343 – Chris Mallette of Chicago, IL Father of Four, Director of Community Engagement & Football Coach at Chicago Hope Academy

Transcript:

Tom Couch: Special thanks to Horizon Therapeutics for sponsoring the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast. Working tirelessly to research, develop and bring forward medicines for people living with rare and rheumatic diseases. Discover more about Horizon Therapeutics mission at horizontherapeutics.com.

Chris Mallette: You know common language at football practice. You know, I tell guys I love them all the time. You know, at the end of every practice, I tell them I love you guys and they all stop. We love you too, coach. You know, I mean, you can imagine what that’s like for some kids who don’t have any men in their life, let alone a man that comes in their life and he’s the football coach talking about, I love you, but I think love never fails. I think love always wins regardless. It may not look like love wins today, but love is going to win. And I’m a firm believer in that.

Tom Couch: That’s our guest this week, Chris Mallette, the director of community engagement and head football coach at Chicago Hope Academy. Chris is the father of four boys and he and our host David Hirsch sat down recently for an emotionally moving conversation, which we’ll hear on this week’s Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast. Now say hello to the founder of the Special Fathers Network and our host, David Hirsch.

David Hirsch: Hi, and thanks for listening to the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast presented by the Special Fathers Network, a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs. The Special Fathers Network Mastermind Group experience is the most comprehensive program the 21st Century Dads foundation offers. Dads raising children with special needs, meet virtually on a weekly basis and form meaningful relationships while sharing weekly wins, discussing books and sharing heartfelt challenges. One of the highlights of the year is attending an in-person weekend retreat. We’re launching 10 new mastermind groups in 2024 with 10 dads per group. That means we’re only looking for 10 like-minded dads in each community. If you’re a dad raising a child with special needs, we hope you’ll join a local mastermind group and make the investment to become the best version of yourself. For more information, please see the show notes or simply go to 21stCenturyDads.org.

Tom Couch: Now let’s listen to this incredible conversation between Chris Mallette and David Hirsch.

David Hirsch: I’m, thrilled to be talking today with Chris Mallette of Chicago, who is the director of community engagement and head football coach at Chicago Hope Academy. Chris also does violence prevention consulting and is the father of four boys. Chris, thank you for taking the time to do a podcast interview for the Special Fathers Network.

Chris Mallette: Thanks for having me.

David Hirsch: You and your wife Kendall have been married for 28 years and are the proud parents of four boys. Luke, 26, Zion, 24, Judah, 19, and Levi, 16. Their family has been touched by mental health challenges including severe anxiety, depression, OCD and bipolar. Let’s start with some background. Where did you grow up? Tell me something about your family.

Chris Mallette: Okay, so I grew up in little town in New Jersey called Florham Park, New Jersey. It’s now the headquarters of New York Jets. It was once the headquarters of Exxon before it became ExxonMobil and the jets bought it from them. But I grew up there. I was a child of the 70s, born in 1970, had an amazing childhood in Florham Park, N.J. was safe, was nurtured. My parents were divorced when I was young. My dad was a neurologist. He was a doctor, so he was the first doctor in the family. So he broke a lot of barriers. A pioneer of sorts. My mom was a nurse. She, ended, up being the head nurse on a psychiatric unit in New Jersey. She’s 89 now, still diagnosing me as a 53 year old. But I will say she’s right on the money when she offers and proffers her diagnoses. But my mom is 89 in New Jersey. My dad passed away, about 14 years ago. He was a pioneer in those regards. I realized I’m kind of a pioneer. I’m the first lawyer in our family. So, you know, that pioneering spirit I probably got from my dad. But my parents were divorced when I was very young. I don’t remember ever really being in the house with my mother and my father. My earliest memories of my father are visiting him when I was little. Okay. My siblings. I’m the baby of five, the brother who’s 63, sister who is 62, just turned 62. And then I have a brother who’s 61. He has battled bipolar and some mental illness throughout his life. And then I have a brother who’s 54, and I bring up the litter at 53.

David Hirsch: Okay, well, thanks for the clarification. I think I misspoke when I said that you, were the youngest of five boys. You have a older sister as well.

Chris Mallette: Oh, yeah.

David Hirsch: And, you mentioned your dad was a neurologist. I’m wondering what type of work did he actually do?

Chris Mallette: So he was in the army. He graduated from Howard Undergrad. He went to Meharry Medical School in Tennessee. That’s where you met my mom. And they were married. I think shortly after he got out of medical school, he practiced medicine. He had a medical practice in Milwaukee, in Silver Spring, Maryland, I think one or two other spots, one spot in North Carolina, where he’s from. So my parents are both originally from North Carolina. My mom from Mebane, North Carolina tobacco farm, and my dad from Wilmington, North Carolina. They met, married after medical school and nursing school, and he practiced for a while and then he went into pharmaceuticals. He worked for Ciba Geigy, I believe in New Jersey. And that’s what brought him to New Jersey, eventually from Maryland to New Jersey. And that’s where I grew up, in the home in New Jersey that he and my mom bought when they moved there.

David Hirsch: Gotcha. Thanks for the background. So how would you describe your relationship with your dad?

