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Super Bowl champion – and Shadle Park grad – returns home

Philadelphia Eagles special teams player Bryan Braman, right, surrounded by family members, receives a proclamation and a coin from Mayor David Condon Friday, Mar. 16, 2018 at Spokane City Hall. Braman, who played in the recent Super Bowl, attended Shadle Park High School before heading off to play at University of Idaho, Long Beach City College and West Texas A&M. (Jesse Tinsley / The Spokesman-Review)
By Ryan Collingwood ryanc@spokesman.com(509) 459-5473

A mountain of a man in a three-piece suit, Super Bowl champion Bryan Braman engaged each of the couple dozen onlookers stuffed inside a packed Spokane City Hall boardroom on Friday.

Some he remembered from his days at Shadle Park High School. Others, mostly city employees, relished the opportunity to shake the sizable hand of the Philadelpha Eagles’s special teams enforcer.

“How’s your son doing? I hear he’s doing well,” Braman asked one man as he signed a glossy photo of himself attempting to block a punt against the Atlanta Falcons.

In his first visit to Spokane since winning the Lombardi Trophy last month –with about 10 family members in tow – Braman scribbled his name and “Super Bowl 52 champion” about 50 times before heading onto his next destination.

But not before Mayor David Condon presented the 30-year-old with another memento: the mayor’s coin.

“It’s for people who have done something good for the city,” Condon said. “Everybody from World War II veterans to folks like him.”

The 6-foot-6, 250-pound Braman said he appreciated the gesture.

“This is great,” he said as he put his arm around Condon.

Before Condon honored the 2005 Shadle Park grad, both men stood in the seventh-floor mayor’s office as the mayor pointed to Spokane’s newest downtown renovations since Braman’s last visit a year ago.

Braman, who said he was scrambling to see as many friends as family members as possible in a three-day window, is looking to help the city himself.

He has been active with the Spokane Youth Sports Association and, on Friday night, he signed even more memorabilia to be auctioned off to help the program.

Last summer, he said he bought a piece of property in north Spokane that he’s been renovating and hopes to use it to host SYSA events.

“I’m really looking forward to working with SYSA, the after-school academic programs and the schools,” said Braman, now a father. “Using that property to give back and help them raise money, because it was such a big part of my life.”

“I wish I spent more time on this earlier in my career, but now I am in a good place.”