24 Hours In Haiti: Ricky Jean Francois Jumps From NFL To Hurricane Relief

If you know anything about Dan Snyder, owner of the NFL team in Washington, D.C., you know he has steadfastly refused to consider changing the name of his team, no matter how many fans, politicians, and Native Americans have charged that the name is a racial slur.

There’s more. Snyder sued fans who couldn’t pay for their season tickets during the 2008-2009 financial collapse.

He's gone through head coaches the way other teams go through rolls of athletic tape, and since he bought the team in 1999, the Washington club has lost 76 more games than it has won.

But Dan Snyder has a fan.

It's Ricky Jean Francois, a defensive end for the Washington franchise.

After his team beat Baltimore two weeks ago, Ricky Jean Francois, 6’3”, 313 pounds, got a text. It came from teammate Pierre Garçon, who wanted to know if Francois wanted to go to Haiti.

"And I sat there for a minute," Francois says. "I was like, 'How we going to Haiti? We getting on American Airlines? Delta? Or something?' They were like, 'No, Dan Snyder offered to lend us his jet and to send some supplies with us to take to Haiti.'"

This is the same Dan Snyder who’s been accused of jacking up ticket prices… same Dan Snyder inclined to sue journalists who criticize him. Yup. Same guy was sending his private jet full of supplies to Haiti with two of the players he employs.

A Nervous First Visit 

Francois got the call because, like Pierre Garçon, his roots are in Haiti. Francois’s father was born there. Though the family moved to Florida before he came along, his dad had always said that someday, they’d make a trip to the island together. Now Francois was about to make his first visit with a teammate, rather than with his dad.

"And I told Pierre, I’m like, 'Sure. We can go. Just tell me the time, and what we need to wear,'" Francois recalls. "And from that point on that day, I was nervous as hell."

Who wouldn’t be nervous about flying into an area that had just been clobbered by winds of up to 130 miles an hour? The United Nations Humanitarian Agency had reported that 750,000 Haitians would need life-saving assistance over the next three months. Reports suggested that about 20 percent of Haiti’s 11 million people had been affected to some extent by Hurricane Matthew.

"I don’t know what I’m going to encounter. I don’t know how people there take up for a disaster. Are we gonna see bodies? Are we gonna see debris? Everything just running through my head."

"But this ain’t a book in front of you now," Francois says. "Now you’re actually finna be encountering with people. You’re finna actually go to a place that’s devastated after a hurricane."

The night before he departed for Haiti, as Dan Snyder’s plane was being loaded with relief supplies, Francois barely slept.

The next morning, once Francois and Garçon were in the air, the nervousness only increased.

"I don’t know what I’m going to encounter," Francois says. "I don’t know how people there take up for a disaster. Are we gonna see bodies? Are we gonna see debris? Everything just running through my head. Pierre tried to keep me calm, but that wasn’t gonna happen. We tried to play cards. We tried to talk. But my whole mind was just set on, when this plane touches down, what am I going to see when I open that door of this jet?"

A Busy Scene, Rewarding Work

When the plane landed, what Ricky Jean Francois saw, much to his relief, was a rescue effort underway.

"I saw military choppers – big, heavy ones – coming in and out. Soon as you hit the door, you can hear the propellers of those choppers, three or four of them at a time, just going," Francois says. "And you just seeing soldiers running back and forth, throwing boxes, throwing different supplies on choppers, because some of the roads that they needed to get to weren’t there anymore, and the storm took it, so the only way they could get through there was through these choppers to drop off supplies, medical supplies, food, so on and so on."

Soon Francois and Garçon, proudly wearing their burgundy and gold Washington game jerseys, were taken to a nearby hospital.

"As soon as the supplies got out the truck, the boxes were already being ripped open," Francois says. "They were already putting IVs up, they were already using alcohol. They were already using peroxide. Everything that came inside those boxes that Dan Snyder helped us deliver, it was being put to use. That’s why you could see the nurses was smiling."

Inside the hospital, there were fewer smiles.

"We went inside one of the recovery rooms, and the lady was telling us, 'Don’t pass a certain line.' I was asking ‘em like, 'Why can’t we pass this line?' She’s like, 'You don’t know what you may encounter, what you may look at. Because, say somebody just had a surgery, and they didn’t have gauze or have the right, proper tools to sew it up, or you was gonna run into smells that you’re just not used to smelling every day,'" Jean Francois recalls. "Imagine somebody telling you or your family member that we have to turn you down because we don’t have the equipment to either help you or either save your life?"

And though the hospital was poorly equipped, and though patients were crowded into rooms where the beds were wall-to-wall, the ones whom the players were able to visit were pleased.

"Everybody's eyes just went big," Francois says. "They knew on the back of our jerseys we had Haitian names. And you just seen them just look at us the whole time, like nobody really said anything. Everybody was just nervous as hell. They just wanted to just sit there and just look at us. I was like, 'I don’t mind. If you do want to take a picture, that’s cool. But If you don’t, I’m not gonna be mad.' People were actually smiling because they seen people are willing to come there now and help. Not just, say 'let’s pray for Haiti,' or 'let’s cut a check.' Nah, let’s bring things to them that they’re praying for. That will put a smile on their face when they actually seen us in person."

A Higher Calling

After his 24-hour trip, Francois returned to the U.S. with a sense of Haiti’s on-going need, but also with an appreciation for the people he’d met.

"At one point I was just an average person. But when people see me step up with my teammate Pierre and my owner, Dan Snyder, it’s like I had the voice of a sound barrier. If I said one thing, it just went off."

"At the end of the day, the Haitian people keep taking licks, but at the same time, we not gonna fall. We not gonna stay down for a long period of time," he says. "We're going to get back up and we're going to get back to grinding because we know we have loved ones we need to take care of. It's a bigger picture to it."

The Haitians had survived earthquakes and hurricanes in the past. And they’d do it again. And Ricky Jean Francois plans to continue to assist them. After the football season, Francois intends to take his father up on that promised trip to Haiti, though it will be a return trip for both of them, and a trip imbued with greater purpose.

"Now it made me want to see, can I get to that Muhammad Ali pedestal, of, when I open my mouth, people from around the world would actually hear me and be willing to help?" Francois says. "Because at one point I was just an average person. But when people see me step up with my teammate, Pierre, and my owner, Dan Snyder, it’s like I had the voice of a sound barrier. If I said one thing, it just went off."

The private jet full of supplies helped some of the many people in great need, and the trip woke Ricky Jean Francois to the possibility of a higher calling than next week’s game. And if it serves as a reminder that people are complicated…all people…even a man who clings stubbornly to a team name that’s shameful at best and at worst obscene, well, perhaps there’s benefit there as well.