Chris Mallette: Oh, boy, it was great when I was a kid. I mean, I don’t know anybody. Even if it’s not great, it’s still great because that’s your dad, you know, and you don’t know anything else and you just want to be close to your dad and you want your dad to be close to you. But, it kind of waned. He remarried after he divorced my mom, he remarried and then I think the visit stopped when I was probably 7 years old, 6 years old, maybe even a little bit younger. And then I didn’t really have much contact with him again until the end of my high school years, my senior year in high school, I did pretty well. I was going to Princeton. Not a lot of kids go to Princeton, period, but not a lot of kids from, you know, it was a nice neighborhood. We grew up in middle class northern New Jersey, but I was going to Princeton. I had done very well with football and some other things, had some honors and awards. And I just remember he kind of popped back in at that point. I wasn’t hostile or anything like that. My college years, I really worked on developing a relationship with my father during those years and kind of began to usher my siblings back into relationship with him, you know, knowing more now as I’m older, and I credit my mother to this. She never spoke a negative word about my father. Never. Not around me, you know, my entire childhood. She never said a negative word about my dad. When you grow up and you find out, you know, you get older and mature and you find out the reasons for the divorce and should have been justified in saying a lot of negative things. I think no one’s perfect. I’m, not shaming my dad or anything like that. I always honor him. But I think part of honoring him is really kind of honoring the truth of his life and his journey. I think of the frustration when he was upper level management and executive at Ciba Geigy Pharmaceuticals, preparing for a presentation in the 80s and having the room prepared. And he’s setting up the boardroom, he’s getting his presentation prepared, and doctors who he oversees walking in the room, telling them how they want his coffee, their coffee, thinking that he’s the help. And he made their coffee and he made terrible coffee. And he serves their coffee. And he said, and then he said when they started they were like, and then Dr. Mallette does such and lead to such and such presentation. And he just, and everybody kind of looked at him like all embarrassed and he said, hey, I’m going to tell you before we get started, you’re going to have terrible coffee if you drink that. My wife makes all the coffee in the house. And you know, it’s a different era. So he referred to his secretary, said, and my girl makes my coffee in the office. But I think it’s that sense of humor. It’s part of the resiliency that you develop over time. Like you can’t be mad at everything, you can’t be frustrated, everything. Learning stories like that, you know, just of him and hearing that and, you know, it kind of lets, you know, you know, when you, when you hit hard. There’s different ways to battle difficult situations. They don’t always have to be met with a sword and rushing onto the battlefield.

David Hirsch: Yeah, well, your point is well taken, which is there’s different ways and in this case to deal with discrimination. Right?

Chris Mallette: Yes.

David Hirsch: You could be offended by it and like, you know, make a big issue of it. Or you could, take a more subtle approach like he did. I love that story about the coffee.

Chris Mallette: And someone asked me at one point, they say, so you’re a high school football coach? And said, okay, coach, how do you argue with the referees? And I said, with all due respect, I am a black head football coach in Illinois. I do not argue with these referees.

David Hirsch: So is there anything else you’d like to say about your relationship with your dad?

Chris Mallette: Yeah, I’d say the last conversation I had with him before he passed away, my mother had called me and she said she had about eight days left. Eight to 10 days left. He was in a hospital in Baltimore, in intensive care. I flew out to Baltimore from Chicago. I had about two days to visit with him. But then the day before I left, he asked my mom to leave the room. And then when she left the room. He turned to me and he said, son, tell me about your Jesus. And ah, we just had a conversation about our faith and about my faith really, because he said like, you know, it’s just something just different about you and how you’ve been living your life and about how you do things, you know, and, and I think part of it was the whole reconciliation thing. I just forgave him, you know, I kind of understood a lot that he’d been through, but I understood it didn’t really matter, I guess like I didn’t have harbor a lot of unforgiveness. I just kind of forgave him and I think that that was kind of freeing for him not having to explain away his life decisions, especially his children, his son who he didn’t spend time with, you know, and then probably had quite a few regrets, not just with me, but with my siblings as well. You know, we talked, we had to talk about our faith, about my faith. And, and then he said the last things he just said. I said, you know, well Dad, I gotta go. I said, how do you feel? He said, I feel lighter. I feel lighter.

David Hirsch: Very powerful. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. So I’m thinking about other father influencers and I’m wondering what, if any influence your grandfathers had on you, starting with your mom’s dad and then your dad’s dad.

Chris Mallette: So I never knew my mom’s dad, I just knew stories of him, legendary stories of Farmer Hayes. So he was a farmer. My mom’s side of the family, she grew up in Mebane, North Carolina and Mebane was, was referred to originally was like a new Texas they called it, something like that. I don’t know where that term came from, but it was originally a farming community of freed slaves and free black people. So he passed away before I was born. But he left a very deep rooted legacy. There was a church, he was a preacher and, and the church was named after, they called the road that led up to his church, Preacher Hayes Road. And my, my dad’s dad, he was a very wealthy man. I remember going to visit him when I was little. He was a millionaire. And I kind of found out later at the reading of his will when I was like 13, 14 years old, that he began as a janitor and over time developed his own janitorial business. At one point he was cleaning all the skyscrapers in Wilmington. All the, all the business buildings in Wilmington he had contracts for. And I remember he had a mansion in Wilmington and then he had a beach house because we Go visit him every year. He had a beach house as well. My mother made sure that we saw my dad every summer, at least every summer. And that we saw my grandfather, her father in law, every summer, you know, so that we had that connection with them. But I remember he just had a chair. He’d sit in his chair in front of like a lazy boy. I mean, this is the 70s, so lazy boy’s new. You know, we don’t have theater seats and we don’t have big screen TVs. You know, there’s still the boob tube, you know, where it gets hot. You know, that’s how my mom used to catch us when we watch TV late at night, we turn the TV off. If it wasn’t glowing, she put her hand on the back of it, you know. Don’t lie to me. So the legend of the one grandfather and then uncles kind of played the role of grandfather father throughout my life on my mom’s side. Most of them farmers and, you know, preachers, farmers, military men, lots of them. And she was 12 of 13, so a lot of my uncles served In World War II, Korea, Vietnam, you know, so spending time with them, talking with them. In particular one uncle who was a marine and a preacher, you know. And I think kind of a lot of my DNA kind of comes from him, you know, in the coaching and the, in the, and the faith, that I have. And then my, my dad’s dad in North Carolina just spending time with me. He’s always very generous. He was always very loving. I think that he was a man of his era. So there weren’t a lot of hugs, more pats on the head and slaps on the backs and. Let me look at you. You know, I don’t know if you guys, if anybody who’s old

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Chris Mallette: enough remembers that phrase. When you see an, older relative, they’d say, let me look at you. Kind of grab you with both shoulders, you know, and assess, like how you look you up from your toes to your top, your head. See how you’ve grown over time. But good memories.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing. Sounds like you’ve had some good father figure influences. So my recollection was that you took a BA in history from Princeton and then you went to UPenn Law School and, you were a public interest scholar. Where did you see your career taking you?

