MIAMI _ There is no better way to tell how much Don Shula meant to Miami and South Florida _ to me and to generations of others _ than to make it very personal. Start there. Because Shula was family, one of us. He was a part of the timeline of our lives, and such a big reason we cheered, drew together and felt pride as a community like we had never known before.
I was a pimply kid who'd just turned 15 when Shula first arrived, and a married father of two when he retired. Along that quarter century of my life there was no greater constant than the familiar coach steady on a Sunday sideline, arms folded across his chest and jaw jutting as his Miami Dolphins went to work, and won, and won, and lifted a city.
It was a death in the family.
The memories he created won't leave us. They are eternal. They are his legacy. He is our heirloom.
Bob Griese, Dick Anderson and Larry Csonka were the former Dolphins who knew Shula longest. It's funny, but when you talk to Shula's players about him, the stuff you would expect _ the Perfect Season, the back-to-back Super Bowls, the most wins ever _ mostly comes up if you ask.
They want to talk more about the man than the coach. They want to talk about towering integrity.
Griese lost his father at age 10, to a heart attack while he slept. He called Shula "a father figure that I never had." In the end, said Griese, "I lost a great friend."
His old quarterback was the last former player to see Shula alive. They met for lunch at Gulfstream Park in March, just before the global coronavirus/COVID-19 shut everything down, a pandemic that would mean the mourning for Shula would get no public memorial, at least for a while.
Anderson recalls that Shula could be ornery with a wink. A teammate once asked the coach why he screamed at Anderson so much.
"He plays better when I yell at him!" came the answer.
Csonka said he never truly knew the depth of his feelings for the old coach until the morning his wife gave him the news.
"I felt a terrible loss," said Zonk, his voice cracking. "I have never witnessed a more dedicated, ethical man."
Most of the people Shula touched, he never knew.
