Doyel: Jim Irsay loved his daughters, his Colts and his music. And Indianapolis

Indianapolis Star

2 days ago

INDIANAPOLIS – They're telling Jim Irsay stories at his funeral service on Monday, and you don't know whether to laugh or cry. In the sanctuary of St. Luke's United Methodist Church, people are doing both.
We're laughing to hear about Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, power lifter of weights, being the Irsay family chef on Christmas morning, making omelets. His secret? Feta cheese. And laughing he'd get on the blender and make the best homemade chocolate shake anyone ever had. His secret? French vanilla creamer.
Laughing, because when he was a boy in Winnetka, Illinois, he'd get permission to invite a friend — one friend — for a sleepover. As that kid was knocking on the front door, greeting Jim's parents, a handful of others would be sneaking around back and sneaking in through Jim's window. 'Late Night Action,' Irsay called those secret missions.
Laughing, because when he became a father he'd sketch out happy little pictures for his girls. Irsay knew he wasn't much of an artist, so he'd include sticky notes on the pictures with arrows pointing out details like: 'This is a mountain!'
Laughing, because he watched 'The Big Lebowski' and 'The Martian' so often he had them memorized. Laughing, because he was the same with musical lyrics. No, he was even better with lyrics, and had a knack for coming up with the perfect lyric for any situation. He'd encourage his three daughters — Carlie, Casey and Kalen — to learn the songs of his beloved Beatles like this: When a Beatles song started playing, the first girl to come up with the title and singer got a Tic Tac.
Laughing, because so many speakers at the funeral can do a passable imitation of Irsay's slowly crooning voice, including some of his favorite catchphrases: 'Fire up,' he'd say to motivate someone. 'Really? Oh wow,' he'd say when he was told something of great importance, like McDonald's introducing its all-day breakfast menu.
Laughing, because the house where he and Meg raised their girls — not far from St. Luke's, where the family walked to services — had an intercom, and you know Jim Irsay. He loved a microphone, didn't he? Any excuse to get on that intercom was sufficient. At the first sign of snow outside, even a single flake, the house filled up with his deep, gravelly, excited voice: 'Girls, no school tomorrow!'
Crying, because every story comes with an unspoken afterward.
Crying, because he's gone.
Doyel obituary: Jim Irsay died and we're less for it; Indianapolis, the Colts, all of us
Hey Jude, don't make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Those are the first lyrics from the first song on the Jim Irsay funeral playlist — 'Hey Jude,' by The Beatles — as guests are being seated and family photos are playing across a giant video screen.
Here's one of Jim and Peyton Manning at Pebble Beach. Now he's holding the Super Bowl XLI trophy alongside coach Tony Dungy. Here he is, hoisting that same trophy after receiving it from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. Pictures with Colts chief operating officer and dear friend of decades, Pete Ward — 'We're like Lennon and McCartney,' Irsay would tell Ward, who'd respond: 'More like Lennon and Ringo' — and John Madden, and Jerry Jones, and George Bush at the White House.
Did you know Jim Irsay liked to play kickball? Or wear Rudolph's red nose? Or pull up his sleeves and growl as he compared biceps with his daughters? So many pictures, more than any other kind, of Jim with his favorite people on Earth: his three daughters, and his 10 grandchildren
Ten people spoke, all of whom have known Jim for decades, with one admitting they'd been considering this eulogy for 20 years because, as most knew, 'He's had some brushes with death.' We are also told how Jim Irsay took a sad song and made it better, how he befriended players on his dad's Baltimore Colts as a teenager, lifting weights with them, defending them to his alcohol-fueled, rage-filled father and being watched over in return by those 1970s NFL players, 'Because they knew growing up was hell for Jim.'
The crowd was the eclectic group you'd expect of a man who befriended rockers and poets and people experiencing homelessness. There were Colts past and present, quarterbacks and kickers, punters and tight ends, more. Every one of the Colts' past 25 years of coaches: Tony Dungy, Jim Caldwell, Chuck Pagano, Frank Reich and Shane Steichen. Every front-office leader too: Bill Polian, Ryan Grigson, Chris Ballard. An eclectic mix that included high-ranking members of IMPD and Pacers executives and a handful of media: local and national, print and television.
One speaker introduced himself as having met Irsay 'at a meeting.' He doesn't say what kind of meeting, then invites the crowd to join him in the 'Serenity Prayer' and calls Irsay 'a calming voice offering hope, comfort and support' at meetings. People gravitated toward him afterward, the speaker told the crowd, and Jim stuck around, giving others 'the courage to keep going.'
Jim built some clubs that would hold meetings and renovated others — new carpet, nice chairs, like that — so attendees of these meetings would have a place 'where they were could feel like home.'
Jim Irsay was an addict, as he talked about freely. Were there occasional headlines? Yes. It happens. The disease is cruel, and it does not discriminate.
The Eastern Star Church choir is here to sing two songs, and its first selection is the 1929 hymn 'I'll Fly Away.'
