She could count the bones along his rib cage like so many blessings. If you hugged him too tight, he’d tear up from the pain.
They were lying in bed together last September after a particularly rough day. He was crying, depressed, a former Giant — literal and figuratively — wearing a diaper, unable to move.
“Will you marry me?” LaDonna Lewis asked.
Jeff Tootle blanched.
“I don’t know, LaDonna,” he replied, a familiar grin creeping back. “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”
But he said yes.
“We’ll get this (expletive) figured out,” LaDonna vowed. “I know we will.”
“I’m smiling so perpetually,” Tootle cracked, “my face is starting to hurt.”
Four aching legs. Two bad backs. One heartbeat, stalwart and true, through sea and sand, against the worst tides imaginable.
“It has been a struggle,” LaDonna sighed.
He’s a former three-sport star at Regis Jesuit, one of the best linebackers to ever suit up in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, and an NFL veteran. She’s the love of his life, a partner for more than 35 years, and dangling from her wit’s end.
In July, LaDonna went to the hospital after problems with diabetes and myopathy. The next day, out of the blue, Jeff was admitted.
Prostate cancer, the doctor told him, hands never leaving his hips. Stage 4.
By the autumn, it had spread to the rest of his body.
“All he can do,” LaDonna said, “is take his meds and be happy with the time that he has.”
Only a funny thing happened at the end of the book: Jeff Tootle, 62 years young, started writing more chapters.
Cancer had grabbed his left leg with a wicked arm tackle. It couldn’t bring him down. Not with LaDonna watching his wing.
“She’s something else, that’s all I can say,” Tootle said. “And that’s coming from my soul. Because I didn’t think I was going to make it. I was in a bad way. I looked up, and she’s still there, washing me up, just taking care of me like a big ol’ baby. My attitude was so jacked up. I don’t know how she put up with me. I wasn’t real nice.”
He’d dealt with heart failure in the winter of 2023 and suffered an infection in his left leg, making it difficult to walk. But the cancer knocked everybody for a loop.
Once overnight, Jeff fell out of bed at their Denver home, around 3 a.m. LaDonna struggled to get Tootle — who played at 240 pounds in the NFL and was heavier during his life’s work in the private sector — back up again.
She couldn’t get the kids on the phone because of the time of day. She eventually found a neighbor, someone she’d never met, and convinced him to come up and help.
“My dad used to say that getting old ain’t for sissies,” Tootle said. “I never really understood. Now I’m like, ‘Dad, I get it.’”
LaDonna got a wheelchair, which Jeff doesn’t love. Sometimes, she’ll help him between points A and B by putting both of Tootle’s arms on the back of her shoulders, so he can more or less use her as a living walker.
“Everybody’s like, ‘Oh, well, you must be well-off,’” LaDonna said. “We’re just regular people who had regular jobs who have regular problems.”
Suddenly, money is becoming one. Jeff can’t work. Tootle’s three appearances with the Giants came during the NFL players’ strike of 1987. He’s not currently eligible for NFLPA benefits, LaDonna was told.
She had to quit her job last year and stay home with Tootle full-time, picking up gigs as they come. They launched a GoFundMe page in the fall, but that somehow got lost in the algorithms.
Now, she wants to get the word out. There’s more story to tell. And a wedding to plan.
“We’re going to have to do it soon,” she said. “It’s just (about) getting your life right. I don’t want to wait a year.”
•••
Tootle grew up the son of an Air Force man, having lived in Kansas, Texas and Guam before settling in greater Denver. Jeff excelled in football, basketball and track at Regis, then helped to turn around Colorado Mesa’s gridiron fortunes.
Because Jeff, young Jeff, could bring it. Tootle was an NAIA All-American in 1982 and ’83 — a 6-foot-2, 240-pound defender who could close and cut on a dime. He was inducted into Mesa’s Hall of Honor in 2022.
