Mom Donna is Brohm family's 'rock'

Previous Mother's Day stories: The Constant (2017) | Letting go but holding tight (2016) | Labor of love (2015)

The support has exhibited itself in a variety of ways.

Making sure kids were fed, clothes were cleaned, sport equipment was prepped, schedules were on-point, car was fueled and ready to lug kiddos to practices and game (sometimes to multiple locations in the same day), screaming from the stands or from a coach's seat at those practices and games, teaching at every opportunity, always willing to offer advice …

Donna Brohm never stopped.

She couldn't, really, not while raising four kids, the gap between oldest to youngest spanning 15 years.

But now even with Greg, Jeff, Kim and Brian Brohm all grown and set on their career paths — Jeff is Purdue's head football coach, Brian is an offensive coordinator and Greg is chief of staff; while Kim has been working in metals and manufacturing for more than a decade — Donna Brohm still doesn't relent.

“She’s doing something for us right now,” Greg, the oldest, said earlier this week, looking down at his watch. “She’s always taken care of us. She still does.”

Maybe, these days, it’ll show up by popping down to West Lafayette and offering to take care of her and husband Oscar’s three grandkids — Jeff has a son and daughter and Brian has a son.

Maybe it’ll be responding to what Brian calls “unreasonable requests” — naturally, never from him — which could be changing a flat tire or a car’s oil.

Maybe it’ll be scooping up Kim’s 14-year-old Yorkie, Pebbles, and taking care of her while Kim is out of town.

Maybe it’ll be flying out to San Francisco — and missing the Christmas traditions of hosting immediate family on Christmas Eve and husband’s side on Christmas Day — to attend Purdue’s bowl game.

Every opportunity seized — sometimes even when not explicitly asked to help —only serves as more evidence of her considerable support. The latter example certainly did.

After the Boilermakers beat Arizona in the Foster Farms Bowl to cap the boys’ first season on staff with a 7-6 season — a shocking end result, even, to some members of the family — Donna was on the field, decked out in black and gold, and wrangling someone up to snap pictures. She found her sons as she could in the flood of players, coaches, coaches’ families and support staff. So a photo doesn’t actually exist with Greg, Jeff, Kim and Brian, but, even so, each one perfectly encapsulates the special bond of the group: Wide smiles, arms tightly latched around each other’s waists or firmly across shoulders, likely squeezing intermittently in celebratory fashion. That was between the hugs.

And Donna, 68, was in the middle of it all.

How could she not be?

It’s where she belonged, in the center, the powerful presence that often operates behind-the-scenes, easily the least public figure in a family that isn’t exactly afforded the opportunity to be private.

The guys represent the “First Family of Louisville.” With patriarch Oscar, the former star quarterback and the guy who gets credit for mentoring two more, Jeff and Brian, as well as helping shape a college receiver amongst his boy brood. With coaching darling Jeff, who recently signed a contract extension that included a raise up to $3.8 million for 2018. With Brian, a recent Kentucky High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame inductee whose quarterback room last season wowed with David Blough’s and Elijah Sindelar’s improvement and production. With Greg, the engaging, take-charge head man inside the program.

And the lone daughter isn’t to be outdone, either, with Kim being a former three-sport college superstar whose outgoing personality is infectious.

And yet, each one of the kids has pieces of Donna woven in. Each understands the importance of Mom’s influence. Each knows that though she may be “unsung” publicly, she’s not in their eyes.

Not even close.

“She’s a consistent, steady rock for us,” Jeff said.

Kim, in a separate conversation, reiterated Jeff’s “rock” sentiment, calling Donna the “solid rock” of the family.

“She means a lot,” Brian said. “She’s always wanting to keep everybody together, keep everybody happy. No matter what you ask her to do, you can count on her. That’s kind of the biggest thing. Anything you need at any time of day, she’ll come through. She’ll do it. She’ll do anything for her kids and grandkids.”

Maybe Donna always has been exactly what her kids needed because she felt destined to be a mom.

She’s the third of five kids and, considering her mother was one of 14 kids, Donna was surrounded by a bevy of cousins. Try in the 90 range. Then, she met Oscar when they were in high school — he was one year older — and he was the oldest of nine kids. So Donna had plenty of practice to be nurturing and a natural teacher — she still works with preschoolers at St. Bernard’s Catholic school.

But it’s not all she was.

Donna was setting a standard of her own as an athlete. Though girls sports weren’t sanctioned at the public high school level then, as a Catholic school kid, Donna was involved in a variety of sports, from field hockey to basketball to softball to volleyball to track.

