Cowboys’ Ware Fulfills a Challenge for Fatherhood
DeMarcus Ware, an All-Pro linebacker with the Cowboys, his wife, Taniqua, and their 3-month-old adopted daughter, Marley.
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DeMarcus Ware with his daughter, Marley, who was named after Bob Marley, Ware’s favorite reggae singer.
On his living room couch this month, Ware looked nothing like a menacing All-Pro linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys. He made baby noises. He shook rattles. He noticed Marley jabbing fingers in her mouth, an indication she was tired.
Nothing quite compares to watching parents hold their infant. But Ware and his wife, Taniqua, believe they appreciate their daughter, Marley, more because they adopted her after three failed pregnancies.
Finally, they have a child: penetrating eyes, chin covered in drool, curious and cuddly and cute.
“Our little angel,” Ware, 25, said.
He and Taniqua say they have two angels — one they hold each day, and one they can feel but never see or touch. A poem, “Angel in the Sky,” sits on the mantle in the living room. It refers to Omar Ware, who was stillborn in 2006 and cremated the same day. The Wares placed his ashes in a gold urn next to the poem.
Early in the second game he played after Omar’s death, Ware sacked Redskinsquarterback Mark Brunell. Instead of dancing, Ware fell backward, powerless, arms spread wide, he said. At that instant, he added, he felt the tension release from his body, as if pushed out by the deafening roar of the home crowd. A friend called Taniqua, saying Ware had looked like an angel falling toward the turf.
James Harrison and Demarcus Ware" width="576" height="324" />Ever since, Ware said: “I feel Omar out there with me, watching over me and protecting me. Sometimes, when I’m tired on the field, and I feel like I can’t go anymore, I just think, what if he had one more breath? What if all three did?”
The Wares always wanted a large family, boys and girls, maybe twins. They met in high school in Auburn, Ala., where Taniqua worked at a deli and sneaked sandwiches and cookies to him.
“Food was the way to his heart,” she said. “And those dimples were every girl’s dream.”
Ware played football, basketball and baseball. Taniqua fought fierce competition to become his Diamond Doll so she could hand him sugar cookies, Snickers and blue Gatorade before each baseball game.
Taniqua, 26, described Ware as a “big softie,” a study in contrasts: a linebacker so feared and disruptive on the field, yet so sensitive and tender off it. He wrote poetry for her and professed his love so often that every phrase in his marriage proposal had been spoken many times before.
She joined the Air Force, working in personnel. DeMarcus went to Troy University in Alabama. They married in March 2005 at a courthouse in Alabama, no family, no fanfare. They celebrated at their favorite fast-food restaurant.
When Dallas drafted Ware in the first round that April, he was living a charmed life. But later that year, Taniqua had her first miscarriage. While she was pregnant with Omar, the hopeful Wares bought baby clothes. But they learned during training camp in 2006 that the fetus had no kidneys and would not survive.
“It’s always on your mind,” said Ware, whose performance in practice suffered. “It really hit me in the evenings.”
Taniqua was always Ware’s counterpoint. She was the daughter of a police officer. Ware met his father for the first time at his high school graduation, and they have since grown closer. She was a tomboy who held in her feelings as often as Ware let his flow.
The experience with Omar brought out emotions in her that Ware had never seen. Sometimes, he said, he found Taniqua crying in her closet. Other times, he broke down in her arms.
“That was the low point,” Taniqua said. “To go to the hospital and give birth and coming home with nothing. You don’t know how to react.
“You’re angry, hurt, upset.”
To honor Omar, the Wares gave pendants to relatives with his tiny footprint on the front and his name and birthdate on the back.
They also decided to try again. They consulted fertility specialists and doctors who specialize in high-risk pregnancies, and Taniqua became pregnant a third time. Before the 2007 season, Ware commissioned a jeweler to make a pendant for her. But while the Cowboys were preparing to play the Giants in the playoffs in January, Taniqua discovered that the fetus’s heart had stopped beating. That was the day the pendant was completed.
