Category: Sports

When Byron Young’s father died earlier this year, he asked his mother for his dad’s key chain.

It’s not your normal key chain. It’s made from the end of a snapped belt, the key ring looping into one of the belt’s holes. There’s a date carved into the brown leather on one side. It’s faint now, but Young said he thinks it reads “7-1-9” for July 1, 2009.

“I think the date that was on the belt was the date that he cut the belt and put it on his key chain,” Young said. “I want to say the belt was broken or something, and he just put it on there. I don’t think there was any deeper meaning.”

But the chain has great significance to Young, the Eagles’ 6-foot-3, 292-pound defensive tackle. When he first linked it to his keys, he marked the other side of the belt with the date “4-7-25,” nearly 16 years after his father’s original carving and just a week after Kenny Young, 62, suffered a fatal heart attack.

“It’s just something that I knew he always carried around since that day, I believe,” Byron said, “and so it’s just something I want to keep with me.”

Young grabbed the key chain from his locker stall when a reporter recently asked how he kept his father’s memory alive, crying as he gripped the belt. He doesn’t hide his emotion. He said he gets that from his father, who openly shed tears when he spoke about his love for his family or God.

“I think a part of being masculine is being able to show your emotions and explain the way you feel and express the way you feel to other people,” Young said. “Not just balling everything up and thinking, ‘Oh, I’m a man. I can’t talk about this.’”

When Young found out his father had died back home in Mississippi on March 31, he drove to teammate Gabe Hall’s house, overcome with grief. They met just before the 2024 season and spent the next six months as part of the same position group, training side by side nearly every day during the offseason. The goal was to make the Eagles’ 53-man roster after having served mostly as reserves. But his father’s death put Young’s football plans on hiatus. He flew home the next day.

“I expected him to be gone for the rest of summer,” Hall said. “I was like, ‘OK, he’s not going back. I’m going to miss him.’ But he came right back. And he was like, ‘Bro, it’s time to get to work.’ When I saw that, I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s my dog.’”

Hall said Young trained with a “chip on his shoulder” that motivated him. They played golf — along with former Eagles tackle Laekin Vakalahi — to break the monotony. And they sometimes spoke about Young’s father.

Hall said he did his best to keep his friend from ruminating on the loss. Young had all the inspiration he needed.

“A lot of working out, man, a lot of working out ’cause it’s what he would have wanted,” Young said of his father.

Young and Hall initially made the active roster. The latter was soon moved to the practice squad where he remains, while the former has played in every game this season as the Eagles’ fourth defensive tackle.

The 25-year-old Young said he doesn’t dwell on his father’s absence or his last moment with him because it was like so many.

“He wasn’t the type that didn’t tell you that he loved you. He wasn’t the type that didn’t tell you he was proud of you,” Young said. “He would always let you know, to the day that he passed, that ‘I’m proud of you; you’ve done a lot of great stuff.

“‘I love you.’”

‘A passionate person’

Young didn’t play in Super Bowl LIX in February. His season ended in October when the Eagles placed him on injured reserve with a hamstring injury. But he was in New Orleans for the game, as was his family, which made the two-hour drive south from Taylorsville, Miss.

His parents, Kenny and Melissa, were unable to get on the field at the Superdome to celebrate with Byron after the Eagles toppled the Kansas City Chiefs. But the family had a proper party back home a month later with Byron and his brothers Kendrick, Regrick, and Brandon, and sister Shavon.

A day later, the Youngs gathered after Sunday church services to celebrate the birthday of Melissa’s sister. At one point, Kenny stood up and delivered a speech. He loved to talk. But he also wanted to express his love for his two sisters-in-law.

“He shed a few tears. What’s crazy is my uncle told him, ‘You get up there talking like you about to leave us,’” Byron said. “It just so happened that he did. I don’t know if he knew, or I don’t think he knew, but I don’t think anybody had any idea.

“But, man, he was just always a passionate person.”

Kenny Young didn’t have anything close to an ideal upbringing, according to his wife and son. But he was a man of faith and found mentors through the Friendship Church of God in Christ in Collins, Miss. He had just ended a relationship when one day in church he prayed that his next girlfriend would become his wife, according to an oft-repeated family anecdote.

His plea was answered when he met Melissa in the library at the University of Southern Mississippi. She was a student, and he liked to go there to read the magazines. They started dating and married two years later.

Kenny was a “hands-on man,” as his wife described him. He worked on farms growing up and was mechanically inclined. He was a laborer at Georgia-Pacific and pulled the wood that the company manufactured into paper products.

