TheMichiganDaily, www.michigandaily.com
FootballSaturday, September 7, 2019
4B
Jack Harbaugh sat on his couch
in Wisconsin, his youngest son
three days removed from the end
of spring practice over 300 miles
away, when he felt a fist. Other
than some discomfort while tak-
ing a walk, he didn’t have any
symptoms — no sweating, no
nausea, no pain in his arm. Just
that fist. A pop right above his
heart, cinching him tight, like
someone grabbing and not let-
ting go.
He looked at his wife, Jackie,
who had been with him watching
North Carolina and Villanova in
the national title game. “We gotta
go,” Jack told her, and from there,
it was a straight shot to Ascension
Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital
Ozaukee in Mequon, Wiscon-
sin. Years prior, John Harbaugh
recalled, Jack had been on some
medication but didn’t like it and
never went back. At age 76, Jack
didn’t have a doctor; he was on no
medicine whatsoever. If he woke
up with pain, he shook it off. “I
mean, I was one of those guys,”
he said this summer. “... You just
don’t — you just don’t.”
Upon arrival at the hospital,
things moved fast. The doctors
performed tests, then woke Jack
up at 4 a.m. to tell him he had a
heart attack. He needed four
bypasses. They were going to do
catheterization in the morning.
Jack thinks Jackie called the kids
after that was done.
Three years later, Jim Harbaugh
doesn’t want to speak at length
about that moment. The lines
of mortality had already been
converging when the call came
— two months after Jack’s heart
attack, Jim signed an addendum
to his own contract to include
a life insurance policy. He says
now that the heart attack didn’t
change his relationship with his
father, that the only shift in his
own perspective since then is
rooted in his dad’s actions. Jim
pivots to discussing how watch-
ing his dad work himself back
into shape at the crux of his late
70s changed his perspective, but
he doesn’t get profound or philo-
sophical. As Jim talks, a chair sits
outside his office. Jack resides
there for a portion of each work
day, within shouting distance
of his son, holding a job title as
special advisor to the Michigan
football program. Jack has no
office or designated workspace
in Schembechler Hall. The chair,
perched right outside Jim’s door,
is all he needs.
In 2004, Jim’s first year as a col-
lege head coach, Jack took a
leave of absence from his job as
an associate athletic director at
Marquette and drove three days
to join his son’s staff at the Uni-
versity of San Diego, as a running
backs coach. They both lived
in Coronado, about 25 minutes
south of campus. In the morn-
ings, Jim would swing by, pick up
his dad and they’d drive to work.
Their conversations often cen-
tered on football — the day-to-
day happenings of the team
— and Jim picked his dad’s brain
on every aspect of running a pro-
gram. As the day went on, they’d
stand side by side on the field dur-
ing practice, sit next to each other
in meetings. When they drove
home, Jack became Jim’s sound-
ing board, a voice on his staff he
could trust completely. Their
conversations ascended the poli-
tics inherent in coaching. Jack
could relate to every challenge,
including that of raising a fam-
ily with the demands placed on a
football coach. If they disagreed
on something, it was OK.
“It was life-changing to have that
year with him,” Jim Harbaugh
told The Daily.
Whatever rushed into Jim’s brain
at the moment he got that call, he
and both his siblings, John and
Joani, dropped what they were
doing and came to Wisconsin the
day before Jack’s surgery. The
heart attack, relatively speaking,
was minor. The word minor in
relation to a heart attack, though,
belies the point, which John Har-
baugh makes without obscurity
or obfuscation. “They said that
if he hadn’t gone in there,” John
said, “he wouldn’t have made it
through the night.”
Jack had 90 percent blockage in
two of his three main arteries.
Surgery was set for Thursday.
Once they got there, Jim and
John stayed through the night,
playing chess at the foot of their
father’s hospital bed, arguing
over some trivial game like noth-
ing had changed.
The family tried to keep things
lighthearted. After Jack’s sur-
gery, Jim took pictures, though
his father had little interest in
seeing them. Jack wanted to be
out of the hospital by Monday,
four days later, because the doc-
tor told him the record was five.
“I didn’t make it. I got out in
about six,” Jack said. “But it’s just
— that’s the way I think. ‘Well,
tell me what I have to do.’ Coach-
able.”
Jim Harbaugh says he’s tried to
hire his dad every single year at
every single head coaching job
he’s had. After that first year,
2004, Jack politely declined,
driving back to Milwaukee with
Jackie. His answer stayed the
same as the years passed, first
due to his duties at Marquette
and then because he had
retired. He was happy to
visit or offer advice, and
did so with regularity.
Besides the 2009
Sun Bowl, when
he
briefly
joined
Jim’s
Stanford staff to coach running
backs because of a departure, he
never took a job on the payroll.
In the wake of his heart attack,
though, Jack opened up to the