Wittum's way was to quietly, humbly excel
If it weren't for that seemingly out-of-place San Francisco 49ers baseball cap, Pat Crowns may have never found out the truth.
One day back in the early 1980s, Crowns noticed that one of his colleagues, Tom Wittum, was wearing a 49ers cap at school. Both Crowns and Wittum were teachers at Grayslake (now Grayslake Central) High School.
Crowns taught science, Wittum taught physical education and driver's education.
"I asked Tom why he was wearing a 49ers hat and he wouldn't tell me," Crowns said. "Finally, someone else told me that Tom used to play for the 49ers.
"I was like, 'Are you kidding me?' I went home and took a look at the football cards I had collected when I was younger, and sure enough, I had four or five cards of Tom in there. He was this really good punter and kicker."
Crowns would have loved to have gotten Wittum to sign the cards, but he held back.
"I just felt a little weird about asking," Crowns said. "Plus, he's not the type of guy who would ever want to do that anyway.
"Tom was very uncomfortable talking about himself. He was a very, very humble person."
The 60-year-old Wittum died on January 22 after battling cancer for nearly two years. He is survived by his wife Cheryl and two grown children, son Matt and daughter Krissy.
By all accounts, only Wittum's athletic prowess matched his legendary humility. He was, and still is, considered to be one of the best athletes to ever come out of Lake County.
A 1968 Round Lake High School graduate, Wittum not only made it to the NFL, he was a two-time Pro Bowler in 1973 and 1974.
Wittum also was a talented baseball player who was a top draft pick of the White Sox right out of high school. But he elected instead to play football and baseball at Northern Illinois University, where he set 10 kicking records on the gridiron and still ranks third all-time in batting average.
Twice he was named the most valuable player of the baseball team.
Meanwhile, in basketball, Wittum was a four-time letterman at Round Lake and always one of the top players in the area. Long after his playing days, he could jump into pick-up games and be the best player on the court.
Of course, Wittum would have never told you any of this. He didn't tell anyone.
His friends, most of whom knew about his pedigree only after doing their own research on him, have found some comfort in making sure that Wittum's story is finally told. Even if it is posthumously.
His death hit them hard.
Just a month after retiring from a 30-year teaching and coaching career at Grayslake Central in the spring of 2008, Wittum found out that he was seriously ill.
"It's such a shame that Tom wasn't able to enjoy retirement more," said Troy Harper, a teacher and coach at Grayslake North who used to coach baseball with Wittum at Grayslake Central. "He was an avid fisherman and he loved spending time with his family up at their cabin in Wisconsin. Tom was a big family guy."
Wittum was also a big-time role model, to the kids he coached and to his colleagues, like Harper.
"When I started my coaching career, Tom was a great guy for me to be around because he was always willing to help," Harper said. "He always had so much insight into the game and so much knowledge that he wanted to share with you. But that and fishing was pretty much all he would ever talk about.
"It's not like Tom was quiet, though. He was a big prankster and he would do stuff in the coaches' locker room all the time. He'd loosen the screws on your locker so that the door would fall off when you opened it, or he'd fill your locker with 100 whiffle balls, which would all come spilling out when you opened the door. He definitely wasn't quiet, he just was quiet about himself. He would never ever talk about himself.
"You would have never known it that he was one of the best athletes to ever come out of this area."
Wittum, who has been inducted into the Round Lake High School, Lake County and Northern Illinois University Athletic Halls of Fame, was chosen in the fifth round by the White Sox and was selected by the 49ers in the eighth round of the 1972 NFL Draft.
He was a two-time, first-team all-NFC punter and played a total of five years in the NFL. Unfortunately, a car accident, in which he was hit by a cement truck and broke multiple bones, sidetracked his career.
After a couple of lukewarm comeback attempts, Wittum retired from football and went into teaching, landing at Grayslake Central.
"I was just always amazed at what a good athlete he was even when he was a little longer in the tooth," Grayslake Central associate principal Dan Landry said.
"We used to coach baseball together and we'd be out in the parking lot for fielding practice and he'd be hitting and he'd say, 'Get ready, I'm going to drop this ball right between the red and white cars.' He'd be right on the mark. And we're talking cars that were lined up vertically, not horizontally.
"I also remember golfing with him and he'd golf like once a year and he'd shoot in the low to mid-70s like it was nothing."
According to Carmel football coach Andy Bitto, Wittum could also still kick a football 60 to 70 yards, long after his playing days.
After Wittum ended his five-year stint in the 1980s as the head football coach at Grayslake, he coached at Carmel for a year with a young Bitto, who was fresh out of college.
"I remember Tom would play basketball with all the young guys and he'd be one of the best players out there. He was just such a great athlete," Bitto said. "We had so much fun that year that he coached at Carmel. It was pretty cool having a former NFL player on our staff.
"I mean, I used to watch Tom on TV. I have older brothers who knew all about him."
Word spread quickly among the rest of the Corsairs that a former great was among them.
"One time, one of the kids came in with Tom's football card and asked Tom to sign it," Bitto said. "Tom did, but he was just so humble and unassuming about it, which is the way he always was.
"He said to the kid, 'This and a buck might get you a cup of coffee.'"
pbabcock@dailyherald.com