Meet Joe • Recent Press

2008

October 8

Ex-pro athlete says youth need "truth"

By Mark Maroney

A former professional football player turned ordained minister called on the community-at-large to come together so boys and girls realize what it takes to be real men and women.

"Look them in the eyes and give them some kind of affirmation and validation about their human potential, value and worth," said Joe Ehrmann, 59, of Baltimore, guest speaker at the 11th annual Lycoming County Youth Commission Banquet held Tuesday night at the First United Methodist Church's Christian Life Center.

His rousing 45-minute speech was met at the end with applause from an audience consisting of many individuals who are devoted to becoming agents of hope for the county's youth population.

Those gathered included law enforcement officials, juvenile justice officials, judges and members of Susquehanna House, school district officials, clergy and Lycoming County Youth Commission workers.

The former all-American defensive end at Syracuse University and all-pro defensive end for the Baltimore Colts, and co-founder of The Door, "an inner-city community based ministry addressing issues of poverty, systemic racism and social injustice,'' urged those in attendance to avoid apathy and indifference at all cost, and to renounce the mixed-messages bombarding today's youth. He said such falsehoods were perpetrated by agents of profit on Madison Avenue and Hollywood and the mainstream media.

To be a man or woman is about developing relationships.

"It's living a life with the capacity to love and be loved," he said. ''On death's door, it's being able to look back and realize without fear what kind of husband, wife, mother, son, daughter, community member I was," he said.

He claimed six lies were leading juveniles astray and causing them to evolve into criminals or live under the burden of depression, turning to addictive behavior such as drug and alcohol abuse, pornography, dangerous forms of sex and violence on the streets.

It is not about telling boys to "suck it up" or to shun 8-year-olds who don't demonstrate athletic prowess, he added. For girls, he said, emulating supermodels or having them believe they must use sex appeal to attract the opposite sex, is a lie.

Ehrmann said boys and girls constantly face lies in their early childhood that form their thinking as they mature.

Among them, society ascribes masculinity to boys by measuring their size, strength or athletic ability or stressing sexual conquest to validate masculine insecurity, he said.