1985 Bears Coverage: Connie Payton says she’s ready now for a little recognition of her own

Every day of the 2015 Chicago Bears season, Chicago Sun-Times Sports will revisit its coverage 30 years ago during the 1985 Bears’ run to a Super Bowl title.

Connie Payton says she’s ready now for a little recognition of her own

Mary Gillespie

Originally published Oct. 20, 1985

Slim, pretty without glamor, she’s the girl next door in a 12,000-square-foot South Barrington house. She’s your unprepossessing carpool pal who happens to drive a Jaguar and wear diamond stud earrings the size of shirt buttons. She’s the woman sporting designer clothes and braces on her teeth.

At 31, she’s comfortably married to football’s greatest running back (and one of Chicago’s most enduring sex symbols), has two beautiful children – one of each – and a live-in maid to help tend them. She watches her Chicago Bear earn his phenomenal salary from a luxury skybox on Sunday afternoons.

Surely, there are those of you who’d love to hate this darling of circumstance. Forget it. There’s nothing to even dislike about Connie Payton.

No artifice. Just her own brand of “Sweetness.”

To most people, Connie Payton is a “Who?” Even non-football fans can usually place Walter, but his wife of nine years has seemed content to lead a quiet Mama Bear’s life during Walter’s decade of record-breaking success. Part of the reason is her natural reticence; part is her husband’s relentless pursuit of privacy – ironically, one of his most-publicized traits.

Now, though, Connie Payton says she’s ready for a bit of her own recognition. She’s polishing a new sophistication that becomes her like the hot-orange jacket she’s donned to greet an afternoon visitor.

“Before, in the early years, I was really young and I didn’t know anything,” she says, curled shoeless on the huge sofa that fills but a corner of the massive living room of their home, completed in March.

“It was me and Walter. My life was centered around him.

“Then Jarrett came, and he added to the family thing – I just hadn’t thought much beyond that,” she continues in a soft voice.

And then the soft eyes begin to shine, hinting at what comes next:

“Well, yesterday, I went to an early meeting, ran to the store, had some ladies for lunch and a business meeting, then some more people came in the evening to discuss another project. When it was all over,

Walter said, `Well, look at you. Such a socialite.’ And I thought, `OK, that’s sort of nice!’ It felt good, you know?”

Walter Payton may have a jammed-to-capacity trophy room downstairs, but Connie Payton is working on a few honors of her own now, including a plaque presented to her in recognition for her volunteer work with the Leukemia Society of America. It might have been inscribed with something about heroism above and beyond the line of duty: At last spring’s fund-raising telethon for the society, an eight-months-pregnant Mrs. Payton stayed “on” until she feared she was going into labor.

Besides her expanding involvement in charity work, Connie Payton is launching a new business with two

partners. Organized on a home-party system, they will sell jewelry and accessories to women “who are too busy to spend a lot of time shopping.” Eventually, she hopes, the venture may expand into one or more boutiques.

Betty Brown, one of Payton’s partners and a companion in charity work, confides that she thoroughly enjoys the reactions of “some of these high-powered types” when they meet Walter’s wife:

“We’ll be at some gathering, and I’ll introduce Connie and people will sort of do a double take. They whisper to me, “Is that Connie Payton?” Because she just looks so. . . normal. So nice. She’s not the

knock-em-over-with-jewels-and-furs type.”

The former Connie Norwood was more the shy type, growing up in New Orleans. As a high-school senior, while visiting relatives in Jackson, Miss., she was convinced by a family friend – Jackson State University football coach Bob Hill – to go on a blind date with a young footballer named. . . well, you get the idea. Connie and Walter sipped Cokes while Walter confided in her about the heartbreak he’d suffered over a recently demised romance.

“I remember thinking, `What a dumb girl to break up with him’,” Connie Payton recalls. “He was just so. . . mannerly. So soft and gentle, you could forget he was a football player.”

She laughs. While she’s grateful that football has made them a fortune (though he doesn’t like to say exactly, Walter Payton’s contract with the Bears is reportedly worth about $1.1 million a year) she’s never felt the need to become familiar with its intricacies. “I saw an ad for one of those football clinics for women,” she confesses, “and it had three football questions on it. I couldn’t answer any of

them.

