Syracuse, N.Y. — The same theme carried throughout a 90-minute memorial service for Markus Paul on Thursday morning inside a Dallas-area church.
David Holmes touched on it, at first holding back tears to remember a man connected at his hip since the fall of 1984, when the two became roommates in Shaw Hall at Syracuse University.
Daryl Johnston got there too, echoing what he said in the aftermath of Paul’s death last week at the age of 54: Let’s all be like Markus.
We know Paul as the former All-American safety who snared a school-record 19 interceptions during a four-year college career that coincided with the rebirth of an Eastern football power in Upstate New York. Holmes and Johnston witnessed all that, but they also knew Paul for his immeasurable acts of service that far exceeded anything he did on a football field.
There are, of course, the hundreds of pro football players he pushed, counseled and gardened in the weight room during a coaching career that touched four different decades and yielded five Super Bowl rings.
But that’s not what the church’s evangelist talked about on this day.
Willie B. Williams III said Paul would often show up at North Colony Church of Christ more than two hours before the Sunday service. At 7-something in the morning, Paul picked up trash, wiped down anything that was dirty or adjusted the chairs, whatever the church needed before the parishioners arrived later that morning. He’d always sit toward the back, so he could open a door, usher someone to their seat or hand them a tissue.
Then he’d go to work at the $1.2 billion football sanctuary 35 minutes down the road in Arlington, Texas.
“He’d carry a broom, and a few hours later you’d watch him on the sideline and you’d see him shouting and supporting and encouraging on national TV,” Williams III said.
“What nobody knew was that a few hours earlier, he got up to make sure that everybody was well before worship.”
Holmes and Johnston ceded their titles and credentials before being introduced as speakers, asking to simply be recognized as Paul’s friend.
Paul, though, was more than a friend. He was a brother, confidant and partner, Holmes said, the man who introduced him to his wife on a blind date and the man who did the right thing all the time. He scrubbed the tub in Holmes’ house when visiting, just because his mother always told him to clean up after himself.
“Losing someone like Markus is like losing half of me,” Holmes said. “But I can tell you one thing. I will keep his legacy going forever.”
It was no mistake Paul was part of the unbeaten SU football team in 1987, Holmes said. It was no mistake the Saints won their first-ever playoff game a few years after Paul arrived in New Orleans, or the Patriots and Giants won multiple championships with Paul on the strength staff.
Johnston said then-Jets coach Herm Edwards used to rave how Paul was able to coax the team’s best players to train in the offseason at the team’s facility rather than head home and train elsewhere.
“That’s one of the things I’m struggling with right now,” said Johnston, who won three Super Bowls as a fullback with the Cowboys in the ‘90s, “is the impact Markus was going to have here with the Dallas Cowboys.”
Johnston and Paul started to reconnect a couple years ago when Paul was hired onto the Cowboys’ strength staff, Johnston said. He bemoaned the visits were too infrequent, finding work often interfered with staying in touch with the people who matter most.
“Let’s try not to be so busy anymore,” said Johnston, speaking at a lectern behind a display of orange flowers resting on Paul’s casket.
Before the former Syracuse teammates spoke, family members wrote their own reflections of Paul that were read at the service.
His father called him a caring person who always wanted everyone to be happy, even if he wasn’t. Paul was his first-born who helped him become a good father and husband, his pride and joy after returning home from Vietnam in 1966.
Paul’s younger brothers called him the best big brother anyone could want, a hero they looked up to now trying to achieve what he could.
His daughter remembered how excited he was to dance with her at the school dance, because work often conflicted with the sports. He was the knight in shining armor who would do anything for her. A couple months ago, he shipped her a car from Texas two weeks after her’s broke down. When she was a teenager, she wrote, he counseled her through mental health issues.
“My dad never got mad at me,” she wrote. “He just wanted to know what he could do to help me. All my dad ever wanted to do was make sure I was happy and healthy.”
Finally, his wife wrote her husband dedicated his life to serving God, with gifts allowing him to work in a field he loved and share his faith with so many others. They prayed together about just that each morning before he left the house. Paul never missed a chapel or Bible study session. Sometimes, Jonathan Evans quipped, he wasn’t so sure he was the Cowboys’ chaplain with Paul in the room.
It doesn’t make Paul’s death any easier to deal with in the week since he suffered an apparent stroke at the Cowboys’ team facility last Tuesday and died the next day in a nearby hospital surrounded by family.
But toward the end of the 90-minute service, they all may have heard something from Williams III, the evangelist, that offers a bit of light in a dark time.
Maybe on that day, the pastor said, God was looking for his next leader.
“Maybe He looked around and said, ‘It’s recruiting season.’
“And I want him.”
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