We lost a hero a few weeks ago, and we never got a chance to say a proper goodbye.
And a proper thank you.
Thank you, Lin-J Shell, for caring about kids.
Thank you for risking your life.
Thank you for going above and beyond your duty as a high school P.E. teacher.
“What an amazing person Lin-J was,” remembers Jay Gruden, who coached Shell with the Orlando Predators. “He was the type of player you couldn’t get mad at. He just always made you feel happy.”
Says a tearful Dan Pearson, the former media relations director of the Predators: “I hope Lin-J realized how much he meant to so many people.”
You might not know who Lin-J Shell is, but you should.
You really should.
He died a few weeks ago at the age of 39 after contracting COVID-19.
He played football at Edgewater High School and went on to become a Hall of Fame athlete at Jacksonville University and an All-Star in the Canadian Football League. He spent 10 years traversing the country and the continent, pursuing his dream and playing football on seven different teams in three different leagues.
He made the Predators roster during an open tryout in 2004; then he played briefly for the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles in 2005, then it was back to the Predators and the New Orleans VooDoo of the Arena League. After that, it was off to the Canadian Football League for stints with the Toronto Argonauts, the BC Lions, the Calgary Stampeders and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
“He just felt blessed to be able to play football — no matter what level,” Pearson said. “He would come to practice every day, smiling, cracking jokes and making everybody feel good. He played with such a tremendous amount of joy.”
And he took that joy with him to his life after football when he became a teacher, a mentor and a coach to so many kids in Jacksonville. Even though he was a P.E. teacher and a dean of boys at Ribault High School, he often ran free football camps during the offseason for any boy at any school who wanted to participate.
Lin-J Shell was willing to help any kid he could have the best opportunity possible to have a successful life. There’s no telling how many lives he saved — figuratively and literally.
You see, it was three years ago when a melee broke out in the gym at Ribault High School, where video footage showed dozens of kids throwing haymakers at one another and Shell wading into the middle of the brawl, trying to break it up.
According to media and police reports at the time, the fight broke out because a 43-year-old woman became upset about a social media post about her nephew and another student at Ribault. The woman and four other boys reportedly arrived at Ribault with the intention of starting a fight.
Shell told CTV News at the time that while he was trying to break up the fight, the woman had gone outside to get something from her car and clandestinely brought it back into the gym.
“She got out of the car; she was irate, basically saying she wasn’t going to let anyone jump on her family,” Shell told the TV station at the time.
It was then that Shell noticed the woman was holding a bag over her hand, trying to hide something. “I walked behind her,” Shell said, “and I noticed I could see the rear sights of the gun.”
Instead of using his football instincts to tackle her and risk the gun going off and spraying bullets amid the melee, Shell quickly and calmly demobilized the woman’s shooting arm.
“I came from behind her; I saw she had a gun. I grabbed her hand, put her hand down and (locked) her elbow,” Shell said.
He coolly walked the woman backward, firmly holding her arm so that the gun was pointed down toward the ground. As he led her away from the fight, he kept repeating the words in her ear, “Please don’t shoot our kids. ... Please don’t shoot our kids. ... Please don’t shoot our kids.”
The woman acquiesced and was arrested.
Police said her handgun was fully loaded with six rounds.
“If anybody could talk a shooter out of trying to kill somebody, it’s Lin-J Shell,” Gruden says. “He had that type of personality. Just a glowing, genuine demeanor; a guy you listened to and could trust.”
Gruden turns emotional.
“This death really makes you wonder,” he says. “Lin-J was such an unbelievable person. Why would he get picked to go?”
Maybe because heaven needs heroes, too.
RIP, Lin-J.
And thank you.
Thank you for teaching, mentoring and protecting our kids.