“To be honest, I never thought Walter would be a big football star,” she says. “I go back and think about college, and even then I never really kept up with it. All the girls used to say, `Boy, you’re

really lucky, you have the most popular boy on the campus and the best football player,’ and I’d say, `Huh? Football?’ I never paid attention.

“The day he got drafted, he had about five friends who were also waiting to see who’d pick them, and we all sat around and suddenly I had to pay attention. When it turned out he’d been picked No. 1 by the

Chicago Bears, I remember thinking, `Who in the world are the Chicago Bears? Where in the world is Chicago? Isn’t that where it’s so cold?’ All his friends were going to places like Houston and San Diego and Los Angeles, and I thought he was the unluckiest one of all.”

Walter spent his rookie year alone here, but soon they were plotting to be together. “We decided real quick to just do it – get married. But the day we were supposed to go, I had been out at the mall and lost track of time. When I got back, there was Walter sitting in this chair, so mad, with his two friends sitting there all dressed up to be witnesses. We were supposed to be at the minister’s study, and I forgot. I just dropped those bags, threw on some clothes and ran!”

Her transition from Southern Girl to Midwestern Wife wasn’t easy. The move to Chicago meant giving up her last year of college, which she never finished. “I was kind of disappointed in myself,” she says. “I

thought I would always work. I never thought of myself as getting married and having kids. I had to make some choices.

“The first two or three years I was here, it was very hard,” she remembers. “The people just weren’t real friendly. Where I come from, you walk down the street and everybody says, `Good morning.’ Goodness,

gracious, I had my feelings hurt so many times, waving to people who just stared back, people who wouldn’t smile. Walter just kept saying to me, `When are you ever going learn?’ ”

She’s had to learn more than she’d ever imagined about strangers – friendly and otherwise – thanks to her husband’s notoriety. There’s never a visit downtown, never a restaurant meal without autograph seekers and celebrity hounds.

“I remember on Easter Sunday . . . we were at the Palmer House and people just kept coming up to the table,” she says. “The thing was, they just ignored me, like I wasn’t there, and kept asking Walter to

sign things. I mean, that’s what I call rude.

“But we tried to be nice. Walter asked them to please wait till we were finished eating and he’d be glad to sign autographs. Do you know what they said? `But we’re leaving right now!’ Can you believe it?”

Through fame, fortune and fan attacks, Connie Payton has somehow managed to keep a calm perspective, marvels Donna Hartenstine, wife of Bears defensive end Mike Hartenstine and fellow “old-timer” among Bears wives. Her husband was the No. 2 draft choice the year Walter Payton was No. 1.

“Connie hasn’t changed much at all since I first got to know her in 1976,” says Hartenstine. “A lesser person might have, given all they’ve been through. She’s still always someone I can call for lunch or to discuss a problem. She’s just a class act, and I don’t think anything could change that.”

The Hartenstines and Paytons aren’t able to get together much anymore for the dinners out they enjoyed in the early years.

“The downside of Walter’s notoriety has been that if we try to go out to dinner, the focus of the whole evening becomes where he’s sitting and what he’s eating,” says Hartenstine. “But Connie and I still talk on the phone. I think we’ll always be good friends; that’s just the way she is.”

Meanwhile, back at Payton Place, relentless “fans” constantly drive up to their security gate and stare at the house. Electronic gates guard the driveway; sensors under the pavement let them know when someone’s near. It can be trying, to say the least.

“One Saturday at 3 in the morning, there were two cars of people who drove all the way up to the gate just to gawk. Another day there was a pack of Cub Scouts or a whole Little League team – it was a van and a car full of kids – and they got out stared and then rode away. It’s really pretty constant.

“I can handle it OK,” Payton says, though a frown is creasing her forehead. “It’s just part of the life. But this one” – she lowers her voice and points to 4-year-old Jarrett – “it frightens him.

“One day he was outside playing with some kids in the driveway and some teenage boys drove by and yelled, “Hey little Walter, we’re gonna get you! We’re gonna get you!” He ran in the house screaming. Walter called the police, but what can they do? You can’t stop the people from coming.”

But you can stop them from coming too close. The house, which Walter and Connie designed themselves, is a scrupulously secured family retreat. It includes a stocked lake in the backyard, a shooting range, a sauna/sun/steam room – just about everything but a private gym.

“Walter said he didn’t want that, because he needed to have something he’d have to leave the house for,” jokes Connie. It’s easy to see why he wouldn’t want to leave it often. The sprawling, tri-level house with a jungle-like atrium in its center is a big jump upscale from the modest Arlington Heights tract home they owned for 7 1/2 years.

