Findlay, Ohio – Enter this now famous town from the north and the first landmark for visitors to behold is a cemetery.
Drive a little farther on a dark, drizzly Sunday night and the 12-block downtown is dead.
Ben Roethlisberger has been so dazzling on a football field at such a young age that he has become somewhat of a local god for putting this town on the national football map.
But, apparently, not even Big Ben can shake off first impressions.
“Findlay is a great place to grow up,” Roethlisberger said. “Blue collar, a smaller version of Pittsburgh. I’ve got a lot of good friends and family there and I enjoyed every minute I was there.”
Since Roethlisberger made it big as the superb Pittsburgh Steelers’ rookie quarterback last season, then a Super Bowl quarterback this season, there has been a fascination with his life story. From Hollywood to New York, nothing captures America’s fancy like the small-town-kid-superstar story.
“We’re pretty contained, a one high school town,” said Jerry Snodgrass, athletic director at Findlay High School and Roethlisberger’s former basketball coach. “It’s one of your own that got to the big time, and I think everybody wants to latch onto that. I do. We all do. We all have our favorite Ben Roethlisberger story.”
Once the first impression is shaken, this town isn’t that small. And Sunday evening might be the only time it’s dead. Where the Mayberry reputation comes in is on the drive in. The two-hour drive south from Detroit is flat, better to see the acres and acres of harvested farmland. It crosses a large water tank that identifies the town of Perrysburg, childhood home of former Rockies manager Jim Leyland.
Just as the trip through rural heartland becomes monotonous, up pops Findlay with the cemetery at its entrance. The U.S. census estimates the population at 42,000, up nearly 3,000 from its official tally in 2000.
An outdoor sign at a local grocery store reads “Go Big Ben. Dreams Do Come True.” Christmas wreaths continue to hang from the downtown lampposts, even though it’s February.
Then again, if Findlay doesn’t have the highest number of street lights and national-chain establishments per capita, it has to be close. Asked on Super Bowl media day Tuesday to name his favorite Findlay restaurant, Roethlisberger struggled to think of one before he threw out Outback.
There is a mall, a small college and a large theater here. The top movie attraction, “Walk the Line,” may not have reached Findlay until about a month after it hit the big-city screens.
But eventually, Findlay can provide the best of both worlds. This is where the Steelers’ and former Miami (Ohio) University star quarterback grew up.
“Throughout his life, so many people in Findlay helped make him what he is today,” said Brenda Roethlisberger, Ben’s mom. “There were so many coaches, so many sports, so many teams, and everyone had a hand in Ben’s life.”
Can’t go home again
Ben Roethlisberger is beginning to understand Thomas Wolfe. More and more, it’s getting harder to go home again. Findlay Mayor Tony Iriti, who coached Ben in youth football, is going to throw a parade for Roethlisberger regardless of whether the Steelers win or lose the Super Bowl.
But in the local paper’s letters to the editor, a citizen let it be known the extra police protection required for Big Ben’s parade should not be allocated from the city coffers. When the small-town kid hits the big time, there is pride, but there also is resentment.
“He gets that all the time,” said Mike Iriti, the next-best athlete to Roethlisberger in football, basketball and baseball at Findlay High. “People don’t like him because he doesn’t sign every autograph, or he doesn’t buy a round for everybody in the bar. It’s ridiculous.”
Roethlisberger last came back for Findlay’s homecoming the first week of October, as the Steelers’ schedule conveniently cooperated with a bye week. He hung out with friends in Chaz Hatfield’s basement, where he had spent so many of his teenage social hours.
“We used to play some pool, hang out, sneak some girls in, play pingpong,” Iriti said. “The one story you should write about – Ben was unbelievable at pingpong.”
There are two major sports bars, each noted for their wings, located on opposite ends of town, and Roethlisberger made the politically correct move of appearing at both. At Frickers, he signed a Terrible Towel for Erin the bartender, who was going to auction off the memento to help pay for the medical costs of an ailing relative.
He spent more time at Buffalo Wild Wings Grill and Bar, where the boneless wings are second only to Bud Light in sales.
“He’s got a good persona in this town,” said Fritz Wink, the bar’s general manager. “He hasn’t put on any airs yet.”
A few minutes later, two students from the University of Findlay offered a contradictory view. They don’t much care for Ben. He brings in bodyguards and can’t be bothered, they said.