Chris Mallette: Oh, boy, I didn’t know. Like I said, I was the first lawyer. I didn’t have a mentor. I didn’t have a family member. I didn’t have a family friend to guide me. I just figured, you know, I gotta take a next step. I’m not gonna play professional sports. And I enjoyed the law. You know, let me, let me venture down this road. You know, I’m a big justice guy. I believe in equity. I believe in justice. It’s, it’s, it’s fundamental. You know, nothing makes me angrier than bullies, you know, watching people being taken advantage of. So I pursued a law degree, went to University of Pennsylvania as a public interest law scholar. Figured it’d be a great way for me to position myself to help a lot of people. I’ll be honest with you. I had no idea what I was getting into. I thought I went to Princeton. I’m, smart. I’ll crush these other students. I’ll figure this thing out. The end of my first semester of law school at Penn, I got a letter from the dean of the law school saying that perhaps I want to try another career path. I have that juxtaposed with the end of my last semester at law school. After my third year, I got a letter from the dean. Graduating on the honor roll or the high honor roll. So I did not enjoy law school. I don’t know many people who do. I am very grateful, though, for the experience on how to read, how to think, how to question, the logic that goes into it, the preparation that goes into it, the attention to detail which I think I carried with me throughout my life as a husband and as a father. It changes the way that you think about everything. You know, hopefully it doesn’t damage, like, I was able to maintain my morals, my ethics, my values. But what do you use it like? Anything, like any gift or anything that you’ve obtained, what are you using it for? If you gain money, what are you using your money for? If you gain knowledge, what are you using your knowledge for?

David Hirsch: Good point. So my recollection was that, you work for the city of Chicago, in a number of different capacities. You worked for John Jay College for a better part of a decade or more in the violence reduction area. You’ve been at Chicago Hope Academy for whatever number of years. Is there a narrative that, you followed?

Chris Mallette: Well, I haven’t really been following a narrative. Like, if you were to ask me if you were interviewing me right now for a position, and you said, where do you see yourself in the next five years? I would say I couldn’t tell you because every time I plan it out, something happens and I take a turn and end up somewhere I’d never expect to be. I left John Jay College of Criminal justice and the Violence Reduction Strategy and was doing consulting work and coaching high school football. And within a year I’m still doing that same consulting work, but I’m coaching at a different school and locked in the hierarchy. And I wouldn’t say a pillar of the school, but definitely a leadership role at the school in more ways than one. And I never would have seen myself doing that. You know, my wife and I, we always saw when we were in Princeton, dreaming about what we would want to do. Children have always been a big part of what my path has been, I would say. When I was at Princeton, at, ah, Princeton, I spent a lot of my time developed the Paul Robeson Fellowship of Student Athletes for minority student athletes at Princeton and developed a Big Brother Big Sister program which started off with myself and one other football player our freshman year, driving into Trenton, New Jersey, and mentoring a handful of kids that lived literally by a junkyard across the street from a junkyard. And that grew into my senior year where we would have, we had over 40 young people and over 20 student athletes involved and students at Princeton involved, where we would pick up kids in Trenton, bring them to football games on Saturdays and basketball games, spend time with them on campus, and then on Sundays we would go back and get them and bring them back on campus for church and lunch or brunch and bring them back to Trenton and just begin a wonderful mentoring program. Dr. Cornel west would come out and play with the kids, and he’s one of my mentors at Princeton. And so it was just. That was amazing. But after Princeton,

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Chris Mallette: coming out of there, going to law school the year between, I did a fellowship. It was at the time it was called Princeton Project 55, started by John Fish, class of 55 at Princeton Chicagoan. So, John got his classmates to pony up their money with Ralph Nader and some other folks and they began this fellowship where they would take. They took graduating Princeton students and Princeton students, current Princeton students, and, and placed them in public interest internships and fellowships across the country. What an amazing vision that was. You know, now I think it’s called AmeriCorps, Princeton AmeriCorps or something like that, because it, they’ve combined with multiple other universities and colleges to expand the scope. But at that time, I remember doing that, coming to Chicago to do that. I worked with Arne Duncan and John Rogers and Melanie Hobson and Craig Robinson, and they’re all like iconic figures now. And we’re just sitting in back offices Just doing community work. And then law school immediately. I signed up for the custody and support clinic in West Philadelphia. My first year. My second year I worked in the juvenile law clinic. And then I was a visiting student at Northwestern. We got married. My wife and I got married. After my second year, I was a visiting student at Northwestern. My third year, still graduated from Penn, but immediately went to the Northwestern Legal Clinic and was representing juveniles in juvenile court for an entire year, you know, coaching all through, somehow teaching Sunday. So this whole educator working with young people, social justice type ministry thing has been in my blood. I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere. I tried to get a firm job. I didn’t want a firm job. I just thought I should get one and pay off some bills. I felt irresponsible, you know, and it. And it just didn’t work out for me, you know. But that’s not my assignment, so to speak. It’s not my calling, it’s not my vocation. You know, it’s always been with young people. And what a blessing to be able to have my own, you know, and my wife and I, you know, we have four children. You know, we lost four. So it’s not like, you know, and I know two of them were girls, you know, and that’s something a lot of people don’t talk about, but it’s actually. I found it was more common, you know, it really taught me, although it was very painful and a very tough period, it really taught me how to be a better husband, you know, and a better father, but really a better husband at the time because our other guys were all little. I call it the Ministry of Presence. You can’t say anything. There’s nothing for you to say. There’s no scripture, there’s no nothing from the Torah. There’s nothing for you to say. There’s no words of wisdom. There’s no encouraging bright good morning. Because it’s not a bright good morning. It’s a good morning, but it doesn’t feel bright because of the loss that’s been involved here. But you just. I learned just to be present. Whatever you need me to do, I’m here. If you need me to sit back next to you, hold your hand, run to the store, run clean something, call someone for you, pick something, whatever you need me to do. And I call it the Ministry of Presence.

