Matt Harkrider

Twenty years ago he blocked a punt in the first game back after Hurricane Katrina. He has had ALS for fifteen years. Today the city gave him its key, and he led the parade himself. His name is Steve Gleason and he played for the New Orleans Saints. This afternoon he led a second line from Lafayette Square to Champions Square. Mayor Helena Moreno handed him the key to New Orleans. Then he performed his new album with Marc Broussard in front of the crowd. The album is called Rebirth. It is his poetry set to music by New Orleans musicians. Tonight he was on the floor of the Superdome with his family, twenty years to the season since the building reopened. The opponent tonight is Atlanta. Same team, same Monday night, same building. You know what he did in that building. Everybody does. Here is what you probably do not know, because he only said it this week. He thinks that punt is why he is alive. "If I do not block that punt, I am another former special teams player, a has-been football guy. When ALS came, I probably fade away quietly and die anonymously." And then this. "The truth I have to live with is this: The same play that helped New Orleans breathe again is a big reason I'm still breathing now." Sit with that for a second. A backup safety made one play on a Monday night in 2006. The city needed it. Five years later he got a diagnosis that takes most people in three to five years, and the only reason anybody was listening when he started talking about it was that play. He is in the ten to twenty percent of people with ALS who make it past a decade. He is nearly sixteen years in. He said something else about walking back into that stadium. "When I roll back into that stadium, I will not only be revisiting a monument of 2006, but I will be walking into a mirror. A place that had to learn how to rise. I had to learn the same thing." And this one is the whole thing in nine words. "I'm still here. That still surprises some people." Be honest about what today does and does not change. There is no cure. He needs help to move and help to breathe, and a key to a city does not alter any of that. But a man who cannot speak with his own voice spent this afternoon leading a parade through New Orleans, and tonight he sat on the floor of the Superdome with his wife and his kids, in the building he helped bring back to life. Twenty years ago he gave that city one play. He says the city gave him the rest of his life.