“If you’re a Packer fan, don’t be discouraged because some of the greatest Christians in the world were first atheists.”

Those were the final words Pat McCaskey, special programs director of the Chicago Bears, gave to students Tuesday as he spoke about the struggles he faced while going through high school and college.

McCaskey – the grandson of George Halas, who founded the National Football League and the Chicago Bears – spoke about the lessons his grandfather taught him and how it helped get him through life.

McCaskey said he remembered watching the Bears play while sitting on an Army blanket with his other 11 siblings next to the Bears bench. McCaskey learned family values at that young age from his grandfather.

Whether the Bears won or lost, he would always be greeted by his grandfather coming out of the locker room and saying, “Hi pal, how ‘bout a kiss for Grandpa?”

Seeing that from his grandpa helped him later in life, McCaskey said.

“From Mark Twain, I learned to take care of business, but don’t neglect your family.”

While at Notre Dame High School in Niles, McCaskey battled injuries to become all-area and all-conference in football.

But by the end of his senior year, a doctor told him a nagging eye problem would force him to stay out of football. The doctor said if he were to continue to play football, he would risk going blind.

McCaskey didn’t like the trade-off, and decided to start running cross-country during his year of prep school at Cheshire Academy in Cheshire, Conn.

McCaskey said he ended up as the top prep runner in the New England area. But he found the competition to be much stiffer once he got to college.

He attended Indiana University, where he barely made the cross-country team as the B-team’s worst runner.

McCaskey spoke about how he had to persevere through that obstacle, and prove himself to become the best runner on the B-team. But once again, health problems got in his way.

During his second year of college, he had eye and allergy problems that kept him from running for the next 10 years.

At that point, he said he did not want to continue college. He told his parents that poet and writer James Thurber, a person he revered, never graduated college.

They answered their son simply: “But you’re going to.”

Health problems caused McCaskey to stay in college for six years.

He earned a Masters degree from DePaul University in Interdisciplinary Studies with emphases in business, writing and performing. He began working for the Bears in 1974.

McCaskey stayed optimistic – as his grandfather told him to feel about running – and eventually grew out of the allergies that kept him from running for so long.

In 1981, he was running against the Bears players at training camp. He finished first, and was later told that Walter Payton said, “I tried to stay with him, but that boy is crazy.”

To this day, McCaskey, 53, runs in the Masters Program races and hopes to be like the 80-year-olds he saw in Louisiana this past summer – still running races.