Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 13, 1994 TAG: 9411290013
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DONNA ALVIS-BANKS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"I didn't tell them about it until 10 minutes before he was due at my door," she recalls. "I said, 'OK, boys. I've got a date. You're going to leave me alone.'"
It was a good sneak play strategy, but it didn't work. Her brothers tackled her.
Literally.
"They physically held me down until they could meet J.B. and talk to him first," she says.
She could have fended off two brothers, maybe even three. But Jennifer Grimes had eight male siblings.
"I didn't get to date much," she admits. "They were all older than me and very protective."
Fortunately, her future husband got a thumbs up from the defensive line.
"They liked him," she says. "And it didn't ruffle J.B.'s feathers at all."
She has been married to John Bryan "J.B." Grimes, Virginia Tech's offensive line coach, for 13 years now. This is her husband's second season at Tech.
Jennifer Grimes, 35, has learned that frequent moves are part of the deal when you're married to a college football coach.
A 1977 graduate of Henderson State University in Arkansas, J.B. Grimes began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Northeast Louisiana University. He then worked as a graduate assistant at the University of Arkansas under head coach Lou Holtz.
Subsequent moves included stints at Delta State and the University of Missouri. In 1985, he took his first full-time assistant coaching position at Northeast Louisiana and helped lead the team to the 1987 Division 1-AA national championship.
When the call came from Virginia Tech, Jennifer Grimes had some doubts about moving to Blacksburg.
She recalls a conversation she had with Lynn Bustle, wife of Tech's former offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Rickey Bustle:
"What is this team? What's a Hokie?" Jennifer Grimes asked.
"It's a bird, a turkey," Lynn Bustle replied.
"What are their colors?"
"Orange and maroon."
She admits the description didn't sound too appealing.
"But I liked it when I saw it all," she adds.
She took a cautious approach when the family moved to Blacksburg.
"I told myself this time I'm not going to make friends because it's too hard to leave them," she said. "I did it, though. I've got some close friendships here."
"I like Blacksburg," she added. "It's a great place to raise a family."
In fact, she says, J.B. Grimes has done some coaching on the home front, too.
"He has coached me through childbirth four times."
When the Grimes' first daughter, Lindsey, was born in 1983, the coach was at a road game somewhere in Missouri.
"He called at half-time and asked how I was doing," his wife remembers. "I told him he might want to start heading home after the game."
When he got home, he found the door unlocked and all the lights in the house turned on, but no sign of his wife. "My dad had already taken me to the hospital because my water had broken.
"He got there just in the nick of time," she says.
Eleven-year-old Lindsey now has three siblings: Nick, 8; Aaron, 5; and Danielle, 3. Jennifer Grimes is a busy full-time mother.
She considers her own family small, compared to the clan she grew up with.
"My mother had 10 children," she explains. "I was the second youngest."
She was raised in the small town of Nashville, Ark. Her father owned the local newspaper, a bi-weekly that covered all the local news.
"We knew who had whom over for supper," she says in her Southern drawl.
After graduating from the University of Arkansas, she pursued a career in advertising and public relations. For a time, she worked for a regional magazine, Razorback Sports.
"I was the advertising person," she says.
Now, she is perfectly content working at home. Her job description includes changing diapers, giving home perms, assembling toys, sewing Boy Scout emblems, baking pumpkin bread and a thousand other tasks.
"I love it. I'm a natural mother."
Jennifer Grimes' day starts at 6:30 a.m., but her husband's begins even earlier.
"I don't know when J.B. goes to work," she admits. "I'm still asleep. It's still dark."
J.B. does break away from his duties long enough to join the family for supper most evenings, but he always goes back to work.
"He's not home in time for the goodnight kisses," his wife says. "But he tries to help clean up the kitchen or give one of the kids a bath before he goes back to work."
Jennifer Grimes says her husband keeps his life as a football coach separate from his life as a father.
"When he comes home, he wants to know how our kids are, what they're up to."
"We're big as a family," Jennifer Grimes says. "We love football, but it doesn't dominate our lives. I can't let it. I think it would drive me nuts."
by CNB