Now, the kids have their wing; the parents have theirs. On the doorknob leading to the elder Paytons’ rooms is a needlepoint sign reading: “We interrupt this marriage to bring you the football season.” Behind the door is a bathroom with a raised, Walter-sized tub that looks more like an indoor pool. A sunken fireplace nook keeps the bedroom cozy in winter; in nice weather, they can open doors onto the

deck that surrounds the house, overlooking the lake where Walter and Jarrett often fish.

The creature comforts afforded by Walter Payton’s golden career do ease the trials. For Connie’s last birthday, he gave her a four-carat-plus diamond ring. She was, characteristically, a bit more practical: For his 31st, several days later, she gave him a pants presser.

“I keep telling him I don’t need any more jewelry,” she says, with an exasperation most women would kill for.

He exasperates her often, she jokingly insists – “You cannot get that man to sit down and be still and just talk” – but it’s clear that after a decade of marriage, they’ve hit their stride

together.

She never travels to away games, but tries not to miss those at home. As the years go by – and running backs with shorter careers than Walter’s retire – Connie Payton admits she worries every time he goes

down and doesn’t get back up fast. She also says the years have helped her polish her kid-glove technique after rough days at Soldier Field.

“Walter’s got high standards; he can be hard on himself,” she says. “The thing to do when he gets down is just to leave him alone. I might say a couple of things, like `It’s not up to you all the time,

you know – it’s a team,’ and then I shut up, and he thinks about it, and he’s fine.”

While he’s his own harshest critic, Connie Payton says her husband is “very loose and easy” with their children. Still, Jarrett is having a rough time being the son of a legend. The rambunctious pre-schooler

isn’t easily calmed when visitors arrive. He competes with his mother for attention, reciting a new favorite phrase – “You look mahvelous!” – and climbing on the furniture.

“He gets a lot of attention from older kids because of his father. They let him get away with murder, and I don’t think that’s good,” she frets. “About a year and a half ago, coming home from pre-school one

day, he said `You know, Mom, I’m getting so sick of all the kids asking me every day about Dad.’ His teacher said another teacher had told him to eat his lunch or he wouldn’t grow up to be big and strong like his dad, and he said, `I don’t want to be big and strong like him.’ His teacher calmed him down and told him that he was right – he he can grow up to be whatever Jarrett wants to be.

“But then, he told me he wouldn’t play on the soccer team unless he could be number 34 his father’s number,” she adds. “Hopefully, he’ll adjust in a positive way eventually. We try to talk to him a lot

and tell him his dad is just his dad to him, just like any other dad. You keep trying and hope it’ll take hold.”

As for 7-month-old Brittney – whom she says is their second and last child – “I feel sorry for her, because between her father and her brother, she’s not gonna stand a chance,” she jokes. “She’ll be the

most spoiled kid, they’re gonna be so protective. When that first date comes, well, he better be tough.”

By the time Brittney’s first date arrives, the Paytons’ lives will have left football behind. The looming question, concedes Connie Payton, is – what next?

“I’ve enjoyed football and it’s been wonderful to us. . . but after 11 years, I think we’re ready to move on to something else. I think Walter has begun to get that feeling too. He’ll probably play one

more year – he has one left in his contract – and that’ll probably be it. He’s very business-minded – he’s got lots of investments, and he’s working on projects like the one with Hilton Hotels.”

During the off-season, Walter huddles with Hilton marketing executives. “They’ve taught him a lot,” she says. “One day he came home with stacks of books on hotel management and marketing and I said, `Right, Walter, I’m sure you’re going to sit down and read all those.’ But he does seem to like that kind of business.” (Recently, the Paytons divested their interest in Studebaker’s, a Schaumburg nightclub that had been part of Walter Payton Enterprises.)

“Well, there’s one thing. . . I don’t know if Walter was serious, but the other day we had some friends over and he was making mention of something about going into politics. I said, `Oh, Walter, please don’t!’ I mean, that’s the last thing we need.”

Whatever he decides to do, it’s clear that she is hatching a nestful of her own plans.

“I’m starting to feel like it’s my turn to do some things,” she says. She takes a breath, exhales softly, smiles that sweet smile.

“Yes,” she says. “I think I’m ready now.”