JD Vance isn’t the only Trump ally to have helped a parent beat addiction. The president’s next chief of staff, Susie Wiles, the daughter of late legendary NFL broadcaster Pat Summerall, has been credited with helping her father overcome alcoholism.
Wiles was announced as Trump’s chief of staff Thursday evening, becoming the first female chief of staff to a president in U.S. history.
Summerall was an NFL champion kicker and the lead color commentator alongside John Madden on CBS for more than two decades. But during his broadcast career, Summerall admittedly became an alcoholic. In his 2006 biography, he recounted an intervention and a difference-making plea from his daughter Susie.
“Dad, the few times we’ve been out in public together recently, I’ve been ashamed we shared the same last name,” Wiles said in a letter that was read during the intervention, according to Summerall’s 2006 autobiography, “On and Off the Air.”
CBS NFL commentator Pat Summerall, left, and analyst John Madden on the air during an NFL Football game in 1986. (Focus on Sport/Getty Images)
Summerall wrote that the words of his daughter inspired him to take steps to address his addiction.
Summerall’s drinking problems escalated at the start of his broadcasting career when he was paired with Tom Brookshier. The pair called games together for six years and admitted to heavy drinking together nights before games, according to SF Gate.
Summerall recounted an experience when his drinking led to him nearly bleeding to death in a 1991 interview with the Tampa Bay Times.
“I found myself bleeding to death and my life passing before my eyes in strange blurs,” he told the outlet. “Doctors said if I’d been 15 minutes longer getting to an emergency room, I would have been history.”
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The same article recounted an incident in which Summerall threw up in an airplane bathroom after calling a game with Madden between the Washington Redskins and Chicago Bears in the 1990s.
“On the final leg, I got sick and three times went to the airplane’s toilet to throw up,” Summerall said. “I’ve been hungover so often I’m an expert on upchucking. But this time was different. I was spitting up blood.”
Summerall also admitted to using painkillers to deal with the stomach issues caused by his constant drinking.
“I figured everybody got up at 10 every morning and had a beer,” he said. “I kept putting heavy alcohol into an empty stomach and taking a lot of pain pills for my bum football knees and a back ailment. Many days, I downed eight to 10 Advil, plus other medication.”
Halfback Phil King, left; star placekicker Pat Summerall, center; and quarterback Don Heinrich of the New York Giants toast each other at the Lone Star Boat Club to celebrate a win over the Green Bay Packers at Yankee Stadium, 20-3. (Getty Images)
Summerall eventually overcame the addiction after Wiles’ intervention and through Christianity.
“My thirst for alcohol was replaced by a thirst for knowledge about faith and God. I began reading the Bible regularly at the Betty Ford treatment center, and it became a part of my daily life,” he wrote in his autobiography.
Years before helping her father beat alcoholism, Wiles began her political career as an assistant to one of Summerall’s former teammates.
In 1979, she was hired as an assistant to U.S. Rep. Jack Kemp, an ex-teammate of Summerall’s on the New York Giants.
Wiles developed a reputation for delivering hard truths to powerful men in politics.
Wiles serves as a senior adviser to Trump and is his campaign co-chair alongside Chris LaCivita.
A longtime Florida-based Republican strategist who ran Trump’s campaign in the state in 2016 and 2020, Wiles’ decades-long political career stretches back to working as former President Reagan’s campaign scheduler for his 1980 presidential bid.
In between presidential cycles, Wiles helped Ron DeSantis with his 2018 bid for governor. Wiles also ran Rick Scott’s 2010 campaign for Florida governor and briefly served as the manager of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s 2012 presidential campaign.
Former President Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, attends a game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and New York Jets with senior campaign consultant Susie Wiles Oct. 20, 2024 in Latrobe, Pa. (Evan Vucci/Pool/Getty Images)
During his victory celebration in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump gave a special thanks to Wiles for her prominent role in the campaign.
“Let me also express my tremendous appreciation for Susie [Wiles] and Chris [LaCivita] on the job you did. Susie, come, Susie,” he said. “Susie likes to stay sort of in the back, let me tell you. The ice baby. We call her the ice baby. Susie likes to stay in the background. She’s not in the background.”
Vice President-elect Vance also helped his mother overcome her drug addiction to alcohol and heroin, which was the subject of Vance’s book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” and a movie by the same name.
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