49ers’ Tomsula returning to hard-working family roots
Twenty years ago, 49ers head coach Jim Tomsula loved his $9,100-a-year job at Charleston Southern University, but he hated the look on his father’s face.
[...] he ditched his whistle, moved his family back home to Pennsylvania and worked as a sales rep at Sysco Foods, where his dad, Jim Tomsula Sr., was a district manager.
Jim Jr.’s great-grandfather was a Hungarian immigrant who was the first in a long line of family members to work back-breaking and decent-paying jobs in the area’s coal mines or steel mills.
Why was his son coaching football, working endless odd jobs and renting a shabby apartment with barely stocked kitchen cabinets?
Two decades later, Jim Sr. and his wife, Betty Jo, will be among a throng of Tomsulas to see Jim Jr. return home as the 49ers visit the Steelers on Sunday at Heinz Field, eight miles from where Tomsula grew up in Homestead.
Tomsula’s uncle, Robert “Tic” Cloherty, said about 50 friends and family members will be at the game, a group that includes his coach at Steel Valley High, George Novak, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews.
Cloherty spent 12 seasons as the scoreboard operator at Heinz Field, and Tomsula said Friday that he didn’t know whether his uncle ever missed a Steelers game when he was growing up.
Tomsula’s favorite athlete as a child was Pittsburgh linebacker Jack Lambert, and he also attended his share of games — sometimes free of charge — at the Steelers’ old stadium.
On Sunday, of course, Tomsula will enter through the front door as a man with one of the NFL’s 32 coveted jobs.
Before he returned home Friday, however, he reflected on the working-class jobs held by the family that shaped him.