David Hirsch: Yeah, it’s really important. I can relate to what you were saying and sorry for your loss. Right. Because, while you have four, you know, that’s what people See and understand. You know, there’s a backstory. That’s what I hear you saying.

Chris Mallette: Yeah.

David Hirsch: And, you were referring to miscarriages. I think you didn’t use the word miscarriage, but that’s what I understood.

Chris Mallette: Yeah.

David Hirsch: You know, we had two and a half miscarriages, you know, two straight up. And then one was part of us that had twins. And fortunately, our oldest daughter was the result of that situation. And, you know, we. We don’t know what the destiny would have been right to her twin, but it wasn’t meant to be right. And, you know, hopefully you can focus on what you have as opposed to what you don’t have. That’s what I heard you say. And, I always talk about the importance of being present, so I think, that that really resonated with me. So, out of curiosity, how did you and Kendall meet?

Chris Mallette: Oh, boy. Well, depending on who you talk to, what the version is. But there’s no denying our freshman year, I was in a friend’s room, and I was in a program called Freshman Summer Orientation Program, where you start Princeton early, basically. Most of the athletes were in it, or a lot of the athletes were in it. Just get used to the curriculum and practicing and all that. You know, the rigor of what you were about to get into with the university. You know, there’s. There’s, like, six of us sitting in the room, and the young lady that I was in the room with, it was her room. She ran a track, and she was like a little sister to Kendall, so to speak. Kendall had kind of adopted her as a little sister. It was not all boys. There’s, like, three boys, three girls in her room. But she came in to check on her, and I began immediately trying to talk to Kendall, and she immediately

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Chris Mallette: shut me down. And then I went through a period of about two years where she just kept shutting me down and closing the door. But I will say this, David. In all fairness to my wife, I right now, as the man that I am, I would not want my daughter dating the freshman, sophomore version of me at Princeton. And I’m grateful that she was so well trained by her dad and mom that she recognized some of the things that weren’t right about me as a potential mate at that time. The end of sophomore year, I finally broke her down, or you could say she broke me down. But, she actually was doing a sociology paper, and the paper had to do with single mom families and males raised by mothers. And you could imagine black males raised by single moms and she has the pool of undergraduates at Princeton to deal with. It wasn’t as random, like, God set up the lottery in a certain way so I would win it. but we got to know each other while she was doing the research, and she was like, wow, this guy really has a lot of respect for his mother. He’s not who I kind of thought he was. And we started talking at the end of the day, the school year, literally, like as the summer began during Princeton reunions. I asked her out and she went out on a date with me. And we’ve been together since that June 5th in 1991. I think it’s just been us two and a half years of dating, two and a half years of engagement while I was at law school, and then 28 years of marriage.

David Hirsch: I love that story. Thank you for sharing.

Tom Couch: We’ll be back with more of the conversation on the special Fathers Day Network Dad to Dad Podcast in just a few moments. But first, this quick message. Please help 21st Century Dads gather research on families raising children with special needs by having them complete the Special Fathers Network Early Intervention Parents survey. A link to the survey can be found in the show notes. As a token of our appreciation, each person, mom or dad, who completes the survey will receive a great dad coin. Thank you. Now back to the conversation.

David Hirsch: So let’s switch gears and, talk about overcoming adversity from a parents, perspective. I don’t know that it’s straight up special needs, like we might define, but, prior to becoming parents, did you, either of you, have any connections to the world of disability or special needs?

Chris Mallette: Oh, boy. Yes. When I was at Princeton, one of the things I did at Princeton was I ran a tutoring program or helped run a tutoring program for the football program where we actually went into, I can’t even remember the town, a southern New Jersey town or Philadelphia, town. And we tutored kids, they call it tutoring who had special needs. So it was a classroom of students that, you know, I guess at the time when you say handicapped, you know, they weren’t, you know, it wasn’t like dyslexia or anything like that. There were physical challenges that they had, and we would tutor those kids, which was amazing for us as we’re Division 1 athletes at, Princeton University. If you don’t walk away from that, realizing how good you got it, you know, you are delusional. You’re not even entitled. You’re delusional. It was life changing for me and for a lot of my teammates to Be a part of that and then just kind of carrying on, working with kids. I have a nephew who’s autistic, you know, working with him in his life. And then at Hope Chicago, Hope Academy, we are the home of Chicago Special Olympics. I know they just changed the name. But Chicago, Hope Academy’s athletic center, where my office is, is not the new home to Special Olympics in Chicago, the branch there. So our students spend at least one day a month working with kids with Special Olympics, you know, so it’s all. It’s about, really, the value of life. The people that you think you have nothing to learn from and they have everything to gain from. You are the very people I found teach you the most. Not just about yourself, but just about life, if you pay attention. A lot of times we do life, we don’t pay attention to what we’re doing. We’re just so busy. But if you pay attention in those relationships and working with kids with down syndrome, you know, and just looking at, like, you walk away and you’re like, this kid is hilarious. Like, not only is he hilarious, he’s smart. And you would overlook him simply by his physical appearance, you know, and his inability to enunciate the way that you enunciate. You would overlook a kid like that. And then how do we do with adults as well? You know, even just. I just coached in the 50th anniversary Illinois Shrine football game, All Star game. I was the head coach of the red team. And

