VETERANS PRESS: 50 Portraits of veterans and their stories No. 1

THOMAS POFF 'Iceman' Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

Thomas Poff grew up in St. Louis. His father had been a machine gunner in World War I, and the son remembers him fondly. "My dad was the gentlest man ever," he says. "We played catch and built stairways and rock walls." Tragically, Mr. Poff died of a ruptured artery at age 44, and Thomas had a difficult time with grief and anger. "Something inside of me just died. I wanted to hurt everything in the world." Football became an outlet for his emotions. "When my dad died," he recalls, "I didn't have much humanity left in me; to be quite honest, I hated everybody. In football, I got to hurt people." The contact sport and its physical exertion helped Poff, but he still missed his father. Even today he speaks highly of him. "I will never be a tenth of the man my dad was — never."