Chiefs’ ‘healer’ Duvernay-Tardif earned major honor for ‘ultimate act of sportsmanship’
As curators of “The Most Inspiring Night In Sports,” our beautifully idealistic friends at the Musial Awards in St. Louis tirelessly seek out exemplary figures to honor in the name of Stan Musial. Their devout mission is to “encourage kindness, integrity and civility in sports and society — and to inspire people across the nation to be good sports.”
The annual event tends to both induce tears and uplift with reassurance about the possibilities of the better angels of our natures. Sometimes, maybe, we can all use reminding about those sorts of things.
Which brings us to this year’s honorees, to be formally recognized Dec. 26 in a nationally televised one-hour program on CBS.
They will include baseball immortal Hank Aaron, receiving the Stan Musial Lifetime Achievement Award for Sportsmanship … with some testimony from Negro Leagues Baseball Museum president Bob Kendrick. NASCAR’s Bubba Wallace will receive the Stan Musial Award for Extraordinary Character for his “courageous, visible stand promoting tolerance, understanding and unity, underscored by his push for NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag at races.”
And then, among other distinguished awardees, there is Chiefs guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif.
Amid the pandemic, the native Canadian in July opted out of the 2020 NFL season to draw on the medical degree he earned while playing for the Chiefs so he could continue to contribute any way possible at a long-term care facility about 30 miles outside Montreal.
(He continues to do so several days a week even as he takes online classes from Harvard, according to the Montreal Gazette, toward a master’s degree in public health to complement the work of his foundation. Attempts to update and clarify with Duvernay-Tardif and a representative were not immediately successful).
Because Duvernay-Tardif recognized the gravity of the moment but has yet not enrolled in his medical residency, he embraced typically less-glamorous work more commonly associated with orderlies or nurses than doctors.
“If I am to take risks,” he wrote on Twitter when he opted out, “I will do it caring for patients.”
At essentially the halfway mark of the NFL season, there’s no way to know what will ultimately define it on the field.
But in the season of COVID, which lingers over the moment and constantly clouds how the next few months could play out, no one has defined himself more indelibly than Duvernay-Tardif.
He forsook a $2.75 million salary — though it’s understood he would receive the $150,000 negotiated for those who voluntarily opted-out — and he shrugged off the chance to repeat as a Super Bowl champion.
All to serve others in a way well beyond even that fundamental mindset of the offensive lineman.
(I’ve long had a vague notion of that, but I’ve thought about it often since visiting former Mizzou and Chiefs offensive lineman Mitch Morse in Austin, Texas, in 2017 and learning about the depths to which he dedicated himself to his brother with special needs, Robbie: “Isn’t that the aesthetic of an offensive lineman? Isn’t that the ethos of kind of what you look for when you want to have somebody doing the thankless job?” Mitch’s father, Kevin, said at the time.)
In this case, life in the “red zone” isn’t about working inside the 20-yard-line but within a COVID outbreak he was dealing with on his assigned floor, as LDT colleague (and admirer) Dr. Josef Moser noted in an interview with the Musial Awards for the show in December.
In this case, being in the trenches has meant Duvernay-Tardif often has been doing “the daily things not everyone wants to do in life,” Moser said. Like bathing patients or helping feed them or drawing blood and changing diapers.
But his work also has entailed something all the more elemental and meaningful, as Duvernay-Tardif explains in fresh detail in an interview to be released for the show.
Even after he quickly moved by his fleeting “egocentric” concerns about his own life in the weeks after the Super Bowl and thought about how “if it’s bad for me it’s probably worse for other people” and enlisted to help, he had another sort of revelation.
In his zeal to be as efficient as possible, he came to feel somewhere between harried and hurried among patients at Centre Gertrude-Lafrance.
“If I keep doing that,” he thought to himself, “I’m going to miss the point.”
And that was to engage and interact. As much as their medicine and treatment, he thought, “what those people need is some comfort, some dignity” and undivided attention.
So he took it upon himself to take more time with as many as he could, to be the one to help them connect with their children and friends via Facetime … or even with Montreal Canadiens players as he moved about in what appears to be customized Chiefs gear.
Just another aspect of his profound statement.
“In a world upside-down with the virus, who was the NFL player who did the most he could to have the most positive impact?” Marc Schreiber, executive producer of the Musial Awards, said in a phone interview. “Seems to me that’s Laurent.”
As it happens, his remarkable decision may or may not be enshrined by the NFL, to which he also has contributed as part of the NFL-NFLPA coronavirus task force.
The criteria for the prestigious Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year award is that it recognizes a player for “his excellence on and off the field,” so it’s understood that any nominee must be an active player on the field. But that doesn’t preclude the possibility of some other special distinction by the NFL.
(Heck, how about just finally allowing him to add “M.D.” onto his name on the back of his jersey?)
But the ever-vigilant guardians of the Musial Awards, produced by the St. Louis Sports Commission, promptly understood the significance of a decision that Duvernay-Tardif calls the hardest of his life.
Ultimately, it was clear to him as he struggled to reconcile his own duty and health and the possibility of putting other people at risk through football that his twin passions finally were at odds.
“It was the first time that I felt like one was not really serving the other,” he said in the video.
Only weeks after his decision was announced, Schreiber sent Duvernay-Tardif a letter requesting the pleasure of his company in the group and offering eloquent testimony as to why.
“To us, you performed the ultimate act of sportsmanship by aiding your community and country during the coronavirus pandemic,” Schreiber wrote in the letter shared with The Star. “Your actions represent extraordinary selflessness, courage and sacrifice. At a time when you could have used the offseason to rest and revel in a Super Bowl title, you instead jumped in to make a difference, support the medical community, and help keep your fellow citizens safe and healthy.
“I know you will be the first to note that you are one of many doing their part and you’d consider others on the front lines to be the true heroes. But you also represent an exceptional example as an athlete who put aside his own comforts and success to join the battle. For that, you are most deserving of one of the most important awards in sports – an award that stands for character, compassion and generosity.”
Typical of Duvernay-Tardif’s grounded humility, he reiterates his gratitude to the Chiefs and Andy Reid, the one NFL coach in the pre-draft process who encouraged his interest in medical school and who endorsed this despite its implications to the team.
When Duvernay-Tardif announced his decision, Reid emphasized the higher calling and reflected on his mother, Elizabeth, a radiologist who earned her medical degree at McGill University — the same school in Montreal where Duvernay-Tardif earned his.
Doctors are “givers,” Reid said, “and they’re healers.”
In more ways than one:
At Centre Gertrude-Lafrance, where Duvernay-Tardif’s presence and Chiefs merchandise have made many a Kansas City fan, Moser said his generous spirit and sense of self as just part of a team has had an impact on the morale of staff and patients “in ways that you can’t imagine.”
Unlike many of his colleagues, Moser was one of the few who followed the NFL and was worried about meeting LDT out of fear he’d just blabber nonsense as he met his hero.
Turns out he’s all the more his hero now that he knows how modest and real he is, accentuated by the truth serum of this chaotic moment in history.
The Musial Awards normally focus on acts of sportsmanship on the field. But in a year dominated by the pandemic, there was room to pivot to what really represents sportsmanship under the circumstances.
“And there’s no finer example,” Schreiber said, “than what Laurent has done.”
And while Schreiber was right when he wrote to Duvernay-Tardif that he suspected he did not seek recognition, he offered a compelling point to enlist him … and thus further sustain the rest of us.
“By spotlighting what you have done,” he wrote, “we can further foster a culture of sportsmanship – and we can motivate others to follow your lead to be kind, gracious and help one another.”
This story was originally published November 6, 2020 at 5:00 AM.