“Because my neighbors when I grew up were boys and I had a brother, when you play, you play what they play. I just always enjoyed it,” she said. “In high school, since it was just this Catholic girls school, there weren’t stats, like the boys. If Oscar played, it was in the paper. They played other public schools. I was lucky, I guess, I even had other girls, Catholic high schools to play. I just loved playing. I just loved sports. That was my extracurricular activity. I did take dancing, did take piano. But I just stuck with sports.”

Her senior year, she was voted “most athletic” by her peers, but she seemed almost dismissive of that honor because “when you’re playing all the sports I played, I probably had the edge on other people.”

When asked if she was good, she hemmed at that idea, too.

She said, “I usually started.”

And then, quickly added, “You don’t brag about stuff like that.”

While she was excelling in the background, Oscar was leading Flaget High School to a 10-1 record as a senior, throwing for a then-school record 23 touchdowns, and earning all-state honors. He ultimately went to Louisville on scholarship to play football. Last year, he was inducted into the KHSAA Hall of Fame.

Donna didn’t play collegiately. Her dad didn’t think she needed a degree, so he steered her into secretarial work, and she learned typing and shorthand and got an office job out of high school. But that didn’t stop her from playing. She continued to play basketball, volleyball and softball. And kept exceling.

“The people who know the family and know the background, they will tell you my mom was a much better athlete than my father,” Jeff said. “He won’t broadcast that. So those that don’t know us real well, they think Oscar was the best athlete. But from any person I talk to that they grew up with, (they say) my mom is the best athlete.”

After high school, Donna played basketball for a private community center, the Cabbage Patch, and, ultimately, it produced one of her most memorable personal sport moments. Because of the lack of women’s college teams at that time, her team was asked to play against the University of Kentucky in Freedom Hall — before a Notre Dame-Kentucky men’s game.

“We’re just a scrappy team that played in leagues around town,” she said.

Donna’s team won.

And she enjoyed that. A lot.

One trait every single one of her kids said they absorbed from her: Her fierce competitiveness.

There’s even a story that she slid playing rec softball … when she was 6 months pregnant.

“When you play, you don’t work and play to lose,” she said. “When you’re on a team, with how many hours I’ve had to practice softball or practice field hockey, you don’t do that to go out there to lose. We wanted to win. I didn’t like losing. I don’t think anybody should like losing.”

Not that a loss meant losing her cool.

Donna doesn’t get rattled, her kids say. Greg says he’s like her in that way, with few things that get him shaken or riled up.

Not all of them got that trait.

Jeff’s fiery sideline demeanor — and locker room one, for that matter — is well-documented. But, at the root of that, he said, is his intense competitiveness. Just like her.

“She’s a good athlete, so when she does something competitive, she normally has a good chance to win in H-O-R-S-E or do a good job in ping pong or corn hole. She can drop it in there pretty good,” Jeff said. “She still has it.”

She just maybe shouldn’t always try to show it.

She finally stopped playing volleyball when she was about 60, she said, but just a couple years ago, she found herself playing 2-on-2 basketball. With Jeff’s son Brady and his friends.

“I think she went to go get a rebound or something — and they’re playing rough, and she knows that — and one of them put a body on her and she kind of fell and put her weight down on wrist and hurt it. I’m like, ‘Mom? What are you doing?’ She’s like, ‘We were just playing,’ ” said Kim, laughing while telling the story. “She was out here holding her own against teenage boys.”

She’s more likely to get her activity in with Jazzercise classes these days, but she certainly expends plenty of energy in another, perhaps unexpected, way, too: Watching sports.

Donna didn’t only play, she also coached, whether it was her own kids, like Kim’s college softball team, alongside Oscar, or other kids in basketball and volleyball. (She was pretty much the quasi-coach of any team my dad coached,” Greg said, “even the ones she wasn’t the official assistant coach. She’s the detail person.”) Those were the “official” gigs, but she also would be in the backyard playing catch with the boys or piping in on techniques as it related to other sports, too. She usually was the one who filmed Brian’s backyard football throwing sessions, for the sole purpose of his dad and brothers then to come inside, watch the tape and offer critiques on his motion.

But those intense times — the playing, the coaching — don’t exactly compare with her current full-time role as fan.

She’s certainly always been one — all four kids had stories about being able to hear her distinct voice from the stands in any venue, whether it be football stadiums to softball bleachers — and her kids always have appreciated that particular involvement.

But they don’t necessarily like watching with her.

“When I sit next to her, I don’t feel like I have to yell or cheer a lot because she kind of takes it over,” Kim said. “Screaming, yelling, cheering, and it doesn’t have to be her own kids that are involved, whether she knows anyone in the game or not. Or even on TV. She’s the vocal one yelling, ‘Why are they doing this? Why are they doing that?’ You almost have to wear your protective gear because she’s grabbing your arm, punching you. She’s very animated.”

