So I was on the sidelines during the pre-game warm up at the University of Arizona Stadium for a contest between THE SEATTLE SEAHAWKS and the PHOENIX CARDINALS.
The place was packed. Sold out, as usual, and I watched in awe as these huge men practiced their trade there in front of me. The whistle blew and all the “boys” started going into the house to get ready for the game.
An assistant coach for the Seahawks came over to me and said, “Wait here, Pete is coming right over and he wants to talk to you….” Pete was talking to a tall, thin, bespecled man just geeked out in Seahawks swag. Coat, hat, buttons, field pass hanging around his neck.
Pete Carroll, head coach of the Super Bowl Champion Seattle Seahawks took the tall man by the arm and guiding him over towards me.
Pete and I had been fast friends since he had taken the head coach job at USC, and together we went thru the incredible ups and downs of the greatest run in college football history. In 2008 Pete had a break in his schedule because of the “SABEN RULE” where a head coach could NOT RECRUIT for the months of April and May.
Pete called me up and said, “HEY! I got some free time which never happens…can you take me to EGYPT? Never been there….want to see it!” So Pete and Melissa and I all went to both EGYPT and ISRAEL for about two weeks.
He would later say it was the greatest time of his life.
“Paul, I want you to meet my best friend, this is Sean David Morton”.
His “boss” was, of course, Paul Allen, the multi-billionaire founder of Microsoft and the owner of the Portland Trailblazers and the Seattle Seahawks. I didn’t know what to say to one of the richest men in the world. So I went all goofy as he shook may hand.
“Mr. Allen! Wow! Hey! Can you loan me fifty bucks?”
He kept shaking my hand, put his other hand on my shoulder and said,
“NO! WHY DO YOU THINK I’m so RICH! HAHAHAHA!”
And he walked away.
Pete and I were still laughing. “Wow! I never saw him act like that before. That was funny!!”
I was always asking him to come back and coach in Los Angeles, and that the head coach job for the Rams might be opening up. I had done an Astro-Chartography chart for Pete, and his NORTH NODE SUPER CHARGED POWER LINE, I kid you not, ran right down the CENTER of the Los Angeles Memorial Colliseum! I always thought he felt that intuitivley and it may have explained his tremendous success there.
So standing near mid-field with tens of thousands of people watching us, Pete took the time to tell me a story.
“Let me tell you why I’m here, and why I work for that man.” He put his arm around me and pulled me closer so I could hear him. “When the Ebola outbreak happened in Africa, remember how the scientists all said it was going to spread and kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people? Well, that man took personal responsibility for that outbreak and said he was going to do something about that situation. He wrote a personal check for $100 million which out fitted nine 747s as flying mobile hospitals and sent them to the heart of the Ebola outbreak in Africa and it stopped the spread of that disease and saved thousands of people. He wanted no credit, and didn’t even want anyone to know about it.”
So for a multi-billionaire with a heart, who may or may not still owe me fifty bucks, thank you for your life, your brilliance, your generosity and your spirit.
You will be sorely missed in a world that is darker without your light.