By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

Even when he was a wide-eyed 3-year-old, barely knee-pad high to the hulking figure he is today, Olin Kreutz had an inkling and a drive for where he wanted to be 20 years later.

Told to sketch a scene representing what he intended to be when he grew up, Kreutz thoughtfully took crayon to easel paper in setting down his hopes and aspirations one day at Kilohana Preschool in Niu Valley.

Chicago Bears center and former Saint Louis School star Olin Kreutz has appeared in four Pro Bowls during his five-year NFL career. "I was fortunate my family always supported me in what I wanted to do," Kreutz said. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

Later, taken by the dedication to his career plans, Kreutz's teacher showed the drawing to his mother, who would ask her son about it.

"I'm gonna be a pro football player and that's me and the ball I'm holding," Lora Perry said her son told her confidently at the time.

"That was Olin," his mother recalls. "He always had a ball in his hands, even then. He watched football with the family. He was the youngest of four boys and he loved sports and was focused on it."

Still, "people probably thought that was pretty far-fetched," Kreutz says now.

Once, perhaps, but life has come to imitate art on the NFL stage for the 25-year-old Kreutz, who today is starting in his second consecutive Pro Bowl.

Aloha Stadium has long been a place where dreams have come true for Kreutz. It is where he played on three O'ahu Bowl Championship teams for Saint Louis School, and performed in his final college game for the University of Washington as a junior, an Aloha Bowl victory over Michigan State.

Now the Chicago center is among the foremost performers at his position. The 6-foot-2, 293-pounder likes to play down his Pro Bowl string — two years as an alternate and two as a starter in a five-year NFL career — by joking that the reason he gets picked every year is because he lives here and is coming back anyway.

But the esteem he is held in around the league — he had his choice of teams and lucrative contracts as a free agent last year before returning to the Bears — easily belies that.

Along the way, the tale of Kreutz's propitious preschool project has become a part of family lore.

"My mom likes to tell the story, but I was too young then and don't remember much about it," Kreutz said. "I didn't know much about it or think much about it until I made the NFL."

"Olin doesn't like to talk much about himself so, he'll just tell me, 'stop, mom' whenever I start telling somebody about it," she said. "But it is a mother's prerogative."

Still, as a point of pride and remembrance, his mother saved the picture through his early years and on into college as a reminder of his youthful aspirations. Only in recent years, during a move, has the picture been lost.

"I was fortunate my family always supported me in what I wanted to do," Kreutz said. "They always encouraged me. Football has been what I wanted to do and I've been lucky that God blessed me enough to allow me to do it."

Just as his untethered dreams had portended it.