Louis
01-28-2008, 06:49 PM
From the NYT
January 28, 2008
From Prison, Encouraging Words for Giants’ Tynes
By JOHN BRANCH
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Of the congratulatory telephone calls that Lawrence Tynes received after his field goal sent the Giants to the Super Bowl, the least unusual was the one from a 30-year-old inmate at the Forrest City Federal Correctional Institution in Arkansas.
Tynes, the Giants’ kicker, hears from him several times a week. They talk about football and family and the details of the case that sent the man to prison for 27 years.
On Saturday, after spending most of the week being questioned by strangers, including David Letterman and a flood of reporters, Tynes was alone at his locker. Rather than reach for the binder that contains all the court paperwork, the one that he carries nearly everywhere, he grabbed a can of chewing tobacco.
“This story could take a little while,” he said, and he walked to a small meeting room at Giants Stadium.
In his typically blunt tone, he began the tale of his brother Mark Tynes, who is now scheduled for release on Nov. 8, 2026, for his role in marijuana trafficking.
“I’m not embarrassed about it,” Lawrence Tynes said. “Everyone has skeletons in the closet or whatever. You could go in that locker room and find 50 other stories probably similar to mine. He’s my brother. I love him. He made some bad choices. Rightfully so, he should be punished. But the extent of the punishment, to me, is ridiculous.”
The story of Lawrence Tynes, from Scottish schoolboy to N.F.L. kicker, usually goes like this: the youngest of three sons of a Scottish woman named Margaret and a Navy Seal named Larry, Tynes was a 10-year-old immersed in soccer when the family moved to Milton, Fla., in the panhandle near Pensacola.
Soccer led to place-kicking, which led to Troy State, which led to N.F.L. Europe (playing for the Scottish Claymores) and two seasons in the Canadian Football League, in 2002 and 2003.
That is where most stories veer into the N.F.L. and toward an underdog’s happy ending. It was not that simple.
While trying to establish himself as a kicker, Tynes did not spend much time at home in Milton. But he was there enough to know what his brother — only 14 months older — and some of their closest childhood friends were doing to make money.
“I just kind of turned the other way,” Tynes said. “My focus was on school. I had my degree. I was trying to make it in professional football. And the less I knew, the better I felt about it.”
May 5, 2003, was Tynes’s 25th birthday. With plans to celebrate that night, he drove toward Mark’s house. He did not see his brother.
“There were Suburbans and bags and vans and people in and out of his place,” Tynes said. “And I said, ‘Oh, wow.’ I turned around and went home.”
He was not entirely surprised. Federal agents had simultaneously raided three homes. Among those arrested were Mark Tynes and four of Lawrence Tynes’s best friends — friends from the neighborhood “that I grew up with,” Tynes said.
Mark Tynes was pinned as the leader of an extensive operation that authorities said moved 3,600 pounds of marijuana from Texas to Florida over several years.
“If they would have said 10 years,” Lawrence Tynes said of his brother’s sentence, “I would have said, You know what? You deserve it. It’s tough love. I mean, you do the crime, you do the time.”
But Mark Tynes had a record, including felony convictions for possession. And he “paid a heavy penalty for refusing to cooperate,” a managing assistant United States attorney told The Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal after sentencing. The others cooperated fully. They became government witnesses. Lawrence Tynes watched as each testified against his brother.
“To me, they were all just as guilty as one another, because they were all doing it,” Tynes said.
One of the four was released Dec. 27, 2004, according to federal prison records. Another was freed Jan. 21, 2005, and another March 2, 2005. The last was released Aug. 10, 2007.
Through mutual friends, Tynes knows where his old friends are living and where they are working. They have occasionally tried to reach Tynes, but he has never called back.
“It’s tough, because those are your friends that you grew up with,” Tynes said. “And as much as you hate to see what they did to your brother, I mean, you still spent 10 years of your life with those guys. I care about them. But for me to say, I’ll be your friend again and look you straight in the eye, I can’t do that. I just can’t. Blood is thicker than anything. I don’t hate them. And the thing is, I wasn’t in their situation when the judge said, ‘Ten years, or testify and you’ll be out in a year and a half.’ I don’t know what that feels like. They do. And they chose what they thought was best for them. I don’t hate them. I just can’t be friends with them. True friends with them. It’s just one of those deals.”
Life grew more complicated after the trial. Margaret and Larry Tynes, by then a sheriff’s detective in Florida, divorced after 28 years. In a stretch of a couple of years, Margaret had a heart attack, a dire kidney problem and brain surgery.
She has emerged strong enough to regularly care for Sterling Tynes, Mark’s 6-year-old son, who is being raised by the boy’s mother in Florida.
Lawrence Tynes and his oldest brother, Jason — a 32-year-old United States Army veteran who oversees a reserve unit in North Carolina — regularly send Sterling presents. Tynes and his wife, Amanda, recently took their 6-month-old twin sons home to meet their cousin.
Tynes, a criminal justice major at Troy who expected to become a lawyer, has found a relatively stable career as a kicker. He won the job with the Kansas City Chiefs in 2004. He was traded to the Giants last spring.
Now he is famous. One kick at Lambeau Field, a couple of minutes into overtime from 47 yards away, brought instant attention from all corners. But the fan who has been with him all along is the one locked away, far out of sight.
When the Super Bowl ends, no matter if the Giants win or lose, whether Lawrence Tynes makes the big field goal or misses it, he knows at least one person will call and want to talk to him.
