Writing about Bill Belichick at this time of the year has almost always meant celebrating—or, at least acknowledging—his football coaching successes. As a head coach, these began when he got the Cleveland Browns into the playoffs following the 1994 season and won a game. This is different. This is bigger than football.
The coaching successes that have guaranteed Belichick a bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame have occurred in New England. His Patriots have won a record six Super Bowls, though this season they were a comparative mess. His golden goose, quarterback Tom Brady, flew the coop, south to Tampa Bay for the winter of his own Hall-of-Fame career, and Belichick never put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Oddly, it has become Belichick’s finest moment.
When the despicable Donald Trump, insurrection igniter, tried to pull his usual distraction out of the hat, his longtime friend Bill Belichick was having none of it. He became the fourth person to decline a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor. This left Trump holding his bag-of-you-know what and staring a record second impeachment square in the face. It might have made even the conscienceless Trump blush but we cannot know since he already is strangely orange.
Those previously declining the Medal of Freedom (the name before John F. Kennedy added Presidential to it) were:
Moe Berg, Major League Baseball catcher whose ability with languages led him into spying during World War II. His assignment: ascertain whether the Nazis were making an atomic bomb. (Berg’s sister later accepted the medal for the Baseball Hall of Fame.)
Jacqueline Kennedy, who helped husband John F. Kennedy design a new version of the medal that President Harry S. Truman had wanted to bestow on Berg. Mrs. Kennedy, following the assassination of her husband, declined to share the award because she probably wanted him to be “the focal point of the honor,” Elizabethtown
College adjunct professor Kyle Kopko told Maria Cramer for The New York Times.
And Harry S. Truman himself, who told the House of Representatives in 1971 when it wanted to give him the medal “that he felt accepting an award meant [for ‘combat bravery’, as it was originally intended] would detract from the honor.
“The medal embarrasses me,” Moe Berg said in The Catcher Was a Spy written by Nicholas Dawidoff. He thought what he contributed to the war effort was only a “humble contribution.” This seemed the right response to filmmaker Aviva Kempner, who made a documentary about Berg. “It fits into his character of being secretive.”
In any case, according to Elizabethtown College Professor E. Fletcher McClellan, a medal historian, Bill Belichick’s “is by far the most public and significant rejection.” It may also have been the most difficult, given a friendship with Trump that went back years and the fact he might have noticed how petulant and vindictive Trump can be.
Belichick had agreed to accept the award before a Trump-inspired mob invaded the Capitol and wreaked havoc that left five dead, the seat of American democracy damaged and desecrated, and finalization of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump delayed. After the devastation, Belichick released a statement, saying he could not accept.
“Above all,” the statement said, “I am an American citizen with great reverence for our nation’s values, freedom and democracy. I know I also represent my family and the New England Patriots team. One of the most rewarding things in my professional life career took place in 2020 when, through the great leadership within our team, conversations about social justice, equality and human rights moved to the forefront and became actions. Continuing those efforts while remaining true to the people, team and country I love outweigh the benefits of any individual award.”
This is a side of the man I glimpsed, if too rarely, because he cloaked it when he coached the Browns and I was writing about him and the team. When he let down his guard and allowed us to really see him, it was usually making a reference to his dad, Steve, a college coach for five decades, 33 of those years at the U.S. Naval Academy.
His father and mother, Jeannette, both Northeast Ohio natives, met at Hiram College in the 1940s when Steve coached multiple teams, including, football, and Jeannette, a 1942 alumna, taught Spanish and French. Years later, at the end of my career, I served as Director of College Relations, taught, and earned a master’s degree at Hiram. I didn’t and still don’t appreciate the way Belichick treats the media who represent those who love his teams, but I admire what he has done for Hiram in honor of his parents.
In 2015 Belichick made a gift to the college that led to the naming of the Coach Steve Belichick Olympic Training Center in the Les and Kathy Coleman Sports, Recreation and Fitness Center, the Jeannette Munn Belichick ’42 Reading Room on the first floor of the Hiram College Library, and the Jeannette Munn Belichick ’42 Endowed Fund, which provides support to purchase books and other resources related to foreign languages.
What Bill Belichick did to help Hiram College, and what he refused to do by rejecting the Presidential Medal of Freedom set him apart from others who have accepted from Trump the award for “especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” There is just one last thing, I wish Belichick would do.
It is unlikely to happen, but I wish Belichick would denounce Trump for the man he is, one who could never qualify to receive the medal which he has bestowed on an excessive number of athletes and coaches (14 of his 24 recipients) to curry favor and to make himself look like the kind of man and example Steve Belichick was for his son.