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Chris Mallette: the whole purpose of the week is the Shriners put it on. The Illinois Shriners put it on, and all the chapters come out. And the whole purpose is to introduce the kids, the families to the Shriner hospitals and also to raise money for the hospital. But we play in the Miracle League softball game with the kids, where each of the players is matched up with a softball player. We visit the hospital so our guys will walk away. I took dozens of photos and then asked the parents, because the parents were there. And the parents, they’re all like, hey, you. You, coach, send me that, send me that, send me that, you know, and just. Just touched by it, you know? And then I’ll tell you one, one quick thing. You know, we had a huge defensive end. He’s going to wrestle heavyweight somewhere in Iowa in college. Humongous human being. And he turned to me during the softball game, you know, and kids are kids, like, they’re not interested in softball. They just start hitting the guys, tackling the guys. They want to. Who are you? Why are you here? Are you gonna play with me? You know, forget this game. Let’s go over here by the pick. Some dandelions. And this one little kid, he comes running up to the biggest guy out there and just tries to tackle him. So the guy, lovingly, he gets what’s going on. So he goes down to the ground and the kid just grabs his cheeks and he’s just smothering him, like nose to nose, smothering him. I don’t even know what he was saying. And, the kid looks at me and he’s like, what do I do? And I said, play with him. I said, like, you have to understand, like, this kid hit the jackpot. He’s got his own personal giant to play with for the next 30 minutes. You know, indulge him. So, that’s been my experience. Mental health isn’t necessarily special needs, I don’t think, but it is a challenging situation to deal with. One of my sons has battled mental health probably his whole life, but just diagnosed and we kind of recognized it when he was a sophomore in high school. And then things start making sense. As you recall his history in life, and some of the challenges he’s had and what he’s been challenged with, it makes sense as to why he battles OCD, he battles anxiety, and he battles depression. All three very severe. You know, there may be some new diagnoses as he gets older. We don’t know. You know, we’re in and out of the hospital now more it seems, than when he was in high school. He’s been residential, he’s been in non residential, he’s been in all types of, you name it, we’re familiar with it. I think, the background of my mom being a mental health nurse, the head nurse on a psychiatric unit for most of her professional career is helpful. And also the fact that, you know, my. I have an older brother who’s battled bipolar schizophrenia. You know, as you look, you learn a lot, with the diagnoses. America is a great place, but it’s not a perfect place. I think black men have been vastly over diagnosed with schizophrenia and vastly, over diagnosed with a bunch of stuff. And for cultural reasons, you know, I’m not saying all the doctors are in a big grand conspiracy, but just not understanding certain things and also the tendency to over involve black people and systems and minorities and poor people and systems in our country, you know, so it’s just having that knowledge and just dealing with it and any awareness has been helpful, but it’s also been a very Big challenge. It’s almost like your kid decides he’s going to go on a journey just out of the blue, like he wakes up and I’m, not to be making little of it, but just from the standpoint of your preparedness as a parent, you know, if your kid were to wake up and say, I’m going to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I’m gonna need you to meet me there in a day, you know, like your, your, your, your son just, you know, just kind of has an episode and ends up in a hospital, you know, three cities away or two cities away or whatever the case may be. And then it’s just, you know, you wake up and you just, hey, I guess I’m going to Tulsa today. Let me make a couple phone calls and maybe I could get something done on the road. Maybe I can’t. But this is what needs to be done at this point. And then also with your marriage, you know, when you have someone who has challenges, whether they be, you know, any type of an illness, special, needs, whatever, but they need additional attention. I’ll just say for whatever reason, you have a family member who needs additional attention. It’s not the family member. You have to always remind yourself when you get high levels of stress and concern that they didn’t choose it. You know, no one chooses mental health issues. No one chooses a, disability or special needs. No one chooses

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Chris Mallette: an illness. You know, people on the cancer ward, they didn’t choose to have leukemia. You know, I just, I just have, one of my football coaches, his sister is 42 years old and was just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I’m 53, I’m 11 years older than her. Probably a lot less healthier lifestyle habits than she has. She didn’t choose that. You know, so how do you engage it, like, once you have the diagnosis? I’m grateful for the professionals that we have in all of those various fields and the people who dedicate their lives to it. So that, you know, I need to know, like, I need clarity, you know, I want to know what are we dealing with here? Because especially with mental illness for so long, you don’t know. So you could be trying to be the best dad in the world, disciplining your kid for something he cannot control or yelling at your kid, and then what are you doing when you do that? That may not be contributing to the mental health issue. I’m sure not helping his self esteem, because now he thinks he just can’t get right. And he doesn’t know that the challenges the OCD, or the challenge is the anxiety, or the challenge is the depression. You know, like, he’s depressed. You know, come on, we got to go to school. You know, get your butt up. Let’s go. Suck it up. This and that. Not knowing that he’s engaged in a severe bout of depression.

David Hirsch: Well, not to focus on the negative, but what have been some of the biggest challenges, for you and Kendall?