Iriti said those weren’t bodyguards. They were high school buddies, who happened to be big guys. Big buddies who happened to be off-duty policemen.
“People want to show they like him and tell him they like what he’s doing,” said Tony Iriti, Mike’s dad. “But at the same time, some people are rude. Just from my standpoint as a mayor, I’ll go out to dinner and I’ll have half-a-dozen people come over and want me to fix their street. They don’t understand that sometimes you just want dinner.”
Usually, when Ben returns to Findlay, he holes up at the brick-faced home his parents have lived in for 13 years. He stays a couple of days, contracts a mild case of cabin fever, and heads on his way.
Findlay might have been a great place to grow up. But it’s not easy for a football star to have a great time.
“No, not really,” said Roethlisberger, who at 23 is the second-youngest quarterback to start in the Super Bowl. “It’s tough. It really is. But that’s part of it. You know it’s part of what goes along with being a quarterback. Going to your hometown, I hang out with my friends and my family and just try to stay out of the light as much as possible.”
Mayor Iriti is going to cringe when he reads that. He’s known Ben since he was a kid. The parade will have a minimal route, the mayor said, and will finish with a couple of speeches at the football field.
“We want him to continue to want to come back home,” the mayor said. “We want him to come back here and feel like it’s a safe haven for him.”
Family ties
Brenda Roethlisberger is standing on her front porch, dealing with another notebook-toting intruder. For Super Bowl week, the proximity from Detroit to the Roethlisberger home is too tempting for visiting big-city newspapers.
Their phone number was unlisted last year, but that only puts the Roethlisbergers in position to decline interviews face-to-face. Try as she might, Brenda can’t bear to watch a person leave disappointed.
Ken is at work. He’s been employed 16 years in the front office of a company that makes automotive filters. He loves the job, even if it often requires long hours.
Meanwhile, Brenda is trying to rush off to her part-time job when she is interrupted. She is familiar with the affiliate of this latest doorbell-pushing stranger, having just been to Denver to watch her son lead the Steelers past the Broncos, 34-17 in the AFC championship game.
“I just felt so bad for Jake,” she said of the Broncos’ Jake Plummer. “As a mother of a quarterback, I sympathize with all guys who play that position. Everybody loved him and after just one game people turn on him?”
Brenda and Ken Roethlisberger are role models to mixed-family parents everywhere. Ben was 2 and an only child when his mom Ida and Ken divorced. Ken, a former quarterback and pitcher at Georgia Tech, was granted primary custody of their son, but Ida would drive in every other weekend to get him.
Move ahead six years. Ken had been run over, literally, by Brenda in a YMCA pickup basketball game and they married a few months later. Ben was 8, shooting baskets in the driveway with Brenda, waiting for his biological mom to pick him up. Ida never made it. She was involved in an accident with a pickup truck and suffered injuries that eventually took her life.
“Anytime you’re a kid and your parent passes, it’s tough,” Ben said. “I was truly blessed to have my father and stepmom, who I call ‘Mom’ now, to be there loving me. I had a great family growing up and I can’t complain at all.”
Just off the front porch, the only evidence a star Roethlisberger athlete lives here is a handmade sign of a basketball stuck in the front yard. The basketball has a #10 and F.H.S. etched on it, marking the number and school of Carlee Roethlisberger, Ben’s sister and a Findlay junior who is getting letters from Purdue, among others, to play basketball, and Ohio State, among others, for volleyball.
Take that, Big Brother.
This isn’t a mixed, or blended family. It’s a family.
“Ken always put me first, so it was never an issue,” Brenda said. “There was a time when Ben could play us against each other, but Ken would always say to do what I would ask. That made it easier.”
Up in Detroit, the Super Bowl festivities started Monday and the players were allowed to bring in their family members Thursday. The Roethlisbergers were going to stay back in Findlay until Saturday.
“We’re too busy,” Ken Roethlisberger said. “We both work. Carlee has something going every night with basketball. And we’re trying to get her into a good school. So we really haven’t had much time to think about all the Super Bowl hysteria. I’m sure we will as it gets closer.”
Win the Super Bowl today and Ben Roethlisberger won’t be able to walk the streets of New York and Los Angeles without getting mobbed. Lose and the national media might cease walking the streets of Findlay.
Either way, there will be cause for a parade.
Staff writer Mike Klis can be reached at 303-820-5440 or mklis@denverpost.com.