It is in the shape of an angel.
The Wares never questioned their Christian faith. But now they asked plenty of introspective questions, like “What’s wrong with me?” and “Why us?”
Then fate intervened. That week, while Ware was picking up his car after repairs at a dealership in Grapevine, Tex., he struck up a conversation with its business manager, Justin Norwood. Months earlier, when Ware bought the car, he noticed photographs of Norwood’s adopted son on the wall.
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And now, after Ware had missed practice that week for what the team called “personal medical reasons,” Norwood inquired about the pregnancy. Ware told him the news, and their conversation turned to adoption.
Norwood’s father, Jim, the pastor of Oakcrest Family Church in Kennedale, Tex., runs a ministry program for women. A few days later, Norwood called the Wares to say that his father knew a woman due to give birth soon who was offering her child for adoption.
Marley is that child. She was born on leap day, Feb. 29, with a black Mohawk that Taniqua said “you had to see to believe.” The Wares, who were at a wedding in Manhattan at the time, caught the first flight home.
At the hospital, Ware said, he told Taniqua, “You a momma now.” She replied, “And you a daddy.”
They named her after Bob Marley, Ware’s favorite reggae singer. Marley, with an infectious smile, is drawn to lenses, and the Wares document her so often that they run low on memory in their camera and camcorder. She has many nicknames, including Stinker and Daddy’s Little Princess.
Ware “lights up Marley’s day,” Christy Shepard, a family friend, said, adding: “She smiles when she sees him across the room. When he comes in, it’s like nobody else exists.”
The feeling appears to be mutual.
“That dude is just one proud papa,” Norwood said. “He’s always, always talking about his daughter.”
The Wares plan to try to conceive again, and they have talked about becoming a foster family. Recently, they started working with Jonathan’s Place, a local nonprofit adoption and boarding agency for abandoned and abused children. Ware said he hoped to become a spokesman for the agency.
He would tell everyone how Marley — and his struggle to become a father — changed his life, made him more responsible, fulfilled him in a way that football never had.
“Our little angel,” Ware said.
Demarcus Ware and his wife, Taniqua, are the proud parents of baby boy, Demarcus Ware, Jr.
“It’s just a blessing,” said Ware. “Sometimes if you’re able to just fight through things and have faith, blessings happen. To be able to have a kid, DeMarcus Jr., I think it’s awesome. People who have never seen just the birthing process, it’s unimaginable and it’s just a great thing.”
The couple have a 2-year old daughter, Marley that they adopted. Taniqua had three failed pregnancies, including a son, Omar, who was stillborn in 2006.
Congratas to Demarcus, Taniqua and little Marley on their new addition
This is the Home of 26 year old Demarcus Ware of the Dallas Cowboys and his wife in Colleyville, TX (suburb of Dallas/Ft.Worth)
According to Tax Records, the value of this house is $534,200
DeMarcus Ware on 21-sack pace
Ware On Pace To Make History
DeMarcus Ware recorded another sack on Sunday to bring his total for the 2011 season to eight. Not surprising, really, since Ware has only finished one game this season without recording a sack--but with his takedown of A.J. Feeley on Sunday, Ware is now on pace to record 21 sacks this season.
If he did that, Ware would be the first player in NFL history--or at least since sacks became an official statistic in 1982--to post more than one 20+ sack seasons. He has 20 back in 2008.
“I need to pump that up a little bit more,” Ware said, per ESPN Dallas. “It’s something you always strive for, getting pressure in the game and we’re getting that at the most critical time.”
That Ware is amazing seems to go without saying, but that didn’t stop defensive coordinator Rob Ryan from saying it anyway. After Sunday’s victory, Ryan called Ware the best defensive player he has seen--not coached, but seen--in his NFL career.
“That means a lot to me coming from Coach Rob because he’s coached a lot of great players,” Ware said. “He doesn’t lie about anything but he says that, and I take it with a grain of salt because I know how much that means to him and his defense. I’ve just got to keep playing.”
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