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By Root 1466 0

Road (Walter created the house number himself) seem like a luxury address, not merely a house at the end of a street. Yet now that he had nothing to do and nowhere to do it, the home felt mostly like a prison. When he was there, Payton spent countless hours on the couch, thinking, wondering, hoping, napping. He would call people at all hours of the day and night, looking to chat, longing for ideas. Though he had just recently played his final game, a feeling of irrelevance came quickly. Off-season newspaper articles about the Bears no longer dealt with Payton. Sports radio mentioned him sporadically, if at all. When asked, Payton told people that he was still working out and staying in tip-top shape. Not true. When the final whistle blew, Payton’s obsessive devotion to fitness died. He made regular pilgrimages to the nearby Bob Evans for bacon and eggs with a huge side helping of sausage. He gorged on Benihana whenever possible.

Once, while flying to an event, Payton sat next to a woman in first class who turned toward him and said, “Do I know you from somewhere?” Payton leaned close and said, “Actually, I’m one of the world’s most famous male strippers. You’ve probably seen me perform.” Payton rose, removed his jacket, and pretended to begin his routine. The woman was mortified until a boy approached and said, “Mr. Payton, can I have your autograph?”

She laughed uproariously. “Oh my God,” the woman said, cackling. “That’s the best trick anyone has ever played on me.” An executive with Wendy’s, she handed Payton a card that provided him a lifetime of free hamburgers. “Let’s just say they knew him at the Wendy’s drive-thru,” said Tucker, who worked with Payton after his retirement as the executive director of his charitable foundation. “He loved those free burgers.”

Walter Payton was a man who was recognized all over the country, yet he suddenly found himself very much alone. He kept in regular contact with none of his ex-teammates or coaches, and had long ago established a distant relationship with his older brother, Eddie. “When Eddie would call, a lot of the time Walter pretended he wasn’t there,” said Quirk. “He didn’t have much to talk with his brother about. The bond was iffy.”

While Walter and Connie remained married, it was a union solely in name and finances. “I started working for Walter in 1987,” said Tucker. “I didn’t even know he was married until probably a year later. I just thought Connie was the mother of his kids.” Shortly after his retirement, Payton—a spokesperson for Inland Property, a real estate firm—was provided with a free fully furnished two-bedroom apartment on Chestnut Street in downtown Chicago. He eventually split his time between there, a 3,500-square foot home he purchased in the Chicago suburb of West Dundee, Illinois, and the family house at 34 Mudhank (depending on when he wanted to be at the house with Jarrett, now seven, and Brittney, three). Husband and wife spoke when necessary, and Walter’s dalliances were becoming common knowledge throughout Chicago. He confided in those he was close with that, when his children graduated high school, he would divorce Connie once and for all. “He didn’t want the children to go through the rigors of a celebrity divorce,” said Tucker. “He knew what the spotlight felt like when it was negative, and he hated the idea of Jarrett and Brittney experiencing any of that.”

To those he trusted, Walter claimed he had never actually wanted to marry Connie; that the pressures of being young and alone had forced him to make a terrible mistake. He didn’t necessarily hate her, but there was no love or, for that matter, like. There hadn’t been for a long time. “Walter knew that if he left Connie all the work he’d done to his image would go by the wayside,” said Ron Atlas, his longtime friend. “Connie was very well liked, and that was a problem. When they were a real couple, friends would always side with Connie when they argued, because she seemed like such a sweet person.”

Of all the people he knew, Payton’s closest confidant was, interestingly, Ginny Quirk.