White House chief of staff’s heart-wrenching letter lifted legendary sportscaster dad Pat Summerall out of alcoholism

Former New York Giants placekicker, decorated sports broadcaster, and Donald Trump pal Pat Summerall was lifted out of alcoholism with some tough love from his daughter, Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff revealed to Post columnist Miranda Devine on the latest episode of “Pod Force One,” out Wednesday.

Summerall, who died in 2013, entered rehab in April 1992, days after anchoring CBS Sports’ coverage of the Masters golf tournament.

“When my mom decided that he needed professional treatment, part of the prescription was for each of the children to write a letter, which he didn’t read until he got into, in his case, the Betty Ford Clinic,” recalled Wiles, the oldest of Summerall’s three children.

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“And so, he says, I don’t know, he says [the letter] was meaningful enough to really make him think,” she went on.

Trump’s right-hand woman, whom he has dubbed the “Ice Maiden,” went on to share one of the most heart-wrenching lines of the letter.

“I said that sometimes I didn’t really want to share the same name, because he was doing so much that I didn’t respect,” she acknowledged.

“I don’t remember the precise words, but that’s kind of what I said to him, and it got his attention, apparently.”

Wiles also recalled that Summerall would get so drunk that he “wouldn’t recognize” his granddaughter, “or see her when she would be running around, and that was horrifying to me, because he’d been such a good dad when I was a little girl.”

Summerall credited his rehab stay with deepening his Christian faith, writing in his autobiography: “My thirst for alcohol was replaced by a thirst for knowledge about faith and God. I began reading the Bible regularly at the Betty Ford treatment center, and it became a part of my daily life.”

After CBS lost the rights to show National Football Conference games to the Fox network ahead of the 1994 season, Summerall and his longtime booth partner John Madden decamped to the upstart broadcaster and called three more Super Bowls together.

In total, Summerall contributed to TV coverage of 16 Super Bowls for CBS, Fox and NBC, more than any other broadcaster.

“He made it a point to take us to work,” Wiles recalled of her dad. “So, I’ve spent lots of time in the broadcast booth at various golf and lots of tennis and some football over the years. Again, I don’t think there were lots of daughters in those boxes back then.”

“He didn’t work the Olympics, because that was always in, well, back in those days, it was always an NBC presentation. But there was no sport he wouldn’t volunteer to work,” she said.

“And he always had a good time. He always seemed funny and just humorous,” added Devine.

“Too good, sometimes,” Wiles replied.

A Florida native, Summerall was drafted by the Detroit Lions out of the University of Arkansas in 1952 and went on to play in all or part of ten seasons for the Lions, Chicago (now Arizona) Cardinals and the Giants before transitioning into broadcasting — first on radio and then on TV.

“We knew he was successful, and he grew in success and stature over the years, and we watched it happen, and I think I was afforded opportunities that others would not have been,” she added. “So, my memories of my dad are of a driven, smart, kind person.”

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Wiles referred to her late father as “a perennial learner” whose drive shaped his media career.

“Now, everything is online, anything you want to know about any athlete or what number they’re wearing on any given day, or when they catch a pass you have to know who it is and who they are,” she explained.

“You had to learn that back in the day — now you just look at your phone. But he studied very hard, he worked very, very hard, and ushered in sort of the modern broadcast booth environment in his 25 years with John Madden.”

That career was nearly undone by his addiction, which Wiles described as “a disease that clouds your judgment.”

“Typically, the smarter you are, the more you think you can out think addiction, you can’t. It’s a disease, and you have to just get to the point where you resolve never to partake again. And when he left treatment, he never had a relapse. He never had even a temptation. We would go to their house and there’d be beer or wine in the refrigerator, and there was no temptation there. When he beat it, he beat it.”

Despite her dad’s struggles, Wiles remembered Summerall as a father who “would never have thought of giving my brothers an opportunity that he didn’t give me.”

“I didn’t realize at the time that was unusual, but I look back at it now and realize I don’t think I would have been able to do the things I’ve been able to do — really gender-blind, because that’s how I was raised, and my mother was the same,” Wiles reflected.

“I grew up in a household where everybody was equal, and it was a merit based household, 100%, and that’s just kind of who I am because of it.”