Clay Henry: Weber Spoke Every Player's Language

As word spread Tuesday night that Dean Weber had passed, texts began to pour into my phone.

In typical fashion, they were just of the did-you-know fashion. They quickly changed to a series of messages about the greatness of the man who taped ankles for 35 seasons for the Arkansas Razorbacks football team.

One of my first messages was from Chuck Barrett, the radio voice of the Razorbacks. We discussed via text if there was anyone other than Frank Broyles who knew as much about Razorback Nation as Dean.

No, we agreed. We considered others. It wasn’t close.

There was a phone call to another radio buddy, former Razorback quarterback Matt Jones. Weber mentored Jones like a son and they drew closer through later years over many lunches.

Jones had been to see Weber many times after he became ill, including Friday of last week.

“It had been a couple of weeks and it was like he had aged 100 years, so it was tough to see him like that,” Jones said. “But he still had his sense of humor. He was always a very funny man, lots of jabs. You’d leave sometimes wondering if he liked you.”

Weber loved Jones like a son.

“One thing he said that was really funny Friday, Deano said the word cool,” Jones said. “Deano never said cool.

“But he knew your language. He could talk Matt Jones. He could talk like Anthony Lucas. He talked Darren McFadden’s language. If he talked with you, definitely you listened. He was a firecracker.

“I had a hard time going to sleep Tuesday night when I got some calls about his passing, but I knew I was in a position of love and that he had touched so many lives so that his spirit was alive and well.”

Yes, he taped ankles all of those years. Former UA head coach Houston Nutt wanted to make sure all knew that aspect just dwarfed what he did.

“Lots of trainers, as they get older, they don’t tape ankles any more,” Nutt said. “That wasn’t Dean.”

There might have been a dozen men and women working in his training rooms that could tape ankles, but Weber never stopped until he was no longer head trainer.

“That’s why he always knew the pulse of our team,” Nutt said. “That’s why he could tell me who needed a push, a lift up or someone I needed to get in line. He knew.

“He knew what to tell Coach Broyles. He was among the first to tell him not only were we outgrowing the stadium, but the building we were working in, too. And when we started making plans, they all went through Dean. He knew what we needed and where to put it.”

Nutt said his relationship started when Weber taped his ankle as an 18-year-old freshman in 1976. That would have been Weber’s third season with the Razorbacks.

“I’ll never forget it,” Nutt said. “It was August two-a-days. He was taping my ankle and two of our offensive linemen, R. C. Thielemann and Greg Koch, picked Dean up and threw him in the whirlpool.

“I thought, wow, this is a different type of relationship between a trainer and the players.”

Fast forward to 1998 when Nutt returned as head coach for the Razorbacks. Weber was still the trainer.

“As a head coach, I got very close to Dean,” Nutt said. “I’d have a staff meeting on Thursday night and then I’d have another meeting, just me and Dean, at 10 p.m. Thursday. Those were great conversations.”

That’s because Weber knew everyone so well, including the walk-ons, but especially the stars like running back Darren McFadden. No one on campus was as close to McFadden as Weber.

“I want to emphasize that Dean treated everyone the same and had no favoritism,” McFadden said. “So everyone would say the same as me about Dean. He was their guy.

“But I did have a great relationship with Dean. I have called him weekly – or he called me – even before he got sick last summer. It developed beyond a player-trainer relationship. We considered each other family.”

After McFadden finished his playing career there was a mention to Weber that rabbit hunting spots were drying up in Pulaski County. He asked Weber if there might be some places McFadden could bring his grandfather for some hunts in Washington County.

“Of course, Dean knew everyone there and soon we were hunting some pretty good spots in his area,” McFadden said. “He’d call around and we’d have some place to hunt.”

McFadden said there were many great conversations through the years, some in the training room, many more on the phone.

“The training room talks, I doubt I can tell you exactly what was said,” McFadden said. “You know training room talk is a different language. Our language might not be so good, that’s both of us. Those were some colorful words, not appropriate for me to tell you.”

Clearly, Weber knew how to talk to players.

“Yes, he did,” said Grant Garrett, team captain in 1998. “Number one, you knew you had a friend in the training room with Dean. Number two, he would lift you up and provide inspiration.

“He did take care of our bumps and bruises, but more than that he connected with every player no matter your role on the team. You knew he had your best interest at heart and was on your side.”

Garrett remembers a trip to Dickson Street with Weber to help with some heavy lifting at Best Sports.

“I think it was me and Russ Brown,” Garrett said. “We helped out, then at the end of the day, Dean had a bunch of boxes for us to put in his truck. We asked what was in them. He said, ‘That’s the things bought for your teammates that have nothing.’

“What Dean would do was go buy heavier gear than the school distributed for some of the guys who came from warm spots like south Texas or Florida that didn’t have anything but shorts. Dean would buy clothes with his own money and hand it out. He bought them shoes, too, out of his own pocket.”

Garrett said Weber did not “see color,” but he did recognize character.

“If you were not a good person, he did notice that,” Garrett said. “What we always said, he’s not going to leave you hanging. You knew what he thought of you. He was so solid.”

