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Patrick Willis shares journey from dirt road to Hall of Fame in new kids’ book

Patrick Willis, wearing a black T-shirt, smiles and holds up both arms while flexing and holding an open kids' book in his left hand, flanked by towers of balloons.

Former 49ers linebacker Patrick Willis reads his autobiography to kids at Lake Shore Elementary School in San Francisco. (Photo: San Francisco 49ers) Dylan Goodman / San Francisco 49ers

By Daniel BrownJune 24, 2026 5:00 am EDT Updated

SAN FRANCISCO — During his NFL playing days, Patrick Willis felt his anxiety build on nights before games.

The linebacker’s angst had nothing to do with tackles. Willis racked up those by the hundreds on his way to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

His pregame speeches, though, stressed him out more than any open-field runner ever could. Growing up in rural Tennessee, Willis had a speech impediment and was terrified of raising his hand in class.

“I had trouble reading. I had trouble really speaking. I felt like I didn’t belong,” Willis said. “I thought I was inadequate compared to the other kids.”

With help, Willis found his voice. And in his final few seasons with the 49ers, he emerged as the leader players counted on for the right words, delivered with a flourish.

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“So I’d write stuff out the night before,” Willis, 41, said recently. “Then I’d get up in the morning and change everything. Then I’d be on the bus on the way to the game, and everything would change again.”

Even then, Willis tended to make one last significant edit: He’d chuck the whole speech overboard and speak from the heart.

“What I found to work authentically,” he explained, “was really just looking the guys in the eyes and feeling the room.”

Little has changed on that front since Willis retired in 2014, but his audiences sure look different. Instead of shouting into a snarling cluster of 300-pound linemen, Willis now gazes into faces he finds no less daunting: fifth-graders.

The kid who once struggled to read has launched an autobiography in the form of a 36-page children’s book. Snicker at your own peril. This is a monumental moment for Willis. Writing a book was his other lifelong goal, a parallel dream that ran stride for stride with his football aspirations.

“Because I wanted to be that light,” Willis said, “the light that I wanted to see in the world.”

Released through Blue Hat Publishing earlier this year, the illustrated autobiography delivers a variation of Willis’ old pep talks, but this time, they are aimed at any child who has struggled with obstacles or doubt.

His opening lines: “To all the young Patricks … there will be seasons when you don’t feel seen, but you are being shaped. Every hard day builds something no one can take away — discipline, faith and heart.”

Joanne Pasternack, his longtime strategist and a co-author for the book, learned of the player’s literary plans years ago. The effort amped up after Willis was enshrined in Canton in 2024, a breakthrough that gave him a cinematic final scene. The book is called “Patrick Willis: Journey to the Hall of Fame.”

Willis wrote his memoir in this kid-friendly format because he feared, reasonably, that adults would louse it up. With “The Blind Side” and the controversy surrounding fellow Ole Miss grad Michael Oher perhaps serving as a cautionary tale, Willis chose to avoid the machinery of big-time publishing.

“For a very long time, he had wanted to write a children’s book,” said Pasternack, a former 49ers community relations executive. “And he wanted it to be simplified enough that it wasn’t a story to be embellished for the purposes of Hollywood. By creating such a simple representation of his journey, it felt more authentic to who he is and what he wanted to share.”

Tellingly, Willis’ first major book-signing event took place with his target audience. We are sitting in a cramped office at Lake Shore Elementary in San Francisco, a few days before Super Bowl 60. Textbooks, scissors, glue and colored pens abound as Willis finishes autographing a stack of books.

As a nod to the football celebrity at their school, some clever staffer scrawled “Green Room” on a piece of construction paper and taped it to the door of Room 29.
Just minutes from his first public book reading, Willis felt a jolt of those old pregame nerves.

“Truthfully,” Willis said, “I’ve thought about this a hundred different ways.’

Hall of Fame linebacker Patrick Willis grew up amid hardship in rural Tennessee. He wants his story to inspire others. (Dylan Goodman / San Francisco 49ers)

The kids were excited to see him, cheering his entrance even though none of them were alive for Willis’ playing career. A few students wore Brock Purdy jerseys, and there was a smattering of Nick Bosas. One pupil, presumably a future history major, came bedecked in a Joe Montana throwback.

Willis didn’t need his familiar No. 52 to establish his football cred. His arms served as proof. Not far from his playing physique of 6 feet 1, 241 pounds, his biceps made for a compelling show-and-tell.

“I’ll give you all a short story about the flex,” the seven-time Pro Bowl selection told the class.