The work was physically grinding. Byron recalled his father’s long hours and hearing his keys jingle in the early mornings as he was leaving for the next 12-hour shift. But Kenny also was a present dad to five children, Melissa said.

There were rules and discipline. He coached his sons in youth football and sometimes took them to chop firewood for parishioners who needed warmth during the winter months. He loved to joke and laugh.

“The best way to describe Kenny is he loved well,” Melissa said. “He had a great love, reverence for God, and he spoke the truth out of love, and he didn’t want anybody to go to hell. … He was a deacon in our church.”

Kenny had been promoted to less strenuous jobs in his later years at Georgia-Pacific. He was a lathe machine operator who “pushed buttons,” Byron said, to keep wood on the straight and narrow. He could have retired, Melissa said, but he told her he was needed to spread the gospel at work.

“We had talked about the two of us retiring at age 65, maybe coming out the same year, but God retired him at age 62, and his work was done,” said Melissa, who’s still a pre-K teacher. “And I feel like God said to my husband, ‘Well done, that good and faithful servant.’

“He slipped away quickly and easily. He didn’t go through any suffering.”

‘A mini-him’

Kenny worked on Monday, the day after his sister-in-law’s birthday, after Byron flew back to Philly. Later that night, Kenny got into bed with his wife.

“He liked to play. And I thought he was making a sound just playing with me,” Melissa said. “And I said, ‘Well, Ken is gonna quit making that sound in a little bit.’ So I guess it may have been a moment, and he kept making the sound. … I got up and I turned the light on, I called his name and I pushed him, and he was not responsive.”

Melissa called Shavon and they dialed 911. They got Kenny off the bed, elevated his head, and tried chest compressions. One of Byron’s brothers called him immediately. There was nothing that could be done.

“He wanted to turn around and come drive right back,” Melissa said of Byron. “But one of his brothers convinced him not to. … They told him to get a flight, because he will get here by plane quicker than he would if he got on the road and drove.

“And he probably was not in any condition to be on the road anyway.”

Young called Hall instead. He wanted to know if he could watch his dog while he was away. They had worked out at NovaCare Complex, the Eagles’ practice facility, earlier that day. Hall sensed something was wrong.

“I was like, ‘You OK?’” Hall said. “This was late. You don’t just call me late.”

Young told him about his father and asked if he could drive over.

“He allowed me to cry on his shoulder,” Young said. “We just sat in silence because there was nothing really to be said.”

At one point, Hall said, Young cracked a joke. Hall had never met Young’s father, but he had heard stories about his sense of humor.

“You could tell he was kind of a mini-him, in a sort of way,” Hall said. “I just knew that was a person he always talked about. He talked about his dad at least a few times a week.

“You could just tell when a man respects somebody in their life.”

Kenny played football growing up, but couldn’t pursue it beyond high school because he had family responsibilities, his son said.

“According to him, he was one of the best ever,” Byron said. “And I don’t doubt it.”

He stopped coaching his sons when they reached a certain level. But he influenced their every decision. Byron wanted to play at Ole Miss, but Kenny felt Alabama and coach Nick Saban would be best for his son.

The first training camp was difficult.

“I remember calling him one day and not wanting to be there anymore,” Young said of his father. “He just told me that’s what I signed up for. … I didn’t really tell anybody else but him. He told me that wasn’t something that he wanted me to do because I gave Alabama my word that I would be there for four years.

“And that was kind of the end of me thinking that I was going to transfer.”

Young played in 13 games as a freshman, won a national title as a sophomore, and was All-SEC by his senior season. When the Las Vegas Raiders drafted him in 2023, he and his father had a long, knowing embrace.

The NFL brought its own struggles. Young played in only six games as a rookie and was cut by the Raiders the following August. He still has the voicemail his father left him offering encouragement and advice.

“It’s something like the last thing that I have on my phone of his voice,” Young said. “And … I just always keep that in my mind.”

The Eagles signed him off waivers the next day. Exactly one year later, Young made the 53-man roster out of 2025 training camp. He said he wasn’t surprised “because I knew the work that I had put in.” He just wished his dad could have been there to see it.

“I believe that he knows, and that he’s in heaven or resting right now,” Young said, “and eventually I’ll see him again.”

For now, he has mementos. There’s Kenny’s 1967 Pontiac GTO parked in the shed his father built that Byron hopes to finish restoring. And, always with him, his father’s key chain.

“Hopefully, one day I have a son or a daughter,” Young said, “and I can give it to them.”