Word: motheral
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...colleges, some tempting him with offers of money, clothing and jewelry. "Assistant coaches would take me outside my house and show me some stuff," he remembers. For an 18-year-old, it was all too much. Lafester was six the last time he saw his father, and his mother had two failing kidneys. The family lived on her Social Security and disability checks. Lafester was excited and confused by the swarming recruiters (he still keeps their letters in a Nike shoe box under his bed). "I didn't really know what was happening," he says. "I didn't have...
Lafester's choice: Iowa State. Coach Johnny Orr had flown to Memphis, where, says Lafester's mother Elsie, "he made two promises -- that he would graduate and that he would play pro ball." Lafester did neither. Today Elsie is bitter. She feels Iowa State did not keep its word. "My momma talks about it - every day," says Lafester, who after five years left Iowa State a few credits short of a degree in family and consumer science. He took twelve hours of classes, but often put in 20 hours of practice a week. Ironically, it was his freshman year, when...
...responsibility as institutions of higher learning and if sports programs were kept in perspective, more student athletes might turn out like Fred Brown. Fred grew up on the gritty streets of the South Bronx. His father was taken off to prison when the boy was in third grade. His mother worked in a grocery and tended bar. On the $4,000 she made, she raised a family of six. But Fred had a way with the basketball and a vision of his own. "By traveling with basketball," he says, "I saw there was a better life, and I aspired...
...school, but if you as an individual can sit there and learn something and better yourself, that's an education," he says. Stroking the lapel of a well-cut gray suit, Fred reflects on his rise from the ghetto to the good life. "I always ask my mother, 'If I hadn't played basketball, what would have happened?' " he says. "Ninety percent of the people I grew up with are dead or in jail, and I would have been the same way. Without basketball, I wouldn't have had an outlet." The challenge is to help more student athletes channel...
...YORK STORIES. In this trio of vignettes, Francis Coppola belly flops with his tale about New York City rich kids. But two out of three ain't bad: Martin Scorsese's crafty sketch of a downtown painter and Woody Allen's comedy about the ultimate Jewish mother...