Maybe that’s because Donna can’t quite recall being as nervous watching games as she is now, with all the boys on staff for Purdue football. She admits she coaches from the stands, especially about clock management, which is supposed to be Greg’s area of expertise. When she has a specific complaint — they wasted too much time or went too fast — she’ll tell Greg, “That’s your job.”

“I didn’t think I could get more nervous than with them playing, but I have,” she said. “I wish I could turn my head off sometimes.”

Maybe this season at Purdue football games, she could try mingling instead of sitting intently in the stands.

She’d really be in her element then.

“She’s never met a stranger,” Kim said. “She’s easily one to go up and talk to someone and start up the conversation. My dad half the time leaves her at parties because she’s busy talking to everybody to say goodbye. So sometimes they have to drive separately so he can leave. She’s still there talking to everybody, catching up, saying her goodbyes.

“She’s got a great heart. I think she’s a pretty fun person to be around, and she’s super young at heart.”

Kim and Greg, who called Donna the “life of the party, the light of a room when she’s in it,” have similar outgoing personality types. Though Jeff isn’t exactly quiet — Donna called him a practical jokester who cracks the family up with his humor — and is used to holding the attention of a room, he identified his mom’s love for sports as one of their strongest links. Brian is like her, too, in his own way.

Greg joked Brian was the “golden child” growing up because the youngest one always helped mom around the house, while the older boys didn’t necessarily do that often. Brian just kind of softly laughed when told that story, saying he just probably was “more helpful in comparison to the others,” but never thought he did anything out of the ordinary. But maybe, even back then, he was just offering glimpses of what he’d become: An intent caretaker and fixer like his mom.

“I want to know how everything within in the household works, how the car works. She was like that,” he said. “She would take care of everything to where if you really didn’t want to do anything, you know she would take care of it. I think I kind of adopted that, where I like to be the one doing the stuff and taking care of others.”

Sunday, though, naturally, should be a day Donna Brohm takes off.

She’s not sure how many kids or grandkids will visit on Mother’s Day this year. Kim lives in Louisville, so she’ll be part of whatever happens, likely taking Donna out to eat. But there’s a chance Jeff and Greg will be in town from West Lafayette, too, because they already were scheduled to be in Louisville Saturday night for an event. Brian’s been on the road recruiting and now that he’s a dad, he likes to celebrate Mother’s Day for his wife, who’s pregnant with their daughter.

But whether they’re together or not, she’ll be celebrated.

As a pivotal piece to a family that's established itself as a humble, hard-working, accomplished group, one that learned to have fun from mom but also so much more. Whether other people knew it or not.

“She doesn’t seek the spotlight whatsoever,” Greg said. “But she’s very much a powerful force of her own."

• Naturally, Donna and Oscar attended the press conference when Jeff was hired as Purdue's coach in December 2016. It was their first time in West Lafayette, and Oscar wasn't quite sure where he was going, so when he got confused on a turn, he accidentally cut another car off. And then that car pulled up next to them and honked.

"I'm like, 'You're going to be reamed out,' " Donna told Oscar.

But Oscar still rolled his window down, in response to the couple in the other car's similar action.

"They look over and go, 'Thank you so much for letting your son come up here and coach,' " Donna said. "I'm like, 'Are you kidding me?' We say, 'Thank you!'"

Finally, they found the complex and get out of the van, still wondering how the Purdue fans knew who they were. Then Donna realized they had a big Western Kentucky sticker — where Jeff had previously coached — on the back of the van, as well as Kentucky plates.

• Oscar is the one with a conference coach-of-the-year title, from when he coached Kim's softball team at Spalding, but all the kids know Donna deserves major credit for her coaching prowess. Even when she wasn't technically a coach. Kim's senior year at Spalding offered the proof. Her volleyball team advanced to the conference tournament, but the head coach was 9 months pregnant and ordered to take bed rest, and the assistant coach had another job and couldn't make the match.

So Donna got the call.

"My mom knows everybody on the team, has been to every game, said, ‘Sure,’ " Kim said. "My mom knows volleyball but maybe not like the game that’s played now, all the plays, but she played, so she at least knows the game. We knew how to rotate, but she managed the game and she was in charge, and she stepped right in, managed the lineup and the locker room."

And Spalding won, "so she has a tournament win under her belt in college."

• That loud voice the kids always heard permeate gyms and stadiums? Greg actually got burned by taking the orders coming from that mouth once. Maybe it's why he is fazed when he gets clock management advice these days.

"I remember during a basketball game one time, I was in grade school, I didn’t line up right on the free throw line. She yelled, ‘Move down!’ Because I had left a spot," Greg said. "So I just immediately did it. It was right when the referee was handing the ball (to the shooter), so I moved down and got a turnover.

"I could always hear her. In a crowd of thousands of people, you could always tell her voice. You could pick it out."

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