catchy slogan, you’re definitely not first.
A buddy supplied the name – “Christmas QB” – and Jeff George set the bar: Raise $200,000 to give families with foster children $250 gift cards to meet their needs this Christmas. George has partnered with the national family preservation ministry Upstream Collaborative, and the Indiana Department of Child Services has gotten on board, and pretty soon the Christmas QB will be coming to a town near you.
The DCS will identify families and kids in the Indiana child welfare system to receive a visit from George and his childhood friend, Todd Melloh, as they’re driving around Indiana in the “Christmas QB” van provided by Greg Hubler Automotive Group. The Christmas QB is going national, too, with $250 gift cards planned for families in other NFL markets (Atlanta, Oakland, Minnesota, Washington D.C., Seattle, Chicago) where Jeff played.
“Our goal is to raise awareness and really help these families. It’s Hoosiers helping Hoosiers,” says George, 57. “Kind of like when I was playing – I like to compare everything to football – you’re the quarterback and you elevate the team, or you try to. That’s how I’m feeling now, outside of football. How can I continue to be a quarterback, not on the football field but off it? How can I make it better?
“The best way I know to do that is to help families get better. If there’s one child that has a better Christmas, then we’ve elevated that family.”
Jeff George will be knocking on doors and handing out gift cards and even throwing passes with anyone who asks. The goal is to throw a million passes a year for 10 years. That’s a lot of gift cards. It’s a lot of doors to approach, but that’s how Lucious Newsom did it. Lucious would walk into grocery stores each Saturday morning, tell them about the Lord’s Pantry he’d founded in the 1980s, and ask for whatever they could donate.
Newsom was bold like that. He once walked into the backyard of the Colts’ quarterback, and anyway, you know that story now. Do you know what happened next? How Jeff George began going to local grocery stores and picking up whatever food they could donate? And how the starting quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts would then deliver it to the Lord’s Pantry, or to a homeless shelter?
“If anyone recognized me, they never said anything about it,” George says now. “I wasn’t the Colts quarterback – I was just somebody handing out turkeys, or whatever we had that day. I don’t think anybody really even cared about that.”
George did that for years here, and continued his work with Newsom in the offseason, and kept it up even after Newsom died in 2008. Look hard enough online, and you’ll find a 2015 newsletter produced by The Lord’s Pantry, honoring George and another former Colts player, Marlin Jackson, “for their community spirit and sportsmanship on and off the field.”
Tell George about your discovery, your online sleuthing, and he goes quiet. He breaks the silence with one word spoken softly.
“Riiiight,” he says, then pauses again.
“I wasn’t anyway near a big part of it like Lucious was,” he says. “I was like every person that just wanted to help out and be a part of it.”
Nobody knew. Nobody was ever going to find out, but one day – this was years ago – local radio personality and community advocate Jake Query was at the Wheeler Mission, doing what he does there, when a big truck pulled up in the back. The driver steps out, opens the flatbed and starts hauling fresh meat inside. Query’s looking, and he’s pretty sure … is that Jeff George?
Last week I’m talking with George. I tell him about Wheeler Mission, about the truck, the meat. I tell him about Jake Query.
He goes quiet, then breaks the silence with one word.
“Riiiight.”
How many more Wheeler Mission stories are there, I’m asking Jeff. How many that nobody knows about?
“I respect what you’re asking,” he says, “but I’ve never been comfortable answering those questions.”
Respect right back.
Doyel from 2017: The Christmas I learned the truth about Grandma
Jeff George: loyal Warren Central legend
Jeff George is from the Eastside of Indianapolis. That’s not a location, but a definition. It’s who Jeff is, because it’s who his mother and father were. Dave George Sr. coached freshman basketball and taught at Tech. Judy George was a secretary at Pleasant Run Elementary. They met at Broad Ripple High. Dave played basketball. Judy was a cheerleader.
As a kid Jeff hung out at Washington Square Mall and ate at the Paramount Pizza Palace, before the mall went quiet and the pizza joint went out of business. Weekends were watching his older brother Dave Jr. play quarterback at Warren Central, and maybe a few holes on the weekend at Maple Creek golf course. When Jeff was old enough to be the Warren Central quarterback, and he was a spectacle – strongest arm in city history, to this day, at any level – more than 100 family members attended Friday night games and then filled the George house, yard and driveway for Judy’s homecooked food.
