Chris Naeole still does his own yardwork. He did his own yardwork when he was playing in the NFL and living on the mainland. He makes his son do yardwork. It ties back to when he was a kid and his tutu made him do yardwork. “It’s my escape,” he says, but then isn’t sure that’s the right word. He doesn’t seek escape from anything. It’s more like a connection to the lessons that have brought him this far.

The man who coached the bruised University of Hawaii football team through the last games of the season after Norm Chow was fired, who held the players together to finish with a win, is all about hard work and discipline.

“My wife says, ‘Why you gotta be the general?’ It’s because my tutu was the general. She helped raise us. Take us school, watch us. Six o’clock in the morning, she had us line up, oldest to youngest, to take a shower. Eight o’clock at night was bedtime. She had a strict regimen, but to me it was good.”

Those who have followed Naeole’s career from all-state player for Kahuku to All-American at the University of Colorado to 13 years in the NFL know that he grew up on Kualoa Ranch, where his father, a heavy-equipment operator, was employed. Most know he retired from the NFL in 2008 and came home to Hawaii, and that his first coaching job was in Pop Warner when his son was in the sixth grade and he was recruited from among the group of parents in the bleachers to bring his NFL experience to a bunch of little boys. Everyone knows he loves the game.

But Naeole wasn’t born with football in his blood, wasn’t clothed in toddler-sized NFL jerseys in his early years. He didn’t play organized football until high school. He was too big for Pop Warner, and in his day there was no Big Boy league. “In ninth grade I was terrible,” he said. “I didn’t even know what pads to grab. I wasn’t used to conditioning. The other guys who had played Pop Warner knew what to expect; they understood the rigors of the game.”

But in his sophomore year at Kahuku, things changed. “It clicked. It clicked fast. I knew I liked this game.”

He loved high school football but didn’t have dreams of college. He thought he’d work in construction like his dad, but began to realize that a college education was a possibility when recruiters came around to look at the older boys but paid special attention to him. Naeole was 260 pounds as a sophomore, a big slab of potential.

By his senior year he was 6 feet 3 inches tall and up to 290.

In college, at the University of Colorado, he was a three-year starter. When he was selected by the New Orleans Saints as the 10th overall pick in the 1997 draft, Naeole became Hawaii’s highest draft pick at the time.

Friendly Isle influence

While his childhood years in Kaaawa shaped him, summers spent on Molokai grounded him.

His father, Simeon, was from a farming family in Hoolehua, Molokai. His mother, Dottie, grew up in Texas, graduated from the University of Texas with a teaching degree and accepted an offer to teach on Maui. She didn’t realize until she got to Hawaii that the job was on Molokai. But she stayed, and she met and married Naeole’s father. The couple moved to Oahu where Simeon worked in construction and Dottie taught elementary school, and together they raised four children.

“My father was blue-collar, hard worker, never complained about anything,” Naeole said. “Four-thirty in the morning go to work. Every day. Work hard. Go to work sick. No matter. He always put food on the table.”

Summers on Molokai were more relaxed but similarly structured around family. Naeole spent those Hoolehua days fishing, hunting, diving — learning these essential things through knowledge passed down through generations.

Even now, when he has a few days off, Naeole tries to get back to Molokai to connect with everything that island means to his family. “I call my cousin from the airport and tell him, ‘I’m getting on a plane, come pick me up,’” he said.

His relatives on Molokai have a big house where there’s always room for one more and there’s always something to do. “Somebody always says, ‘Let’s go catch something and cook it for dinner.’”

Naeole says his relatives like to hear football stories, but he’s not inclined to tell many. “That’s like talking about work,” he said.

His beloved tutu was buried on Molokai. She died when he was in the fifth grade, and the impact of that loss shook him in a way few things have ever shaken this big man.

“We were scared. We didn’t know anything about death. Nobody explained it to you,” he said. “On Molokai, old style, you dig your own grave, make your own pine box. In most people’s experience, when a family member dies, they tell you to walk away when they lower the box into the grave and cover up the dirt. But this was the old way. We dug the grave, did the burial, shoveled back the dirt on top the box.”

Years later, when Naeole’s father died in 2008, Naeole felt a sense of closure. Death didn’t scare him anymore. His father had finished his work. Naeole had a family of his own by then, and he was passing down the lessons he had learned from his elders to his son and daughter. His father chose to be buried in Temple Valley rather than back in his hometown of Hoolehua. He had worked construction jobs in the area. “He cut that mountain, so he knew right where he wanted to be buried,” Naeole said. The thought of that brought a smile to his face.

Work is more than pay

He doesn’t say it outright and he certainly doesn’t brag, but Naeole doesn’t have to worry about money. In 1997 he signed a five-year contract with the New Orleans Saints worth close to $8 million, then played well beyond those five years. “The game has been very good to me,” Naeole said. “I’ve been blessed.”

He saw other pro players squander their earnings on luxury items and decided to be different. “I don’t buy all the fancy stuff. I have a nice house, but cars? Your money is gone as soon as you drive that thing off the lot.” He says his wife, Tara, is “CEO and CFO of the Naeole family trust,” and he laughs like he’s joking, but in a way that indicates it’s not far from the truth. “She always has my back,” he said. He and Tara, who grew up on Kauai and graduated from Kamehameha, met in college in Colorado and have been married for 20 years.

He doesn’t have to work but he wants to.

“Everybody thinks it’s good to be retired at a young age, but it’s not,” Naeole said. “Work gives you peace of mind and a sense of purpose, and football is something I love, no matter if it’s Pop Warner all the way up to the pros.”

Naeole’s birthday is on Christmas Day. He turns 41 years old today.

The Naeole family will spend the day together, just the four of them, the way they did all the years when he was playing professional football on the mainland and they were so far from grandparents and cousins and home. His daughter, Azure, is home from college in Georgia, where she attends the prestigious Savannah School of Art and Design. Son Christian will be graduating from ‘Iolani School in the spring and heading to college in the fall. Soon, at their young age, the Naeoles will be empty-nesters. Coach isn’t worried, though. Working with the UH players on the offensive line is like raising 16 extra kids.

“I laugh every day. I love my job. I have a great wife who is my best friend. I have good kids. I own my home. I work with kids. I have a second career. My family is taken care of.”

And every week, no matter what, he will do the yardwork by himself.

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Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.