ONE DAY LAST spring, Alfred Pupunu invited his parents to go for a drive. He wanted them to see a house he hoped to buy for himself, he explained. They drove south from their tiny home in Sugarhouse and eventually stopped in front of a big house in Sandy.
"You like it?" he asked after they had looked the place over.Yes, they liked it.
"OK, it's yours," he said. "This is your home."
Just like that, Alfred gave William and Polini - now retired and well into their 60s - a four-bedroom, two-story house with a view. The next day, their son was gone again, off to San Diego to return to work.
"It was big surprise for us," says William in his broken and halting English. "We had no idea. That's the way we live. When you need to give to someone, you do it. We love each other very much."
Pupunu, one of the most unlikely of the unlikely San Diego Chargers who will play in Sunday's Super Bowl, has come a long way - from Tonga to Salt Lake City, from South High, Dixie College and Weber State to the San Diego Chargers, from a free agent to a starting H-Back in Super Bowl XXIX - but not so far that he has forgotten his roots. He has not forgotten his family, his culture, and the island where he was born. If he had forgotten, would he dance that dance in the end zone, or bear gifts to parents and siblings?
"You've got to take care of your parents," he says. "Just think of all they did, all the sacrifices they made."
If not for those sacrifices, Pupunu's life would be radically different. The youngest of five children, Alfred was two months old when William moved his family to Utah to give his children better educational opportunities. The move had a price. In Tonga, William held a cushy paper-pushing job as an assistant manager of a large shipping company; in Utah he had to take a tough, blue-collar job because of his poor English. For more than 20 years he repaired wrecked trucks, tearing them apart and rebuilding them again.
There were other changes, as well. William never has gotten used to the cold; when the snow came that first month they arrived in Utah, he stayed inside while his children happily ran out into the stuff. But this was just part of the trade. He left behind a simpler, warmer, slower life, where TV and electricity were rare, and he could sell or eat the food that grew in his garden or trees or in the ocean.
He exchanged all of this for education and urban America and a living that was meager, even with his wife working as a housekeeper. They made sure the kids had good clothes and books for school, but that took about all they had.
"The children said, `That's good enough for us.' They were very understanding," says William.
Now the youngest is giving back to his family. Pupunu, although not extravagantly paid by NFL standards, will earn close to $250,000 this season, which is enough to support his generosity.
Surely, a raise is in his future. Pupunu has established himself as a rising young player - even if, after three years in the league, everyone is walking around Miami this week wondering who is Alfred Pupunu? Nobody can even get his name right. It's always coming out as POP-pee-nu, Pa-PAW-na, POP-a-nu, POO-poo or some darn thing like that (say it Pa-POO-Noo).
Most of what Pupunu does on a football field are the kinds of things only coaches and teammates can fully appreciate. The H-back is a modified tight end position - part tackle, part receiver - that requires brawn and brains. He rarely lines up in the same place twice and the running game depends heavily on his blocking. At 6-foot-3, 265 pounds, Pupunu is required to go one-on-one with 300-pound linemen and speedy, athletic linebackers.
"If Al don't go, I don't go," says star running back Natrone Means. "I don't know how much plainer I can put it."
But fans and media don't want to talk about such mundane stuff as blocking; they want to talk about Pupunu's end-zone dances. He calls it the Kava Dance. After Pupunu scores a touchdown, he flexes his biceps, takes a couple of steps, pretends to remove the top of the football as if he's opening a coconut, and then tilts his head back and "drinks" from it, followed by a spike and/or a few dance steps (the Bolt Dance).
Everyone assumes he is pretending to drink beer, but, no, it's kava, a thick, brown Polynesian cocoction that is made from a root (we told you he hadn't forgotten his roots) and "tastes like mud water."
"It's for our culture," he says, explaining the dance.
You might be weary of such antics, but Pupunu is serious about his dancing. Several years ago he and his friends were throwing a football near the dorms at Dixie College and trying to dream up a new end-zone act. "Here's what I'm going to do," Pupunu said, and he produced his first Kava Dance.
No one could have guessed that Pupunu ever would have such a stage for his dance as the Super Bowl. As a 6-1, 195-pound tight end at South High, he was recruited by two schools. He didn't make the starting lineup until his second year at Dixie, where he sequestered himself in the weight room and was used mostly as a blocker. He spent most of his first season at Weber State on the sidelines with an assortment of pulled muscles. Milk (not Kava) cured the problem, and he caught a nation-leading 93 passes as a senior.
The Kansas City Chiefs signed Pupunu as a free agent, then made him their final cut, hoping to re-sign him as a practice-squad player. League rules required them to put Pupunu on the waiver list for 24 hours, and the Chargers grabbed him.
He has been a starter since midway through last season. This year he has caught 27 passes, 3 for touchdowns, which means he has had few opportunities to perform the Kava Dance. The dance got prime time after Pupunu caught a 43-yard touchdown pass (on a play called "60 counter Tonga") that triggered a victorious rally against Pittsburgh in the AFC Championship game. Now his dance is all reporters want to discuss with him this week.
"I never thought it would get so much attention," he says.
Wait until they hear about Pupunu in Tonga - the first Tongan (supposedly) ever to play in the Super Bowl, doing the Kava. "I don't know if they have TV yet in Tonga," says Pupunu.
The Pupunus have never returned to Tonga, but they passed the culture on to their children by discussing it in their home. They plan to return someday, and then they can tell them about the Kava and their son the football player.