Chris Mallette: And, I don’t think it’s negative at all, David. You know, one of the things I’ve learned is I’ve learned how to turn losses into learnings. First of all, you can’t win all the time. No one wins all the time. And remember, this is the coach speaking for all the listeners. So listen closely. This is great knowledge here, but you can’t win all the time. No one wins all the time. I think winning and losing kind of goes in cycles. I have a good friend who’s a pastor in Vancouver, Canada, John Swain Jr. And John taught me this. He said that God always gives you a mixed bag of blessings and burdens. You’re never going to have too many burdens in life. You’re never going to have too many blessings in life, so to speak. We have tons of blessings. We all do. Even when I have a friend, Risco, mentioned Lewis, who taught me working with ex offenders and people in prison and jail, she would meet with guys and she would say, where’s the treasure in the darkness? There’s always treasure in the darkness. And it got me to thinking, like, where is the treasure in the darkness of this thing? When you have a child that’s battling mental illness and you can’t see it, if it’s leukemia, I can see it. If it’s cancer, I can see it. I can see what it’s doing to your body. I think mental health, you can’t see it. You can only see the behaviors. I can’t see your brain. I can only see the behaviors. And you can’t see your own behaviors. How many of us monitor our own behaviors? But I think in the dark moments, I look for the treasure. I encourage my wife, and she encourages me. And the other siblings who are at various stages of life, have understood their brother’s battle differently, have had different levels of acceptance of his battle, you know, because you can, as you can imagine, like, you know, early on not knowing, why are you being so lazy? Why don’t you have any drive? You know, why can’t you finish things? Why does it take you an hour and 15 minutes to get out of the bathroom, you know, not knowing that there’s elements of OCD going on here, you know that there’s elements of anxiety. Like you test Mensa, why can’t you pass these tests in high school? Not knowing that when he sits down for a test, he’s got to set up his pencil 12 times, then he’s got to shift his chair 15 times. Then he looks at the clock and he’s 12 minutes into the exam and he hasn’t answered the first question. Now the anxiety starts to click in. And then after the end of the exam, when he knows he’s failed it miserably, even though he studied vociferously, now the depression kicks in. And then it’s kind of like that, that three pronged demon, if you will, that just tried to keep wrapping itself around them like an octopus, not letting him breathe or like a boa constrictor, you know, constricting around his personality, constricting around his gift to the world, you know, constricting around the value he wants to add every day that, that he feels. I can’t add value because of this, this mental health thing. Because of this thing. It’s blocking me and then it frustrates me and now it’s changing me. And then you take meds and then the meds make you lethargic and you’re a high energy person and the meds make you gain weight and you are a physically fit person now. You

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Chris Mallette: don’t like the way you look, you don’t like the way you sound, you don’t like your mannerisms and, you know, and now you’re beholden to psychiatrists and therapists and doctors and your medicine and, and it just feels like this is, I’m in bondage with this thing. So how do you walk in freedom with those challenges? How do you coach up your kids, so to speak? How do you coach up yourself and your spouse and siblings and like you’re the dad, you know, was dad going to do about this? Was that, you know, an understanding when there is mental illness and some things, you know, some ugly things can be said from time to time. When things are said, being able to redirect, your tribe, so to speak, to understand that’s not him, you know, that’s the illness. Just like when you look at, I think Jim Valvano famously said, coach at NC State, I have cancer, but cancer doesn’t have me. I refuse to lay in a bed. I refuse, like, I know I’m going down, but I refuse to let cancer Take me down the way cancer wants to take me down. And, you know, you do the best you can. You know, at some point, you got to be. We all got to get into bed at some point, and we all got to say goodbye at some point. You know, this. This. The life on this earth is not. We’re not immortal, you know, this life is not perpetual. But, I do think, and I appreciate folks who you see battling through. That’s why it’s so important for my players and my students to be a part of Special Olympics, to be a part of the Shrine Hospital numerical league, softball league, to be a part of that. So you spend time with folks. You don’t know folks till you spend time with folks. Right. And then even when you spend time with folks you don’t really know, you’re just more familiar with them. You know, I do a lot of work with people in the criminal justice system. I say, other than domestic violence, people don’t commit crimes generally against people they know. I mean, some do, but overall, crimes are committed by strangers, you know, so. But if you knew everybody, then you’d be less inclined. Like, if I know David, like, now, I don’t want to, you know, like, do I want to go break in David’s house now? Nah, the guy’s pretty good guy. I know the guy talk. I spent some time talking with him. But I will say that the key takeaway for me has been when it gets real dark, you know, look for the treasure. Because there’s a treasure in the darkness. And it’s not always easy to find because you’re in the darkness, you know, you’re stumbling around, and usually you stumble into that treasure and realize what the treasure was.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Well, thank you for expressing it. The treasure in the darkness brings to mind, the phrase, there’s purpose in the pain.

Chris Mallette: Yes.

David Hirsch: The challenge that you’re going through. So, you know, we might be using different phrases, but it means the same thing. And then, you made reference to the fact that, you know, your son is like, decided, to go to Nebraska. And you’re like, well, geez, I guess we’ll have to figure out how to get there and what’s going on there. There’s a poem, it’s entitled Welcome to Holland. And it’s become very popular in the special needs community. Because, the way the poem is set up is that they had this trip planned to Italy. And then the planes takes off, and the captain comes on and says, oh, we’ve decided we’re going to Holland. And everybody’s like, well, wait a second, we didn’t pack for Holland, we packed for Italy. We’ve been focused on this trip to Italy and all the things that, know, we anticipate doing.

Chris Mallette: Right.

David Hirsch: And then, you know, you realize that, you’re going to a different destination. That’s what I heard you say, Chris. Right. And you’re not prepared for that destination.

Chris Mallette: Yeah.

