Continued from Part I

In a time when young men struggle to know what it means to be a man, this book is so poignant.  For decades, it seems as if other men in society have been urging boys and young men to grow up and “be a man.”  Season of Life by Jeffrey Marx faces the question of what it means to be a man head on.  It seems as all cultures have some kind of ritual which signals the end of boyhood and the beginning of manhood.  At this point in time, in the United States of America, it seems that we, as a society, have no definition of what it means to be a man.  Unless, you look at the society as a whole, to Hollywood, traditional stereotypes, etc.  Some seem to find the changing in a young man’s life marked by that of conquest:  sex, money, fame, etc.  But is that really the definition of being a man?

Marx began the journey when he had heard that the old Baltimore Memorial Stadium was being torn down in the Winter of 2001.  Marx had served as a ball boy in the 70′s for the old Baltimore Colts team which had played in the stadium.  Marx wanted to see it one last time.  In this context, he decided to find as many of those football players as he could.  The search led him to a small private school in Maryland, Gilman High School.  There, Joe Ehrmann, a former Baltimore Colt defensive lineman, was serving as a volunteer assistant football coach.  Ehrmann and his head coach, Biff Poggi were coaching Gilman to conference championships while teaching their football players how to become men:  Men Built for Others.

Marx decided to stay a while.  He decided to follow the Gilman football team for a season, and to see what Ehrmann was spending his time doing.  Ehrmann was a “life of the party” type person during his time with the Colts until he experienced tragedy when his little brother was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and passed away before attending college.  Ehrmann began to seek answers to the meaning of life, and, after beginning a relationship with God, attended Dallas Theological Seminary during his offseasons.  Erhmann became a minister and started a ministry called The Door in inner city Baltimore.  Eventually, Ehrmann served as the preaching pastor at Grace Fellowship Church in Baltimore.  Along with his wife, Paula, Ehrmann founded Building Men and Women for Others, an organization which strives to empower men and women to be their best for the sake of others.

Through Ehrmann and Poggi’s work with Gilman, they instilled the principles derived from Ehrmann’s Building Men for Others Ministry.  Even though the coaches were dedicated to helping the team achieve success on the field, the purpose for the boys was something entirely different.  Marx related the ritual in which the coaches would ask the team, “What is our job as coaches?”  The boys would answer in unity, “to love us.”  Then the coaches would ask, “What is your job?”  “To love each other,” they would respond.  This ritual was delivered with the enthusiasm you would expect from a football team getting ready to take the field.

Each game day, hours before the game, Gilman players would head to “chapel” where Ehrmann would lead them in Building Men for Others 101.  The coaches shared stories, often from the Bible, to help the boys identify areas in which they could help others.  Ehrmann explains that what society teaches as becoming a man is really false masculinity.  Instead of defining masculinity in terms of athletic abilities, economic success and sexual conquest, masculinity should be defined in terms of relationships and having a purpose bigger than one’s self.  This is underscored to the players through Gilman’s code of conduct.  Each player is to accept responsibility, lead courageously, and enact justice on behalf of others.  The coaches encourage their players to never let another boy sit alone at lunch.

One story in the book (p. 53) highlights the importance to the coaches of building these boys to be men for others.  After a scrimmage, at a team cookout, one of the parents of the boys asked Coach Poggi how successful he thought the team would be.  Poggi responded that he didn’t know.  He said he would know in about 20 years when he sees how good of a father, husband, member of the community they will be.  The parent, of course, was talking about that season.  Biff was talking about the rest of their lives.

Marx followed the team thoughout the whole season.  During the season, he shared regular visits with Ehrmann to learn more about the concepts involved in Building Men for Others.  The journey led him to explore his own relationship with his father.  In the end, he decided to do something about it before it was too late.  The principles he had learned from Ehrmann and Poggi as they coached the boys from Gilman High School, ultimately became principles that would cause him to make a decision and act upon it.  The last chapter, a visit with his father, was very moving.