After college and cups of coffee with the Chiefs and Colts, he hooked onto the Giants, jumping onto a moving train driven by the likes of Lawrence Taylor, Harry Carson, Carl Banks, Leonard Marshall and Bill Parcells.
“Playing with LT was a lot of fun,” Tootle recalled. “He used to kill me. ‘Come on, 92! Come on, 92!’ I can still hear his voice coming around that corner.
“He was a heck of a player. Just a free spirit. He was something else. He’d be in one spot on the field, and I’d say, ‘Wow, I didn’t even see him get over there.’”
“Ever run with him off the field?” I asked.
Jeff laughed.
“He was a heck of a player. He was all right,” Tootle replied. “He was a little different.”
So was Bill Belichick, his position coach.
“I just couldn’t get Belichick to love me,” Tootle cracked. “He was a different kind of coach. Different than I’ve ever had. You didn’t ever know where you kind of stood.”
•••
With LaDonna, that’s never been an issue. Theirs is a romance that started like all classic soaps: The debt collection department at Citibank, inside the old Cinderella City Mall.
LaDonna was already entrenched in the company’s collection wing in 1989. That’s when Jeff found work after the NFL stopped calling.
“I just had a baby, I was getting a divorce. I was like, ‘Wow, I’m so happy to be single,’” she recalled. “Then I met Jeff and was like, ‘What’s going on here?’
“He was like, ‘Hey, I’m Jeff.’ I’m like, ‘So?’”
LaDonna didn’t care about LT. Or Belichick. Or football. He asked her out anyway.
“She couldn’t stand me,” Tootle chuckled.
He broke the ice, though, thanks to the popcorn stand downstairs. LaDonna dug caramel and cheese mixes, so Jeff offered to share a bag. Then he started gifting them.
Snacks became lunches. Lunches became dates.
“Pepsi Cola and some popcorn,” Tootle said, “and we would talk.”
It blossomed into that quintessential ’90s American love story: escalators, shopping malls, sodas and office gossip. Only this one held fast, through thick and thin.
“It’s like oil and water, me and her,” Jeff said. “Because we still get along, but we don’t. We learned how to argue and we know how to smile at each other the next 15 minutes after she says her piece.”
On Valentine’s Day, they had only one firm rule.
“We just try to be loving that day,” Tootle said. “If something’s between us, we’ll bite our tongues for that day.
“‘Be sweet. Just be sweet.’ We’ll pick it up tomorrow.”
•••
The good days and bad days have one thing in common. Everything aches. Even joy.
“How am I going to deal with this?” Tootle asked. “Keep marching.”
Tootle takes four of what he calls his “horse pills” in regular doses. Last summer, he lost 75-80 pounds.
After a nadir of about 198 pounds, he got his appetite back and has climbed back to 210-ish.
The pills have slowed the pain. But they also kick him square in the backside, a cycle of naps and fatigue that gnaws away at the clock.
His legs gave. His energy waned. It’s not just the lack of independence, but the dependence. Moving. Bathing. Dressing.
“I can do it, I can do it,” Tootle liked to say. “I’m just a little bit slow.”
“A lot slow, Jeff,” LaDonna countered.
In sickness and in health …
“LaDonna has replaced my backbone with her backbone,” Tootle said. “I don’t know how else to put it. Her backbone became mine. I was on my deathbed for several weeks. I couldn’t keep anything down. It counts to have a good woman in my corner.”
Especially when the good woman who wanted to stay single all those years changes her mind.
“It caught me off guard,” Jeff said of the proposal. “I’m like, ‘Whoa, after all these years, now you want to marry me?’
“I guess you’re OK.”
They’ll pick it up tomorrow. Tootle laughed again, softer this time. A smile never hurt so sweetly.
For more information or to donate to Jeff Tootle and LaDonna Lewis’ GoFundMe, visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/um6dz-support-jeffs-journey-to-healing-and-hope?qid=4ecc66a6fbcc7ce0e2e5aea4125c2071 or email ladonnatoot@yahoo.com.
Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analysis on Denver’s teams.