OFF THE BEATEN PATH — 12 DAYS OF IRISH 2009 — DAYS Ten, Eleven and Twelve — McCredie

This comes exactly a week late by the reckoning of the calendar but, in fact, it is years overdue.

Because you need to know about Jeff McCredie — and, yes, he has done enough in his life so far to warrant three days' worth of verbiage.

Jeff McCredie is a true original.


He comes from the kind of Irish-American family about which weepy, redemptive movies-of-the-week are made.

Old man abandons the family, mother shoulders the Herculean burden of raising three kids, bouncing from Kentucky to upstate New York to Havertown, Pennsylvania, kid beats the odds and you can imagine the rest...

Only here's the thing: Jeff emerged — bruised and scarred — as a driven, gifted young man who excelled at ... well, everything:

Smarter than everyone — and when I say everyone — I mean friggin' everyone! Dude's in MENSA.

Great tennis player.

Better baseball player.

Okay — typical white-guy hoopster. But still ...

Talented actor.

Prolific painter (We have two hanging in our house — neither of which he'd let us pay for, the moron.)

Bad -ass lawyer.

Drinker of a solid pint.

Loyal friend.

Out-sized, reckless heart.

American hero.

Oh ... didn't see that last one coming? Its the truth. And its important that you know it because he has— on countless occasions and without fanfare or accolades — made your life safer and better.

And, if you've ever been within a five-mile radius of him, he has made your life louder, funnier, vastly more interesting and memorable.

Because McCredie is nothing if not memorable.

I didn't know Jeff all that well growing up. He lived a few blocks away from us in Havertown and he was a few years older than me.

I only got to really know him when he graciously opened his home to me on my first visit to Los Angeles. That was 1998. Upon my arrival, he dropped everything and, within minutes, we had two well-poured pints of Guinness sitting in front of us.

It was 11:20 in the a.m. (For the record — it tasted great.)

By that time, Jeff had graduated from Eastern College (cum laude, with some kind of freak-genius triple major in History, Poly Sci and Business Admin) , where he was the only baseball player in the school's history to play in every game. Later he was invited to The Philadelphia Phillies training camp. He ultimately went on to play semi-pro ball.

Along the way he was able to squeeze in becoming a nationally-ranked tennis player.

(My brother Trip used to play tennis with Jeff — and was lucky to win a point. If memory serves, one of Jeff's booming serves nailed Trip right in the weiner. That alone makes Jeff one of my all-time favorite people.)

Oh and let's not forget that Fulbright scholarship to the University of Hamburg.
It was during that experience that Jeff first came into contact with the Agency. The Company. The Spook House. The CIA. What did he do during that time?

You don't have clearance, Clarence.

Then Jeff knocked out your basic law degree from Temple University and promptly became indispensable as assistant D.A. of Montgomery County in suburban Philly.

(He once prosecuted a case involving my cousin's seriously flawed first husband and withstood — with grace and wit — daily grillings from my old man. I think we all know the self-control involved in that.)

And then it began.

Jeff became a walking, talking Robert Ludlum novel.

For three years he was a Special Agent in the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) in the area of counter-terrorism. He worked closely with special ops groups and was also an anti-terrorism instructor.

The next five years saw Jeff employed as a legal advisor in the Office of International Affairs at the Justice Dept.

Suffice to say, neither of these assignments were desk jobs. Both involved willingly going into places and situations that would have you and me curled up in the fetal position screaming for our mommies.

Wherever bullets were flying, laws were being broken, bombs were exploding, rebellions were percolating, dictators were scheming and people were dying — Jeff went there and did that which was asked of him.

By us.

Imagine the following places at their absolute worst — and that's when Jeff was there:

Liberia
Northern Ireland
Russia
Israel
The Phillipines
Thailand
Zimbabwe
Iraq
Afghanistan
Pakistan
South Africa

That's roughly a quarter of his passport stamps.

And the only souvenirs he brought back (besides some killer African masks and a dizzying array of weapons) were a wrecked shoulder; chronic, debilitating back problems; broken bones; memories that would psychologically buckle ordinary people and a whippin' case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

I'm sure plenty of people in Jeff's former line of work bullshit their way to free drinks and good sex, spinning gourmet meals of embellishment concerning their own heroics.

