Bolles captures Alan Page award for community work
Although Broncos left tackle is a superior blocker, his work with youth may be more impressive.
SAN FRANCISCO — Garett Bolles is more than the NFL’s best blindside protector.
How do you do more than the best? By expanding to the greater good. Bolles doesn’t just pass-block better than anyone on the planet, he doesn’t just donate money to off-field causes, he puts in the volunteer hours for those causes.
I have built a school, for goodness sake. On top of his mentorship for troubled kids in the juvenile detention system, Bolles, the Broncos’ All Pro and Pro Bowl left tackle, opened a training center for children afflicted with apraxia, a speech disorder, in Parker.
For his off-the-field efforts, Bolles was named Tuesday as the NFL Players Association’s Alan Page Community Award winner.
“It’s the legacy part, it’s the thing I want to leave back and show people that it doesn’t matter how you start it’s how you finish,” Bolles said Tuesday from a second-floor conference room of the Super Bowl LX Media Center.
“You’ve got to put in the effort. Not just on the field but off the field.
“I’m a big believer that how you live your life off the field is how you perform on the field. It’s definitely a blessing, an honor to see the fruits of my labor come to fruition.”
Bolles himself had a troubled childhood, kicked out of his father’s home and frequently called to the principal’s office in school. The Freeman family gave their hearts to him, rescued him, got him involved in their church and as he matured, Bolles found his calling on the football field.
Beyond grateful – words he often uses – Bolles discovered true peace and happiness comes when it’s shared.
“It’s all about sharing,” Bolles said “Sharing is caring. To be able to show the kids – it’s all about the youth, it’s all about the next generation — to give them a voice and a platform and to bless their life in the way that they always bless mine when I go to visit them. It’s amazing. I’m just beyond grateful to not only stand here today but to represent all those kids who are struggling and suffering.”
Bolles is also up for the NFL’s Walter Payton Man of the Year, which the league has come to call its most prestigious award, even if nothing beats the annual Most Valuable Player trophy.
The Walter Payton honor will be announced at the NFL Honors program Thursday night but in the meantime, any award named after Alan Page is significant.
The central figure in the famed Purple People Eaters, the unforgettable sobriquet of the Minnesota Vikings’ defensive front four in the 1960s and ’70s, Page was the NFL’s first-ever defensive player to be named Most Valuable Player. More impressively, Page later became a Minnesota Supreme Court justice, a position he held for 23 years.
“Pretty amazing,” said Bolles, who was born in the same year (1992) Page was first elected to the state supreme court. “What he did on the field was remarkable and speaks volumes of what type of player he was. He loved football but to go and become a supreme justice and a judge, one of the highest honors you can get and to represent that community, to be able to show everything is possible is truly a blessing.
“To be able to know him and study him and understand what this award means to me and my family and I get to represent him and his family to continue to push the tradition forward.”
