From the time he was in college, the Giants’ new general manager has wanted to run an NFL front office. His football mentors and the tireless trucker who raised him explain how Schoen developed the qualities he’ll need in a daunting job with Big Blue.
Behind the wheel of a freight truck, parked with the motor still running in the lot outside of a Walmart, a 65-year-old man cried.
Tears of joy. Tears of pride. Tears of a divorced father who raised his son on the values of work ethic, integrity and independent thinking.
The Giants called Joe Schoen at about 11 a.m. Friday to inform him he was their choice as their next general manager, the first since 1979 without previous ties to the franchise. He accepted the challenge, hung up the call and dialed his father — a semi-tractor-trailer driver about to make a drop in a Logansport shopping center, 90 minutes from his Elkhart, Ind. home.
“There was a long pause,” Dick Schoen told The Post, “and then he broke down and said, ‘I’m the new general manager of the New York Giants football team. Dad, thank you for all your hard work and everything you did to get me here.’ I started bawling like a baby.”