However, in those circles, there is evidently an unwritten rule that states — the veracity of any given story is iron-clad only if a fellow agent tells it about you.

One night at a Japanese restaurant with Jeff and two friends of his — a real-life Mr. and Mrs. Smith — the married spook couple told the most mind-blowing story of ballsy nerve and outright courage I've ever heard.

It was about Jeff.

And even taking into account our epic sake consumption and my own inclination toward exaggeration ("Did I ever dunk in a game? Hell yes! Twice, dude!" Yeah, if games of Nerf basketball count.) the story about Jeff was insane. His well-ya-know-what-else-could-I-do shrug was all he added.

After eight years of operating in the shadows and fighting off the demons of his memory, Jeff landed in Los Angeles. He had been acting for years on stage in and around D.C. — in between dodging automatic weapon fire and chasing down terrorists — and he wanted to give his acting career his full attention.

His day job was as a Special Agent with the Justice Dept.'s Inspector General Office. He investigated the illegal activity of scuzzball Justice employees. From busting drug rings in California's most notorious prisons to South Central gang takedowns to cutting off human trafficking operations, McCredie jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

(Take that — all you pussy actors who've ever whined about your bartending or catering or temp jobs ... oh wait, that's me. Shit.)

And he hustled for acting work — which was hard to come by. He worked on stage and scrambled for film and TV jobs. Jeff and I commiserated about the business. We collaborated on two scripts. We became friends. He was one of the first people to see our daughter Eirann after she was born.

He also pulled a slightly demented practical joke on Lisa two months earlier that nearly induced labor on the spot.

(Lisa and I went to Duke's in Malibu with Jeff one night. As we're leaving, he breaks off and starts a conversation in Farsi with some Middle Eastern guy there. He's also fluent in German. I mean, Jesus Christ, I can barely speak English. Farsi!?)

And he painted and painted and painted. He painted landscapes and beach scenes and every piece of art he produced seemed to search for some kind of peace, a respite.

A brief, failed marriage and the spectacularly awful and abrupt end of his government career led to Jeff having to confront his demons, his PTSD, his lingering injuries and a lifelong struggle with depression head-on.

Which he did.

And the government didn't want to help him. In fact, the government tried their level best to deny Jeff that which he was owed.

The government — our government — wanted to scrapheap a guy who had left pieces of himself scattered across the globe in service to his country. This is not a new story — given the appalling disregard Washington has shown to veterans. But, ya know what, this is Jeff's story. And he had to fight and claw to get that which he had earned several times over.

Finally, he was grudgingly awarded disability pay from the government. Grudgingly.

In recent years he has had excruciating back surgery and major shoulder surgery. There are a battery of medications he takes to keep the wolves at bay. He — like my father, my nephew and countless other combat veterans — continues to struggle with the fallout of his service to our country.

A couple of years ago, he left L.A. for Virginia — to care for his ailing mother — the other hero of this story. She was the one who kept the family together, from whom Jeff inherited his smarts (she was valedictorian) and who introduced Jeff to art.

He has — for all intents and purposes — shouldered this responsibility alone. His fractured family could not bridge the gap. As his mother's condition deteriorated, Jeff was the constant, doing all the things that constitute the daily care of a terminally ill 72-year-old woman.

If you've ever had to watch a parent waste away and were powerless to stop it ... try doing it alone.

Last week, he made the most wrenching decision of his life --- to take his mother off life support.

Okay, listen — Jeff McCredie is not a saint — far from it.

In fact, sometimes he's closer to some rogue hybrid of Bruce Campbell, Al Hrabosky and Michael Collins who simply won't shut up or listen. His missteps are legendary.

But they are dwarfed by his generosity, his friendship, his talent and his commitment to those he loves.

Jeff McCredie is one of the the most fascinating, maddening, opinionated, eccentric, hilarious and loyal people I've ever come across. He has sacrificed more than most of us can imagine. The government has forgotten him (and many like him.) He never has — and never will — ask for your pity. I only ask that — this one time — you recognize a forgotten American hero.

And maybe get him an agent. He's a pretty fuckin' good actor.