The whisper of the old man at the table adjacent to the Nady family was loud. Loud enough for Scott Nady to overhear as they all sat for lunch at a Snuffers Restaurant two years ago.
The old man kept looking over at the Nady family. And finally, Scott said, he heard the man whisper quite audibly to his wife.
“There’s a guy back there,” Scott recounted hearing. “A white man with a black woman. And I think they have two kids. … Disgusting.”
Scott is married to Ronnica Nady, a black woman. His two children, Max Nady and Phoenix Nady, are mixed-race.
He reacted in that moment by calling the server over and insisted on buying the elderly couple’s lunch. When the server told them of the Nady family’s gesture, the old man came over to thank Scott.
“I said, ‘Well, I felt bad. Because I know the sight of my family ruins your lunch,‘” Scott recalled. “‘So I wanted to pick up the tab.’”
Racist encounters such as this aren’t out of the norm for the Nady family. Scott is the Director of Recruiting and a quality control coach at SMU. Prior to joining Sonny Dykes’ staff, he was the longtime head coach at Parish Episcopal in Dallas, where he won state championships in 2010 and 2014.
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Scott and Ronnica have been together since high school. Another especially disturbing incident happened when Ronnica was in college, when Scott was put into a police cruiser and questioned about why he had picked up a prostitute, while Ronnica — his girlfriend at the time — sat in the car.
These moments are part of why, as a family, the Nadys have been out to protest police brutality and join in support of a movement that’s sweeping across the world.
“This intrinsically affects them,” Ronnica said. “And the way they live and the way proceed through their lives. I don’t want to live like that. I don’t want them to live in fear. I don’t want them to freak out every time the police stops them for a minor traffic violation. No one should have to live like that. I just think it’s important we stand up and speak out.”
Scott isn’t trying to gain sympathy or show tribulations by speaking out about these previous encounters. He acknowledges that his experiences pale to those that others have faced. His interest is as a father to two African-American children. His fear is sending them out into a world he knows can be cruel.
“This is what police authority has resorted us to,” Max, 11, said of going to protests. His dad, sitting next to him during the interview, then asked his son how it made him feel to be out there. “Sad. And a little bit scared.”
This is why Scott made sure Max watched the entire clip of George Floyd’s death at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department. All seven minutes and 46 seconds.
A daily fight
Max has already overcome so much. His lifelong battle with Cerebral Palsy, a debilitating movement disorder, has been nothing short of a miracle. The 53-pound child went from needing a walker just to move, to recently running a full mile with 20 pounds of added weight strapped to him.
Years of intense physical therapy, hundreds of thousands of dollars raised and seemingly insane experimental medical treatments at facilities in Canada allowed him to progress — allowed him to become an inspiration.
But Scott knows there’s another daily fight his son will have to battle. And it’s one he’s teaching him by taking him out to Black Lives Matters protests, by watching George Floyd’s death and by having difficult conversations about race from the perspective of a white father.
“It’s scary,” Scott said. “… In five years, he’s gonna drive. Pretty soon, well before that, I’m gonna start rehearsing traffic stops with him — what he can say and what he can’t say. What he can do with his hands and what he can’t do. Things he always has to do and things he can never do.
“My father never had to have that conversation with me. Not in a million years.”
Max has an entire room in the Nady household dedicated to his physical therapy. There’s a treadmill, weights, medicine balls, boxing gloves and even workout routines written in blue marker on the mirror.
While Scott’s full-time job has always been in football, his life’s mission is the health and safety of his son. When Max was born, Scott said, the chance he would ever be able to walk on his own was almost zero.
Max has become a source of inspiration among the players Scott has coached over the years. Fundraisers populated by hordes of players have come out to support the Nady family.
It’s because they know Max. He’s out at practice, he’s around the team. Scott makes sure the kids he coaches don’t complain, and makes sure they know that Max wouldn’t complain if he were in their shoes.
Ke’Mon Freeman, a former running back at SMU, is particularly close with Max. Last year, Freeman, James Proche and Xavier Jones were all at the Nady household playing video games on a Friday night.
As the night wrapped up, the players left. Freeman walked all the way down the block to his car. But right as he got to it, he stopped. Then he turned around and jogged back to the house. He came inside, ran up the stairs — all because he realized he’d forgotten to give Max a hug before leaving.
“I was like, ‘Max, you were gonna let me leave without giving you a hug?’” Freeman recalled.
“I always hug him. It’s important for me. The love I have for that kid is crazy.”
Finding help
When Max was younger, the family conducted fundraising campaigns to help pay for his health care. Many of the treatments were considered experimental, and thus not covered under health insurance.
They could cost up to $25,000 a month at times, but never lower than $3,000. Over the year with fundraisers, the family has raised around $400,000, a number they burned through quickly.
Scott has sought out treatments all over the world. When Max was 3 years old, the family travelled to Pickton, Ontario, for a six-week intensive physical therapy treatment following the practices of doctor in Budapest, Hungary. Scott drove and the family flew.
“And these women, they put him through hell,” Scott said, referring to the physical therapists. “He would cry so hard he would throw up.”
For four hours every morning, the family had to leave and let the therapists work. In the afternoon, Max would go into an hyperbaric oxygen chamber. He’d fall down 50 times a day, Scott said, so much that his knees were black with bruises.
Every time, Max would look at his dad, asking to be helped up — an instinctual reaction from the toddler. But Scott had to go against his own instincts and refuse. He had to let his son get up on his own, and learn how to do it himself.
“That was hard,” Scott said. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”
The family never bought a wheelchair. They put down a bamboo floor to make it easier for him to move around. Max used walkers and canes at various times. And now he runs more than many healthy Americans possibly could.
“Eleven years ago, if somebody were to have said, ‘What makes you special?’ … I would have looked them in the face and confidently said to them, ‘I’ve got a God-given ability to push young men further than they think they can go,’” Scott said. “… And then God gave me a baby who needed to push himself further than he thought was possible. Love the grind. Believe in an outrageous goal, believe in himself.
“All the football I had coached up until that point had nothing to do with football, it had to do the arrival with him.”
Being prepared
It was nearly 100 degrees out on June 5, but Max and Scott both attended a Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Dallas. They were joined by many members of the SMU football team and help passed out water to protestors.
Max was there in a Superman t-shirt and a big white mast that covered every centimeter below his eyes. The pair had been to marches all throughout the previous week, with Scott posting on social media about why it was so important him and Max to be there.
In Max’s hands was a cardboard sign that read “I CAN’T BREATHE” with red marker underlying the black lettering.
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Scott is Texas born and raised. He’s a man’s man. A football coach with a slight Southern drawl. By all respects, the issues of race for someone of his white privilege might never come up.
But for Scott, his wife and his kids, it’s the most important issue. The issues of race and racism are ones Scott is learning every day and passing along to a son that wasn’t born with the same white skin.
Rewind back to the confrontation at the Snuffers Restaurant with the Nady family and the old man.
After the man walked away, Max asked his dad why the man didn’t like their family. It’s impossible, Scott recalled Max saying. The man didn’t even know them.
“It’s such a simplistic and accurate reaction,” Scott said, smiling.
And while Scott loved that his son’s instinct is to see the world in that way, he also knows it’s his job to show him that the world is much, much different.
“We can hope for milk and honey, but the world is what it is,” Scott said. “And I’m sending my children out into the world as young black people.
“And there’s a lot of good in the world, and there’s a lot of beauty in the world. But there’s also a lot of evil in the world. I would never send them on a journey across the desert without the right provisions. And I’m not going to send them out in the world and have them not be prepared for what’s out there.”
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