David Hirsch: But, you know, there’s actually good things about Holland, and you just have to sort of accept or pivot and make the change. And not that you had any control over that, but that’s your destiny. Right. And if you embrace it for what it is and make the most of the situation.

Chris Mallette: Yeah.

David Hirsch: You realize, hey, I’m disappointed I didn’t have a chance to go down the path that I had anticipated. But, you know, this is the path. Right. You’ve already made reference to that in your life. Right. You had a degree in history, you got a law degree. Right. You know, there were certain things that you might have anticipated doing.

Chris Mallette: Yeah.

David Hirsch: And you can only connect the dots looking backwards. You cannot connect the dots looking forward. So thank you for sharing. So let’s talk, for a minute or so about Chicago Hope Academy, which been knowledgeable about and a supporter of, you know, since the beginning. Right. Back in 2005 when Tina, and Bob Muzikowski, you know, started this, program. it’s a private Christian inner city high school. They serve about 300 students. And I’m wondering from your perspective, what is

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Chicago Hope Academy known for in our community?

Chris Mallette: Hope is known for. There’s a place that takes care of kids, you know, not just the students, but all kids from Special Olympics in our facility to high five sports camps in our facilities. We have club volleyball, club baseball, club soccer that utilize our facilities. We have NBA and NHL guys who utilize our athletic facility. We have phenomenal athletic facilities. We have a church that uses our school, the police department runs a basketball camp and has their football team. All of our sports program, which is pretty well known, we’ve done very well. If, you know, I get pat myself on the back, you know, our football team is. We’re a 1A school that plays a 5, 6A schedule and we’ve done very good knocking Goliath off time after time, getting kids in the college, getting kids into the armed forces, getting kids into trade schools now is, one of our focuses, I think. Just a place where every kid is valued. People know that your child is going to be valued if they come to Hope, and your child is going to be known. They’ll hear their name. I think our, goal as a staff and as a faculty is for every kid to be called by name at least three times in the first hour of the day. And I think we do a pretty good job achieving that. And also talking with alums, you know, how, how they’re doing and how they’re feeling, you know, common language at football practice. You know, I tell guys I love them all the time. You know, at the end of every practice, I tell them, I love you guys, and they all stop. We love you too, coach. You know, I mean, you can imagine what that’s like for some kids who don’t have any men in their life, let alone a man that comes in their life and he’s the football coach talking about, I love you, but I, think love never fails. I think love always wins, regardless. It may not look like love wins today, but love is going to win. And I’m a firm believer in that.

David Hirsch: Well, thanks for sharing. Hope is an amazing place. And, I do know that the student to teacher ratio is, rather attractive. The average class size is around 12. And I think one of the statistics I remember reading or seeing was that there’s 100% college acceptance rate. Now, not everybody goes to college, but there is 100% acceptance rate, which is really remarkable if you think about where the students come from. So you guys are doing God’s work, and, it’s just a beacon in the community, like you were saying.

Chris Mallette: Yeah.

David Hirsch: So I’m thinking about advice now, and I’m wondering, what advice you can share with parents, specifically dads, who find themselves in a situation that, maybe they weren’t anticipating or aren’t prepared for.

Chris Mallette: I would say your kid’s journey is your kid’s journey. You know, like I tell my kids all the time, your journey is your journey. It’s not my journey. It’s not your grandfather’s journey. It’s not your mom’s journey. It’s not your sister’s journey. It’s your journey. It’s uniquely yours for reasons that I can’t explain and probably never will be able to. And I’m not going to try. I’m not going to try to tell you why this happened to you, because I don’t know. But I can tell you what I think. Some good that could come out of what happened to you or how you could turn this thing and use it for your good. There’s a campaign now, predominantly in the special needs community, where it talks about in the mental health community as well, where it talks about, you know, that’s your superpower. That thing that. That everybody points to is the thing that slows you down, the thing that makes you different, the thing that makes you less than that thing is your superpower, you know, so figuring out how to turn that into your superpower, you know, And I think that exercise in and of itself helps you look at things, you know, not in the. Yes, the challenges are negative. They’re challenges. But we’re faced with challenges every day of our life, whether we recognize them or not. Some challenges we just kind of brush off because it’s not that important to us. Other challenges we dwell on all day, you know, and it affects our mood, our behavior, and how our interactions, you know. But I think Coach prime said it, Deion Sanders, he said he never has a bad day. He said, I have bad moments, I may have bad hours, but I will never have a bad day because I have a day, and there’s people who don’t have that day. You know, I think it’s perspective. I would say my advice would be change your perspective. Change your perspective to a perspective of, I’m not going to have a bad day. And there is a solution here. It may not be the solution that you like, may not be the solution that you want, but there is a solution. And in being encourager, you know, being encourager, don’t. You don’t have to go over the top, but just know when to encourage,

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Chris Mallette: know when to be quiet, like, just be present, you know, you don’t have to have all the answers. Nobody likes anybody who has all the answers. It’s good to say sometimes. It’s perfectly fine sometimes to say, you know what? Let me look into that and get back to you. Or, you know what, son? you know what? You know what, sweetheart? You know what, son? I can’t answer that right now. I don’t know, you know, because it also humanizes you as a father because it’s wonderful to be elevated into the stratospheres that our children elevate us into. Even when they’re angry. Our kids get most angry with us when they feel we let them down. You know, not because they didn’t get their way, because they feel we let them down, but humanizing yourself. I don’t have the answer to that. You know, sharing, your vulnerability with things. Because it’s hard. Like, especially when your kid has a challenge. And you as a father, your job is to fix it for your family, fix things for Your wife, fix things for your kids, protect them. And when you feel like that ministry of presence thing and you feel, I can’t do anything here, I don’t have the money to pay for this. I don’t have the connections to help you negotiate situation, whatever it may be.

