'IT'S BEEN A HELL OF A RIDE' FOR MCGARY ON AND OFF THE FIELD

By Rich Myhre

By Washington Huskies

September 20^th, 2018

The call came at around 5:15 in the morning. It was January 26 of this year, a Friday, and the ringing phone woke Kaleb McGary.

The caller was a neighbor and close friend from Fife, where McGary’s family lives, and he delivered a heart-stopping message. “Hey, you know your house is on fire?” McGary recalls being told.

In those initial moments of confusion and fear, “I was having like a panic attack,” said McGary, who was living in Seattle while attending school and playing football at the University of Washington. “I hung up and tried to call my mom, my dad, my brother and my sister. I couldn’t get ahold of anybody and I was like freaking out.”

What happened that morning – first the phone call about a fire and then the terrifying uncertainty about his family – is unquestionably “one of the scariest things in my life to date,” he said.

As McGary would later learn, the early-morning blaze had severely damaged much of the family home while also destroying a recreational vehicle parked in an adjoining carport. Home at the time, but fortunately escaping unhurt were his mother Cassandra, his father Justin, and his then-15-year-old brother Jonah (sister Savannah, then 19, was away at Montana State University).

'IT'S BEEN A HELL OF A RIDE' FOR MCGARY ON AND OFF THE FIELD

The fire, which caused damage that Cassandra McGary estimates in excess of $250,000 to the uninsured home, destroyed “a lot of personal and sentimental stuff, but nothing that was really important,” Kaleb McGary said. “Everything that lived and breathed made it out, and no one suffered any kind of injuries.”

That much, at least, was a silver lining in what was otherwise a frightening and life-changing ordeal. Still, what nagged at McGary – beginning on the day of the fire and then continuing for weeks afterward – was a feeling of separation from his family. As his parents and brother dealt with the daily traumas of loss and grief, he had to remain in Seattle for school and offseason football training sessions.

“Those are the most important people in my whole life, and I had to be up here (in Seattle),” he said. “I couldn’t be down there with them. And even though it was out of my control being where I was, it still hurt not being there. It actually hurt a lot. It was really surprising to me how much it hurt not being able to help.

“For me, that was probably the hardest part of the whole thing. I was still up here, tied up with football all the time, when all I really wanted to do was be there with my family. It was very difficult to keep my focus. But my parents were definitely a lot of help in that. They reassured me that I had something really important going on here and there really wasn’t anything I could’ve done by going down there.”

According to his mother, Kaleb “came down as often as he could.” A few times he showed up with friends to help with the cleanup.

Over the ensuing weeks and months, and in an ongoing effort that continues today, the McGarys have salvaged and restored what they can. Eight months after the fire, Cassandra, Justin and Jonah McGary are again living in one-half of the home, though only two rooms – a bedroom and a living room/rec room – have electricity. Extension cords provide electricity to the bathroom and to the kitchen, where Cassandra McGary cooks with an electric skillet, a microwave and a rotisserie oven.

Every day “is still very, very difficult,” she said. “But what else are you going to do? It wouldn’t serve anyone for me to go in the corner and curl up in a ball, though there were a lot of days when I’d feel like doing that. But I wasn’t giving myself permission to do that and neither was my husband.”

Instead, she said, “you just roll up your sleeves and walk the path before you the best you can. We take it one day at a time and we keep moving forward.”

In the eight months since the fire, “we’ve kind of regrouped (as a family),” Kaleb McGary said. “Everyone was (uninjured), so we’ve really tried to keep a positive spin on it. Things could’ve been much worse. And at the end of the day, even the sentimental stuff is just stuff.

“While the ripples are still being felt, everyone has tried to move on. It’s now about the next step. What do we do from here? … The plan is to rebuild as much as possible. We’re still in the process of knocking stuff down, putting stuff up. We’ve gotten some of the house put back together. Bit by bit, piece by piece.”

In much the same way, there has also been a process of emotional healing. For Kaleb McGary, the experience has left him with a new appreciation of life, blessings and, perhaps more than anything, the value of family.

“Like everyone else, I’m guilty of taking all kinds of things for granted,” he admitted. “But this was just a reminder that things could always be a whole hell of a lot worse.” The fire and its aftermath have “certainly reaffirmed my family’s importance to me, and also my commitment of wanting to help them and do everything I can (for them).”

