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FSU is family he never had

Todd Williams, once a teenage criminal living on the streets, has a promising future.

By BRAIN LANDMAN

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 3, 2001

[Times photo: Joseph Garnett Jr.] Offensive tackle Todd Williams, who barely knew his mother and never met his father, is close to graduating early with a double major.

TALLAHASSEE -- During the summer, Florida State junior offensive tackle Todd Williams worked for campus security, patrolling the student parking lots in the evening to prevent car thefts.

"I reversed the roles a little," he said with a laugh that underscored the irony.

Not that long ago, Williams was on the alert for police or a passerby as he prowled Miami looking for cars to steal or simply to crawl into for a comfortable night's sleep.

At 15 years old, he lived alone on the streets.

Any way he could.

But instead of continuing a downward spiral, living a life of desperation and despair, Williams, a 23-year-old Bradenton native, reversed his fortunes by finding faith, friends he could trust, and football.

Williams is starting for the first time in four seasons at FSU and is demonstrating the kind of power and quickness at 6 feet 6 and 315 pounds that's sure to catch the attention of the NFL. He also is on schedule to graduate early in December with a double major -- in, of all things, sociology and criminology.

"I don't know of anybody who has played football who has had as tough a situation to overcome as he has to be where he is today," coach Bobby Bowden said. "I hope he can maintain it because it's just a great story in the making is what it is."

If a tight-knit, nuclear family is a person's anchor, Williams was left adrift once his grandmother, Joyce James, died from diabetes in October 1993.

He had lived with her since he was 9 and had little contact with his mother, Ozepher Fluker. Without a hint of malice, he says that Fluker "had her own trials and tribulations." Meanwhile, he never knew his father and saw him for the first -- and only time -- shortly after James died.

"He was laying in a casket," Williams said stoically. "He was on the way up to see me from Miami when he got shot in the head three times. I couldn't even cry because I didn't know the guy. He was my dad, according to that side of the family, but he never signed the birth certificate."

With social service representatives coming to pick him up, Williams ran away and survived for the next two years on his own.

"I stayed in dumpsters. Sometimes I broke into cars. Sometimes I broke into motel rooms," he said. "Sometimes I'd go into restaurants and steal tips off tables. Sometimes I'd go into stores and run out with certain things. Sometimes I'd steal cars and take them to chop shops."

He was trapped in a vicious cycle he had seen before.

Uncles had ended up shot or in jail and resigned to no future.

"I thought, "Man, I'm right on that same track,' " he said, admitting he contemplated suicide but refused to use his lot as an excuse for quitting. "I wanted something better."

He stole a car, returned to Bradenton and, after a second stay in juvenile detention, moved in with a cousin. He decided to return to high school to try to turn his life around and, for the first time since his grandmother's death, he found adult love and help.

"God was always there," he said, "and God brought people into my life."

A Bradenton Southeast High counselor, Sally Bishop, got him enrolled in night school so he could catch up. He also started attending the Suncoast Harvest Center, where he met Pastor Tim Dyson and Joanne Vaneska.

"We didn't really give him a handout, we gave him a hand up," Dyson said. "We reached out to him and he started pulling himself up by his bootstraps."

Vaneska, 48, didn't realize Williams previously had moved into a subsidized housing complex where she was the landlord (an uncle signed the lease agreement for Williams) and was amazed he was making it alone.

"The complex is nice, but the area is known for drug activity," she said. "Todd could have chosen to go around the corner to make a fast buck, but he didn't do that. He did the right thing."

To cover the $282 monthly rent, Williams delivered the Bradenton Herald before sunrise, bagged and stocked groceries after school in the afternoons and worked the grill at Chili's or Steak and Ale on weekend nights.

"When you see someone wanting to do good, you want to help him," said Vaneska, whom Willams said is like a mother to him to this day. "There's just certain kids who get to you, get to your heart. Todd did that to me. I feel God put people in his life to help him and I'm thankful I'm one of them. It's a privilege."

Although Williams never had played organized football before showing up for practice as a junior at Bradenton Southeast in 1996, one look would tell you he had the physical prowess to succeed.

But he also had trouble controlling his anger.

"There were times when he wanted to fight the world more or less," Southeast coach Paul Maechetle said. "At the start of his senior year, we really gave consideration that maybe we should let him go. But we realized we had married the kid into our family and we had to give him another chance. We did and everything worked out okay."

When college coaches started courting him, Williams initially had to laugh. He wanted to earn his high school diploma and join the U.S. Marine Corps.

A visit from Bowden changed that. Bowden preached the opportunity to earn a degree and develop as a player and a man. He also talked about being part of a family. That tapped into a desire Williams craved to fill.

"I never had a dad. I never had structure as far as family," he said. "That was just incredible."

At FSU, his maturation has been gradual. He has had flare-ups with his temper and bouts of poor judgment. But Pam Overton, FSU's associate athletic director for student services, said Williams might prove to be "one of the best educational efforts this university has ever made for a kid."

Hollywood producers call Overton regularly about Williams, who has rebuffed the overtures. His story, he insists with a smile, is far from over.

"I haven't reached a place where I'm comfortable, where I can just stop," he said. "I'll always keep striving."

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