It starts like this:
Some glad morning when this night is o'er I will fly away
I will be free one day
Jim Irsay is free now.
Just yesterday morning they let us know you were gone…
That's the third song on the pre-service playlist, that 1970 piece by James Taylor about life and death, addiction and fame.
The crowd that files into the sanctuary walks past pictures of Irsay and his girls, Irsay and his grandkids, Irsay and his dog, a Maltese-Shih Tzu mix named Drake. The casket is near the pastor's pulpit, the lid a strong Colts blue, surrounded by nearly a dozen guitars and more pictures of Irsay and his family and a wreath of flowers shaped into a horseshoe.
Another song: 'I am the Walrus' by The Beatles (1967). Another: 'What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye (1971). Another: 'Tired of Being Alone' by Al Green (1971).
The songs are telling the story of Jim Irsay, a romantic and an optimist and a dreamer. And a realist who'd tell people, 'It's lonely at the top.'
Soon John Mellencamp is playing, but not over the loudspeakers. He's right up there — next to the casket, in front of Irsay's prized drum set once played by The Beatles — having entered the sanctuary through a side door. Irsay was 24 when they met, shortly after the Colts came here from Baltimore in early 1984. Mellencamp was 32, and Irsay called him his 'big brother.'
'He was a dreamer,' Mellencamp says before he plays his first song. 'We all need to be dreamers. And he did that so well.'
Mellencamp says he wrote the song he's about to play first, 'Longest Days,' for his mom.
'She lived to be 100,' he says. 'Wish I could say the same for Jimmy.'
Then he's playing 'Pink Houses,' and if you're getting chills as you read those words, you're not the only one. All over St. Luke's, people in mourning are tapping their feet. Leather shoes, wing tips, high heels — they're keeping the beat. Irsay would've liked that. And this was a moment that Irsay, who talked about death quite a bit, had discussed with Mellencamp.
'He asked for this song to be played,' Mellencamp says.
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There is a time for everything
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
A time to be born and a time to die…
Those are the first three lines from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, a scripture the family asked Dungy to read. As the nearly two-hour service unfolded, speakers kept describing the misunderstood essence of Jim Irsay in bursts of one or two sentences. No need to identify the speakers; this wasn't a news conference. This was further illumination of this city's biggest champion:
'A proud student of the school of life.'
'I'm going to miss his innocent and loving eccentricities.'
'He loved the Colts, he loved the state, and boy did he love people.'
'He was wonderfully, perfectly imperfect.'
'He'd speak to a homeless person in New York like he'd speak to one of his fellow (NFL) owners.'
'He believed in God, he believed in angels who were looking after him, and he believed that one day those angels would lead him into the arms of God.'
'I wish I could've seen it last week when he met his beloved John Lennon: 'What's up, brother!''
'If you wanted to get on his bad side, talk down to somebody in the (Colts) building. He hated that.'
'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
Those are the first two lines of 'Shelter in the Storm,' a 1975 song by Bob Dylan, another of Irsay's beloveds. The crowd is treated to audio of Irsay introducing that song at a club in Nashville, before he sings it in a passable rendition — better than that; the man had real talent — of Dylan himself.
'Three, two, one,' Irsay says, warming up before getting started on his introduction. 'Sometimes we can be trapped in this wilderness we call the world here…'
Irsay continues in that gravelly smoker's voice of his, and while there is no video, you can hear him speaking around a smile. Then he is singing, and this is the end of the service. Jim Irsay is having the last word at the Jim Irsay funeral, and guests are holding candles as several of Irsay's grandchildren walk from row to row, lighting each candle at the edge of the row, the fire being passed from mourner to mourner until there are 1,000 or more flickering lights while Irsay sings to mourners in what the ceremony program calls a 'message from Jim in heaven.'
He was a fascinating man, Jim Irsay, an intellectual who studied the lives of Teddy Roosevelt and George Halas, JFK and MLK. He was the Colts' No. 1 fan, celebrating with family the team's home victories — every one of them, for years — with takeout from Hollyhock Hill restaurant on the northside. He was a girl dad, writing the song 'Lily White' about the joy of watching his babies sleep. A grainy home video of Irsay singing that song played Monday at St. Luke's, with Irsay strumming his guitar and singing over audible conversations all over the room. Someone behind camera keeps giggling as he describes his girls, these future owners of the Indianapolis Colts, in hues of white and pink.
He was a romantic, Jim Irsay. A man of music, a man of dreams.
'As we all go on,' Mellencamp had said before walking out the way he came in, 'think of Jimmy from time to time and what he did for this community. And let's hope his dreams come true.'
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Threads, or on BlueSky and Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar, or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar. Subscribe to the free weekly Doyel on Demand newsletter.