And he will be glad to chat.
January 28, 2008
From Prison, Encouraging Words for Giants’ Tynes
By JOHN BRANCH
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Of the congratulatory telephone calls that Lawrence Tynes received after his field goal sent the Giants to the Super Bowl, the least unusual was the one from a 30-year-old inmate at the Forrest City Federal Correctional Institution in Arkansas.
Tynes, the Giants’ kicker, hears from him several times a week. They talk about football and family and the details of the case that sent the man to prison for 27 years.
On Saturday, after spending most of the week being questioned by strangers, including David Letterman and a flood of reporters, Tynes was alone at his locker. Rather than reach for the binder that contains all the court paperwork, the one that he carries nearly everywhere, he grabbed a can of chewing tobacco.
“This story could take a little while,” he said, and he walked to a small meeting room at Giants Stadium.
In his typically blunt tone, he began the tale of his brother Mark Tynes, who is now scheduled for release on Nov. 8, 2026, for his role in marijuana trafficking.
“I’m not embarrassed about it,” Lawrence Tynes said. “Everyone has skeletons in the closet or whatever. You could go in that locker room and find 50 other stories probably similar to mine. He’s my brother. I love him. He made some bad choices. Rightfully so, he should be punished. But the extent of the punishment, to me, is ridiculous.”
The story of Lawrence Tynes, from Scottish schoolboy to N.F.L. kicker, usually goes like this: the youngest of three sons of a Scottish woman named Margaret and a Navy Seal named Larry, Tynes was a 10-year-old immersed in soccer when the family moved to Milton, Fla., in the panhandle near Pensacola.
Soccer led to place-kicking, which led to Troy State, which led to N.F.L. Europe (playing for the Scottish Claymores) and two seasons in the Canadian Football League, in 2002 and 2003.
That is where most stories veer into the N.F.L. and toward an underdog’s happy ending. It was not that simple.
While trying to establish himself as a kicker, Tynes did not spend much time at home in Milton. But he was there enough to know what his brother — only 14 months older — and some of their closest childhood friends were doing to make money.
“I just kind of turned the other way,” Tynes said. “My focus was on school. I had my degree. I was trying to make it in professional football. And the less I knew, the better I felt about it.”
May 5, 2003, was Tynes’s 25th birthday. With plans to celebrate that night, he drove toward Mark’s house. He did not see his brother.
“There were Suburbans and bags and vans and people in and out of his place,” Tynes said. “And I said, ‘Oh, wow.’ I turned around and went home.”
He was not entirely surprised. Federal agents had simultaneously raided three homes. Among those arrested were Mark Tynes and four of Lawrence Tynes’s best friends — friends from the neighborhood “that I grew up with,” Tynes said.
Mark Tynes was pinned as the leader of an extensive operation that authorities said moved 3,600 pounds of marijuana from Texas to Florida over several years.
“If they would have said 10 years,” Lawrence Tynes said of his brother’s sentence, “I would have said, You know what? You deserve it. It’s tough love. I mean, you do the crime, you do the time.”
But Mark Tynes had a record, including felony convictions for possession. And he “paid a heavy penalty for refusing to cooperate,” a managing assistant United States attorney told The Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal after sentencing. The others cooperated fully. They became government witnesses. Lawrence Tynes watched as each testified against his brother.
“To me, they were all just as guilty as one another, because they were all doing it,” Tynes said.
One of the four was released Dec. 27, 2004, according to federal prison records. Another was freed Jan. 21, 2005, and another March 2, 2005. The last was released Aug. 10, 2007.
Through mutual friends, Tynes knows where his old friends are living and where they are working. They have occasionally tried to reach Tynes, but he has never called back.
“It’s tough, because those are your friends that you grew up with,” Tynes said. “And as much as you hate to see what they did to your brother, I mean, you still spent 10 years of your life with those guys. I care about them. But for me to say, I’ll be your friend again and look you straight in the eye, I can’t do that. I just can’t. Blood is thicker than anything. I don’t hate them. And the thing is, I wasn’t in their situation when the judge said, ‘Ten years, or testify and you’ll be out in a year and a half.’ I don’t know what that feels like. They do. And they chose what they thought was best for them. I don’t hate them. I just can’t be friends with them. True friends with them. It’s just one of those deals.”
Life grew more complicated after the trial. Margaret and Larry Tynes, by then a sheriff’s detective in Florida, divorced after 28 years. In a stretch of a couple of years, Margaret had a heart attack, a dire kidney problem and brain surgery.
She has emerged strong enough to regularly care for Sterling Tynes, Mark’s 6-year-old son, who is being raised by the boy’s mother in Florida.
Lawrence Tynes and his oldest brother, Jason — a 32-year-old United States Army veteran who oversees a reserve unit in North Carolina — regularly send Sterling presents. Tynes and his wife, Amanda, recently took their 6-month-old twin sons home to meet their cousin.
Tynes, a criminal justice major at Troy who expected to become a lawyer, has found a relatively stable career as a kicker. He won the job with the Kansas City Chiefs in 2004. He was traded to the Giants last spring.
Now he is famous. One kick at Lambeau Field, a couple of minutes into overtime from 47 yards away, brought instant attention from all corners. But the fan who has been with him all along is the one locked away, far out of sight.
When the Super Bowl ends, no matter if the Giants win or lose, whether Lawrence Tynes makes the big field goal or misses it, he knows at least one person will call and want to talk to him.
And he will be glad to chat.