Louis Campbell, former UA player, assistant coach and administrator, said solid isn’t quite strong enough.

“He was the rock that we were all tied to,” Campbell said. “He advised all of us and that included Coach (Frank) Broyles. If there was something important, Coach Broyles was going to talk to Dean first. I’ve known Dean since he got to Arkansas in the spring of 1973. We all changed through the years, but not Dean.

“He was the same yesterday as he was then. He was tough and hard, but he was the same with everyone.”

However, Weber apparently handed out love in equal doses with the toughness. In the last few months as his health slipped, visitors showed up in droves. They came to the hospital as he recovered from a truck accident. Eventually, he was moved to Catherine’s Place, an assisted living facility.

Sean Rochelle got to know Weber first as a graduate assistant on Ken Hatfield’s staff in 1989. They worked together starting in 2014 when Weber moved from athletics to the Razorback Foundation where Rochelle was executive director.

Rochelle and Weber have been regular lunch partners for many months. Rochelle has been an almost constant visitor in recent days. He was with Weber at the end.

“What I know about Dean is that his heart had no boundaries,” Rochelle said. “He looked at everything he did as a gift to others. He had such incredible passion. He wasn’t ever lukewarm on anything. He was passionate about the Razorbacks for 52 years.

“He was so good to me as a GA for Coach Hatfield. I’d come from Elkins and St. Paul so my thought was I’d never had it so good. What I saw was a tough, tough man. He’d tell players, ‘Don’t ask for another pair of (gym) shorts until you’ve done something.’ So I didn’t expect anything.”

As Christmas and a trip to the Cotton Bowl approached, Weber asked Rochelle if he’d done the Christmas shopping for his parents. He had not.

“He took me into the equipment room and said, ‘Go pick some things out to take them,’ and I got a Razorback coat for my stepdad and a sweatshirt for my mom,” Rochelle said. “Then, Dean stopped me and said, ‘Now don’t make this into a big deal.’ Well, it was a big deal. My stepdad wore that coat every day until it was in tatters.

“Everyone has cool stories about Dean. He just made you feel special. He had that gift.”

Rochelle said Weber loved one gift he received from former players. The seniors of 1979 got together for an endowed scholarship in his name to send a UA student trainer to grad school.

“That was so special to him, quite a legacy,” Rochelle said. “It meant the world. He’d talk to me about that a lot.”

Rochelle felt a huge need for another talk with Weber on Tuesday morning.

“I went to the foundation and sat in his office,” he said. “We had coffee there every morning. I closed the door and talked to him. He talked to me, too. He always did. We will keep talking.”

Former baseball coach Norm DeBriyn worked with Rochelle and Weber at the Razorback Foundation. DeBriyn went to see Weber on Monday morning. Typically, Rochelle was already there.

“I think Sean did a great job helping Dean through the transition when he came to the Foundation,” DeBriyn said. “They were extremely close. He was a constant at the hospital or the care facility every day, but so were Louis and Katie Hill. Tom Reed, Jim Watson and Zack Pianalto were with Dean a lot, too.”

The constant flow of former Razorbacks, former coaches and athletic trainers continued to pick up over the last few months as Weber moved into Hospice care.

“They moved him to a bigger room at the hospital because of visitors,” DeBriyn said. “And, they did at Catherine’s Place, too.

“It was interesting at the hospital because he knew all of their procedures and whether they were doing them right or not.”

Apparently, the caregivers found out how experienced Weber was in medicine. Whether or not those workers got a dose of Weber’s tough love was not mentioned.

“What those people at the hospital and Catherine’s all learned is how many people loved Dean,” DeBriyn said. “They knew he had that hard outer core, but you just didn’t get offended by him because you knew how many people he helped.”

DeBriyn learned about the helping hand when he mentioned to Weber that he was about to send $3,000 to a former track athlete from Jamaica who had no way to pay burial expenses for his mother. DeBriyn met him through church.

“Dean gave me another $1,000,” DeBriyn said. “He didn’t know much more than he’d been one of our runners. That was Dean.”

Before the new baseball stadium was built and there were proper offices for baseballs coaches, DeBriyn’s office was on the second floor of the Broyles Center. The regular coffee group on that floor was typically in the office of Campbell and included Weber, DeBriyn and Robert Cox, the tennis coach.

“When you are a head coach, sometimes it’s lonely,” DeBriyn said. “If anyone knew how to counsel a head coach, it was Dean. We’d have those coffee meetings and Dean never kicked me and Robert out.”

Cox said the tennis team got “top care” from Weber and his staff.

“Dean was so good to me as a player, coach and department employee,” Cox said. “He always called me ‘Wobert’ because that’s how Coach Broyles said my name. He would always smile when he said my name and that made me smile.

“He took care of our athletes on and off the court. He recognized mental health in the early 1990s and that was before departments even talked about mental health for athletes. He did.

“Here is what we all knew as coaches at Arkansas, our teams were better because of Dean Weber. He took care of all of us.”