If this was a truly just world, what the McGarys have endured since January would be a one-time setback. It was instead the latest in a series of family hardships going back over several years. In 2011, Justin McGary was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a sometimes disabling disease of the central nervous system. A year later, financial problems forced the family to leave their farm in the southern Washington community of Amboy, about 20 miles northeast of Vancouver, and relocate to Fife, where Justin and Cassandra had met as high school students years ago. The home they moved into and that later burned had once belonged to her parents.

Shortly after the move to Fife, Kaleb McGary collapsed during a high school basketball game and was subsequently diagnosed with heart arrhythmia. He has since undergone three procedures to allay the condition, which can lead to an irregular and sometimes racing heartbeat. Though his football future was initially in doubt, he has been medically cleared to continue playing.

Taken together, the adversities seem a lot for one family. But as Justin McGary pointed out, a burden of challenges “is called life.”

Yet through it all, there have also been moments of elation. Among them, Kaleb McGary grew in size and athletic prowess to become, by his senior season of 2013 at Fife High School, one of the top prep players in the state. A heavily recruited offensive and defensive lineman, he became a member of Chris Petersen’s first UW recruiting class early in 2014.

McGary, who measured 6-feet-7 inches and 291 pounds as a true freshman, became an offensive tackle for the Huskies. He redshirted his first season, became a part-time starter in 2015, and has since started every UW game at right tackle. He played well enough a year ago to be named to the All-Pacific-12 Conference first team, and he also received the Earle T. Glant Tough Husky Award at the team’s 2017 postseason banquet.

“In the last three years, I don’t think there’s been anybody here that’s taken more snaps than Kaleb has,” said UW offensive line coach Scott Huff. “He’s been incredibly durable and incredibly tough in every sense of the word, both mentally and physically.”

Since his freshman season, McGary “has grown a ton,” Huff went on. “You can just see it in the way he carries himself and also in his leadership. He’s always been a good role model in terms of how to work hard and (lead) by example, but he’s also not scared now to voice leadership, which is not always an easy thing to do.”

In the last year, McGary also faced a very significant decision. Having grown to 6-8 and 324 pounds, he has obvious National Football League potential. In fact, he was eligible to declare for the NFL draft last spring, but instead chose to return to Washington for a final season. Tempting as those first pro paychecks must have been, and particularly given the needs of his family, he instead opted to finish his degree while also continuing his development as a player.

As Huff explained, “He made the tough decision to stay in college when I think you could’ve made the case – and a lot of people maybe would’ve made the case – that he should go out and make that money right now. But not only did he make the decision that he did, he’s also come back and been working really hard to better himself.”

It was, Huff added, “a really mature decision. And then how he’s gone about (working hard since the decision) has been really mature as well.”

During McGary’s deliberations, the family’s financial situation “did not come into the conversation,” his mother said. “Kaleb’s life and future is his life and future, and Dad and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Kaleb decided he wanted to go back to the UW and be part of winning the championship. And if that’s what’s important to him, then that’s what we wanted, too. Whatever is best for him is what we wanted to happen.

“Money does not make this family go round at all,” she said. Moreover, she added, “Justin and I feel like there’s nothing on the planet that we wouldn’t do for our kids and for each other.”

So McGary is back for his senior season at Washington. He returned to a veteran squad seeking a possible Pacific-12 Conference championship and perhaps even a place in the College Football Playoff. He also returned as one of the elder statesmen among the team’s offensive linemen, a unit he affectionately calls “the good ol’ boys club.”

In the coming months, McGary will leave Washington with an undergraduate communications degree. He has yet to settle on a specific career plan, though he has visions of owning a business someday. But that is for the future. A year from now, he hopes to follow up his college career by playing in the NFL.

Regardless of how the coming years unfold – and more than most people, McGary has learned never to take anything for granted – he believes his Washington experience is preparing him for whatever life has to offer.

In his time as a UW student and football player, “I’ve certainly become more resilient,” he said. “I always considered myself to be a resilient person to start with, but there’s been a lot of stuff that’s happened to me since I’ve been here and it’s definitely made me more resilient. I deal much better with all the things that I don’t enjoy doing, even if I still have to do them.

“I’d say that I’ll be leaving (Washington) with a lot of life skills, a lot of life experience, a lot of life capability and a lot of confidence entering into the real world,” he said.

In addition, he will leave with considerable gratitude for the many experiences and relationships that have enhanced his years at Washington, both on and off the football field.

“This is a place with a good coach (Petersen) who’s also a good person,” McGary said. “On his staff he has good (assistant) coaches who are also good people. They’re people that I trust and that I know I can talk to. And then I have good (teammates) around me.”