David Hirsch: Yeah, very powerful. Great, pearls of wisdom. Your kids journey is your kid’s journey. You know, that weakness, that difference, if you can somehow position it, reposition as your superpower and the importance of, you know, recognizing that. We all have bad experiences, right. whether they’re moments or hours, but, hopefully they don’t lapse into days, weeks, months or longer periods of time. Right. Because it is a frame of mind, right. How we, categorize things. And that’s not to, you know, candy coat some of the difficulties or challenges that people have. But, you know, it’s, it’s our life’s journey, right. And I think, we each have to take responsibility for making the most of it. So is there anything else you’d like to say before we wrap up?

Chris Mallette: I would just say if you do find yourself in that period of time, you know, a dark period or whatever, challenging period, you know, just recognizing and reminding yourself that it’s a season, you know, it’s not forever, you know, it may be longer than you want, but just recognize that and face that. You know, in the words of one of a police commander that I worked with for years became superintendent of police in Chicago, he said this at one point. He said, he was in front of another superintendent when he was a commander and in front of the entire command staff in an exercise called CompStat, where you review all your shootings and homicides and crime. And this is this police commander who said, like, be able to articulate the problem. It was really bad during a segment of time. So the superintendent takes off his glasses and he says, Fred, what’s going on? And the commander says, boss, in front of the whole department leadership, boss, I will never stand up here and I will never serve you dog poo, smother and syrup and tell you it’s pancakes. He said, yes. And the whole place just erupted because it was just that genuine level of honesty, like we’re eating dog poo. And that’s just what it is right now. And I can’t tell you that we’re not going to be doing it. I can’t tell you when we’ll be done. But this is what it is. And I think that clarity is a leader’s best friend, has been said often because you need to know what you’re dealing with and what you have to deal with. And I think for that moment, you can see it just resonated with me. It stayed with me. It’ll stay with me to the day I die, probably. But sometimes that’s life, raising children, that’s being a father. Sometimes, like, it’s going to be difficult. You did not ask for certain things. You did not cause certain things. We as men cause enough problems in our own lives. I think we have to solve more problems that we didn’t cause than we caused. And that’s okay. You know, sometimes you can’t solve the problem. You just help people navigate through them. And that’s hard when you’re a dad because you love your child so much and you can’t fix it. You know, you could fix stuff when they were little. It’s easy. You know, you could fix it for them. Fix their toy, make their bed, you know, clean them up, take them to the doctor, hold them, you know, burp them. But you can’t fix these things. And when you can’t fix those things, the things you can’t fix, just encourage them and be encouraged.

David Hirsch: Yeah, good advice. A thought

00:55:00

that comes to mind is small kids, small problems, big kids, big problems. Right. And, you know, some of the bigger problems don’t have easy solutions. Like you were saying.

Chris Mallette: Yeah.

David Hirsch: So let’s give a special shout out to Bob Muzikowski, Kevin Hall, and more recently, Frank McKinney for helping connect us.

Chris Mallette: Amen. Good people. Very good people.

David Hirsch: If somebody wants to, learn about your work or contact you, what’s the best way to do so?

Chris Mallette: Oh, boy. I’d say just text me or call me. I mean, my number is out there. It’s 773-991-7101. Just drop your name and let me know that you came in contact with me through the Special Fathers Network, so I could place it. I get quite a few text calls and whatnot every day. I used to oversee and watch, direct the prison reentry program in Illinois for, the city of Chicago. So I still have a lot of individuals who call me when they get out. I might be a number that they held onto so I don’t change my number. And there’s a lot of people, ah, that I coached and that I work with on the streets of Chicago that I don’t know where they are. But they guy just called me last week from a residential facility, rehabilitation, ah, residential facility in Iowa. And I hadn’t talked to this guy in 22 years, but he still had my number and he still thought to call me. So but that’s the best way to reach me. And then my email address is cmallette m a l l e t t e @chicagohopeacademy.org so either the email or feel free to text me.

David Hirsch: I’ll be sure to include that information in the show notes so it’ll make it as easy as possible for somebody to get a hold of you. Chris, thank you for your time and many insights. As a reminder, Chris is just one of the dads who’s part of the Special Fathers Network mentoring program for fathers raising a child with special needs. If you’d like to be a mentor father or are seeking advice from a mentor father with a similar situation to your own, Please go to 21st centurydads.org thank you for listening the latest episode of the Special Fathers Network Data Dad Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. As you probably know, the 21st Century Dads foundation is a 501c3 not for profit organization, which means we need your help to keep our content free to all concern. Would you please consider making a tax electable contribution? I would really appreciate your support. Chris, thanks again.

Chris Mallette: Thank you David. I appreciate it.

Tom Couch: And thank you for listening to the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast. The Special Fathers Network is a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs. Through our personalized matching process, new fathers with special needs children match up with mentor fathers in a similar situation. It’s a great way for dads to support other dads. To find out more, go to 21stCenturydads.Org.

David Hirsch: And if you’re a dad looking for help or would like to offer help, we would be honored to have you join our closed Facebook group. Please go to Facebook group facebook.com groups and search dad to dad. Lastly, we’re always looking to share interesting stories. If you’d like to share your story or know of a compelling story, please send an email to david@21stcenturydads.org.

Tom Couch: The Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast was produced by me, Tom Couch. Thanks again to Horizon Therapeutics who believe that science and compassion must work together to transform lives. That’s why they work tirelessly to research, develop and bring forward medicines for people living with rare and rheumatic diseases. Discover more about Horizon Therapeutics at horizontherapeutics.com.

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