Brooks' role: to ease kids' minds

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By GARY SHELTON

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 19, 2001

TAMPA -- For some time now, Derrick Brooks has meant the world to the kids of the Audley Evans Center.

Now, all he had to do was try to explain it to them.

Brooks sat on a plastic chair, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his shorts. A half-dozen teenagers sat in front of him, their eyes fixed on him. Brooks' eyes were cast downward, his voice quieter, deeper than normal.

"We could go to war," Brooks was saying. "There's a lot of uncertainty out there. We only know one thing for sure, and that's our faith."

This is how the richest linebacker in the history of the NFL spends his free time. This is where one of the ranking celebrities of the area goes to hang. To talk to kids. And, rarer still, to listen.

It was sundown on Tuesday, and Brooks sat with his bunch in a small library, trading stories and images of the last week, listening to fears and concerns, talking of faith and hope. If you still are looking for the role of the professional athlete in a time of crisis, this is it.

Already, Brooks has impacted their world, sized it, shaped it and made it accessible. He has taken these kids of the Boys and Girls Clubs from the corridors of the White House to the plains of Africa to the edge of the Grand Canyon. He has led them aboard airplanes and on the backs of horses. Every year, Brooks sponsors a trip somewhere far away, and as a result, the rest of the world does not seem so far away, so mysterious.

In some ways, however, that makes the last week even more frightening. For instance, Brooks had considered taking these teenagers to New York over the summer instead of the "Wild West" trip that took them to the Grand Canyon and Boulder Dam. Even now, Brooks remembers the itinerary.

"We were going to the World Trade Center," Brooks said. "We were going to see the Statue of Liberty, and we were going to try to see something at Madison Square Garden. We were going to the stock exchange, and we were going to see a play. It's scary, thinking about that, thinking about what could have happened."

The thoughts weren't lost on the teenagers, either.

"I thought about all the planes I've been on," said De'Nedra Nieves, a 17-year-old student at Blake High. "What if someone had tried to take over one of those planes? It was scary."

Brooks nodded. "Remember our flight to Africa? There were a lot of people on that plane that matched the descriptions of these people. I'm just glad none of them had the same kind of hatred in their hearts as these people."

And so they talked, swapping stories about this victim, about that survivor, about Brooks' week of inactivity, about how he believes it is finally time to move on with the games. He talked about Washington, and how his group wasn't allowed to get too close to the Pentagon, and how he remembered the tight security as he saw the images of the building after a plane crashed into it.

Suddenly, as if the sun had come from behind a cloud, they weren't talking about pain. They were talking about canoeing rivers and climbing rocks and riding horses, about San Francisco and Arizona and Africa. They were living common memories, giving each other a hard time, and the laughter grew so loud it drowned out the sound of basketballs bouncing outside.

In those moments, when Brooks laughs so hard he has to cover his face with his cap, you understand why he comes. Yes, he has money and fame and celebrity. But this isn't bad, either.

"It would hard not to come," Brooks said. "I can't imagine myself not coming to visit these kids. This center is part of me."

Since 1996, Brooks has been coming, talking, hanging out. He talks to his kids about respect, about desire, about changing perceptions. He talks them about making a difference.

"They don't look for me to know all the answers," he said. "But they know me. I'm going to tell them the truth. I'm not going to tell it like it's fairyland. If I don't know the answer, we'll talk and see if we can figure it out."

The events of the last week are a perfect example.

"I wanted to hear what they had to say," Brooks said. "These are kids who have seen dead people. Some of them have seen people shot and killed. The majority of them know about loss."

This week, we all know a little more about loss. What, then, is the role of the professional athlete in all of this?

Perhaps Brooks has the answers, after all. Perhaps it is a little bit more perspective. Perhaps it is a little more conversation. Perhaps it is a little more prayer.

And perhaps some day, like the kids at Audley Evans, our talk of pain will cease, and our laughter will drown out the noise outside.

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