Wrote the IndyStar during his senior year: “The George family – Jeff, his parents Dave and Judy, brothers Dave and Randy – is extremely close. A large family of grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles have followed Jeff through his legendary career at Warren Central.”
That family, the Eastside – same thing – is the reason Jeff chose Leon Burtnett’s struggling Purdue program coming off its fourth losing season in five years over offers from Jimmy Johnson’s Miami Hurricanes, Terry Donahue’s UCLA Bruins and scores more.
“I picked Purdue (because) I just didn’t think I could leave Indiana,” he said on national signing day in February 1986. “I’m just an Indiana boy. I couldn’t leave.”
Things change – Purdue fired the pass-happy Burtnett after George’s injury-marred freshman season, and replaced him with the ground control offense of Fred Akers – and Jeff moved on, but only from Purdue. Not from his family, not from Indiana. When Jeff got married several years later, Dave Sr. was his best man. When he played for the Colts, Dave Jr. was his roommate. He paid off his parents’ mortgage and had his mom retire from Pleasant Run to handle his own business affairs. And he hired his best friend since childhood, Todd Melloh, to run his foundation.
The Jeff George Foundation found its purpose in 2000 when Judy was diagnosed with breast cancer. While Judy was battling the disease to the end in 2010, her son’s foundation sponsored free mammograms and provided transport for those whose mammogram revealed the need for more testing.
Jeff doesn’t talk about it.
“I had a foundation,” he says, “like every other athlete does.”
Try another tack. Ask Jake Query about it.
“He has raised – quietly – incredible sums of money for breast cancer research in his late mother’s honor,” says Query, who struck up a friendship with George that day at Wheeler Mission after being among his loudest critics on the air. “The guy is a fascinating case of public persona vs. private reality.”
‘Who am I to get attention?’
The public knows what it’s told, and it was told that George transferred to Illinois after complaining about Purdue’s decision to fire Burtnett and replace him with Akers. It was told about his holdout in Indianapolis, and his sideline spat in Atlanta with Falcons coach June Jones that led to a suspension. Those things happened. So did other things, but Jeff has never wanted to tell anyone what he does away from the field.
For example: During his rookie season with the Colts in 1990, he read in the IndyStar about a high school wrestler from Winchester, Andy Chalfant, who was battling cancer. George and his mother showed up in Andy’s hospital room with the football he’d thrown on his first NFL pass two months earlier, a story his mother called the newspaper to share.
“He’s just been so good to Andy,” Carra Chalfant told the Star. “As far as I know (the family) hasn’t told anybody, and I know them well enough to know they aren’t doing it for the publicity.”
Another example: This story, the one you’re reading, came from his friend. Todd Melloh sent me an email and followed up with a phone call where he said he thought, probably – OK, maybe – he could get Jeff to talk about the Christmas QB initiative.
That was the story’s premise. Research through IndyStar archives, and talks with several of George’s friends, filled in the blanks. Like the Lucious Newsom story from the early 1990s, and the postscript a decade later – when Newsom’s van broke down, threatening the retired pastor’s food ministry, so Jeff George bought him a new van.
Tell George about that – tell him you found out – and he goes quiet, then breaks the silence with one word.
“Riiiight,” he says, then pauses again.
“Those are things at the time nobody really cared about it,” he says. “God’s blessed me in so many ways. If I’m able to help, I’ll do that. What I saw day-to-day from (Newsom), getting up early and going to stores, I could do nothing in comparison. Buying a little van is nothing.”
How many more van stories are there, I’m asking Jeff. How many that nobody knows about?
“Listen, it’s what we do,” he says. “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do in life? Help others? It’s not about advertising or getting credit. If you can help somebody by who you are, it’s what you’re supposed to do.
“I just like to do good things for people. If other people want to talk and say stuff, fine, that’s great. I get emotional when I think about it, and all the people in my life who do things that go unnoticed. Who am I to get attention? I don’t do anything that others don’t do.”
Riiiight.
How you can help: Donations for Jeff George’s Christmas QB campaign can be made through www.christmasqb.com, with the proceeds going directly to families identified by DCS and Upstream Collaborative members.
More: Join the text conversation with sports columnist Gregg Doyel for insights, reader questions and Doyel’s peeks behind the curtain.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Doyel: Jeff George aka ‘the Christmas QB’ is raising a small fortune for foster families
Reporting by Gregg Doyel, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
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