Standing Up To Hard Knocks Seahawks Linebacker, Father Have A Special Connection

The mechanic promised that the beat-up car would get him to Boston.

He didn’t promise that it would get him back.

To David Kacyvenski, 59-year-old one-time chef, disabled janitor, full-time recovering alcoholic and world-class father, the promise of reward outweighed the risk of winding up stranded on a stretch of highway between Boston and Endicott, N.Y.

He’d get to Harvard for his son’s graduation, even if 22-year-old Isaiah was a continent away, in Kirkland, Wash., with the Seattle Seahawks.

A room was waiting for him, his son’s room at school, still occupied by roommates. The signing bonus hadn’t been delivered. Money was still tight.

Still, the diploma prized by the whole Kacyvenski clan would not go unclaimed. The old man was there, in his son’s cap and gown, going through ceremonies and later relaying by phone what a thrill it was.

On the other end, Isaiah listened - with his pop on the phone what else is there to do? - and grinned.

Happy times.

When the car needed another trip to the shop, Seahawks rookie linebacker Isaiah Kacyvenski dashed off a check for repairs.

No strangers to hard times, David and Isaiah are bonded in a way few fathers and sons can be. It has nothing to do with support, at least not financially, and everything to do with support emotionally.

They have fought and fought together. There was the battle of the bottle that David had to win on his own, and the battle against melancholy that they and Isaiah’s brothers and sisters waged together in the wake of his mother Margaret’s untimely death five years ago.

Growing up, there was no fighting over the phone. There wasn’t one until Isaiah was in eighth grade.

Too much TV?

They didn’t have cable.

Food stamps got them through the month.

“I remember not having electricity at times,” Isaiah Kacyvenski said after a steaming afternoon practice at Eastern Washington University this week. “No hot water. Food stamps, the whole bit. We got cable after I left. I keep busting on him about that.”

Isaiah is smiling, traces of his red beard contrasting with a shaved head and slightly burned pale skin. (“He’s red, white and blue, like the flag,” his father says).

I caught David on a bad day on the phone. His sister-in-law, Susan Zelechivsky - Isaiah’s aunt - had died of pancreatic cancer only that morning, in nearby Vestal, N.Y.

Before setting out for training camp, Isaiah said his goodbyes, he and his Aunt Sue knowing it would probably be the last time they’d see each other.

After we talked, David said he’d be off to an early-evening meeting, for the serenity, he said, “for balance in my life,” to again cope with death in the family.

On or about the same moment Isaiah was headed to a meeting, too, this with other linebackers and defensive players, to soak up the complexities of Seahawks defense.

The grieving he does on his own time, usually in the mornings, before the will kicks in and he steels himself against the heartache, to focus on this opportunity of a lifetime.

Playing football professionally, he says, is an ongoing 22-year-old dream.

Tragedy and Isaiah Kacyvenski - the Seahawks’ fourth-round draft choice - go back too far, only you’d never know it from the way he goes about training camp.

He loves this game. It’s obvious. He loves his aunt more, naturally - she was his surrogate mother - but he did all he could.

At least they shared their goodbyes.

When his mother died, so many things unsaid went with her.

Every time he takes a step up the ladder, his dad was saying, he seems to have to deal with profound sorrow.

But if nothing else, misery taught him to cut through the trivia. Isaiah Kacyvenski has a pretty good view of what’s up in his world

Last spring, home briefly after a minicamp, he and his father were driving through town.

“He told me we were going out for groceries,” David said. “We pulled into a dealership. He asked me if I liked the blue one. I said sure, of course.

It’s yours. Want to try it out?

It’s a Chevy Caprice that will get David Kacyvenski to Boston or anywhere else.

And back, of course.

“I told him I didn’t deserve it,” David said, “but I wasn’t going to give it back, either.”

David Kacyvenski by his admission, didn’t do so well, money-wise. He did better, otherwise.

“We scraped to get by but we were never unhappy,” Isaiah said. “I always felt we were loved. It was a happy home.”

It’s not unusual to grasp at threads, even in happy homes, to sustain broken ties, knowing that rational explanations are not always forthcoming.

It’s that way when Isaiah strings together the whys of his mother’s death.

Like why did Kacyvenski wind up wearing No. 49 at Harvard, only later to find Isaiah 49 highlighted in his mother’s bible - nearly a year after her death?

Why did she wear a Harvard sweater long before her son ever thought of going there?

So many elusive questions.

Kacyvenski spent the early days of the week wrestling with another.

Go or stay?

Services for the aunt who stepped up when her sister couldn’t are Saturday. The day of the Cardinals’ game, Isaiah’s second of the preseason.

“I might have to go to Coach Holmgren,” he said. “My family doesn’t want to pressure me, but I feel like I have to be there. At the same time . . I don’t know what to do.”

His father knows.

“As close as I can figure out right now,” he said late Tuesday afternoon, “the service is Saturday at noon. I’m a little mixed up on dates and times right now. I don’t know if he’s coming home, but they play Arizona. I told him to feel free to stay put.

“He’s said his goodbyes.”

“I’m torn up inside right now,” Isaiah said. “I called home the other day before the game, told her I was writing her name on my wrists (wristbands). She couldn’t talk, but they said when I told her they saw a tear.”’

She knew, David Kacyvenski said, “that Isaiah played that game with his aunt in mind.”

That’s not all he did.

She had asked for 20 Seahawks hats, autographed, to pass on to family and friends who cared for her during her six-month ordeal.

Isaiah may not make it home Saturday. The thoughtfulness he showed will.

“The hats,” David Kacyvenski said. “I’ve got a feeling I’m going to see Seahawks hats at the service.”

At least 20 will be autographed.