The player’s signature celebration with the 49ers involved a double-armed flex that transformed his biceps into a pair of bowling balls. Willis told the fifth-graders that there was symbolism in the gesture, in part because the pose formed the shape of a W.

W stood for winning. It also stood for Willis.

“A lot of people think it’s about muscles and think it’s about showing off,” he said. “But really, it’s about execution. It’s about doing what you’re supposed to do — and not just doing it OK, but doing it with excellence. Doing it flawlessly.

“It means doing what you’re supposed to do, whether it’s your teacher asking you, whether it’s your parents asking you, or whether it’s something you told yourself you would do — and you did it.”

Then Willis patted his stomach and asked the students to do the same.

“Everybody rub your belly,” he said. “Everybody say, ‘Yes!’”

The kids did as instructed, loudly.

“You feel that good feeling in your soul right here? There were some days growing up when I thought I was inadequate compared to the other kids,” Willis said. “There were some times when I just didn’t know if I had it in me.

“But deep down inside, I remember what I’d tell myself when I was a kid: that I just wanted to be special. And when I got the opportunity to be special, I wouldn’t leave it hanging.

“So every time you all get a chance to do something, give it your all. Give it your best, so when you look back, you have no regrets.”

At times, “Journey to the Hall of Fame” reads like a fable. The narrative explains how Willis lived in a trailer at the end of Buck Ditch Road in Bruceton, Tenn. Willis didn’t have running water until he was 8, so he carried five-gallon buckets up and down a hill to get water from his grandparents’ home.

As the book recounts, physically, it made him stronger, but he was also building mental strength along the way. This establishes the autobiography’s dominant theme: Every hardship is an opportunity, every setback a springboard toward something greater.

Willis told the kids how much he faltered academically as early as third grade. He did so for anybody who might be feeling that shame right now.

“School wasn’t easy for me,” he said. “It was a moment in time in my life when I was struggling. I didn’t have the help I needed at home. I just felt like I wanted to give up.”

Patrick Willis overcame a speech impediment as a kid to emerge as a vocal leader during his time with the 49ers. (Michael Zagaris / Getty Images)

One of Willis’ favorite shows growing up in that dinky Tennessee town was “Reading Rainbow,” which was hosted by LeVar Burton and ran on PBS for more than 20 years.

“There was a time I couldn’t wait to watch it,” he said. “Where I grew up, there wasn’t much going on around me. And so, reading and watching that show, I felt like I could go into another world. Another world of possibilities, another world of opportunities. I told myself that one day I want to be able to write a book and leave a book behind so others can grab hold of it and take from it what they may.”

Along the way, Willis studied hard, earned solid grades, and missed only one day of school from kindergarten through Central High School (where his graduating class consisted of about 40 people).

“He won an award for having the best attendance,” Pasternack said. “And there’s the fact that he got himself to school. He walked a mile of unpaved road to a church where the bus would stop to take him to school. Nobody was driving him.”

Still, Willis’ delayed progress in learning to read ultimately cost him his dream of going to the University of Tennessee.

“They said they didn’t like my grades,” he told the class. “But what they didn’t know was, I really believed in myself. I was not going to quit.”

Plot twist! Willis became the first in his family to go to college. He graduated from Ole Miss in 2006 with a degree in criminal justice and a minor in English. A few years ago, his alma mater invited him to give the commencement speech.

Not bad for a kid who was once too scared to raise his hand in class.

“His first instinct was, like, ‘Can I do that? That seems like a lot,’” Pasternack said of the Ole Miss invite. “He wound up doing a spectacular job of it. He shared his story, and people were connecting with him and saying things like, ‘Hey, I didn’t know you went through that.’”

A student checks out Willis’ autobiography, which he wrote specifically for young audiences. (Dylan Goodman / San Francisco 49ers)

Despite being a literary rookie, Willis knows his way around a metaphor. In the climactic final pages, Willis details the famed knock on the door that welcomes new Hall of Famers. (As a nod to the moment, Bryant Young, the former 49ers defensive lineman who ushered Willis into Canton, tagged along with Willis to this book reading.)

The last image in the book is a red door beyond a welcome mat that reads, “Opportunity.”

“So today, I ask you — we ask you — what’s your ‘door knock’ moment?” Willis told the class. “It’s still to be determined, but just know that the door is waiting for you to go through. Don’t rush it. Just stay persistent. Stay disciplined. Stay faithful. And keep your heart in it.

“We all have something we dream about. Only you can make your dream a reality.”