Thunder Dan
12-04-2009, 03:32 PM
During the 2009 MVP ceremony in the St. Vincent-St. Mary gym, LeBron looked out into the crowd and said, "Pam and Frankie Walker were instrumental in me being here and getting this award."
When people talk about those who helped shape LeBron James into a Most Valuable Player, you hear many names: his mother, Gloria; youth basketball coaches Dru Joyce II and Keith Dambrot; several pro coaches; NBA stars such as Kobe Bryant and Jason Kidd, who were LeBron's teammates on the 2008 Olympic team …
But you seldom hear about the Walker family.
The Walkers met LeBron when he was a long-pencil-legged, sometimes scared, often shy 8-year-old. They remember him as a quiet, tall, skinny kid, a star on the peewee football field who scored 18 touchdowns in six games for the South Side Rangers coached by Frank Walker. They remember LeBron as a kid who needed some stability while his single mom went through a difficult time and they offered to take him in.
Gloria James was 16 when her son was born on December 30, 1984. She lived with her mother, Freda, who was known in her neighborhood as a giving woman, an excellent hairstylist and an anchor to her daughter, who now was a single mom. They lived in a large house on Hickory Street in Akron. But on Christmas Day, 1987, a week before LeBron's third birthday, Freda James died of a heart attack. Gloria was 19, on her own and unable to make enough money for her and her only child to stay in the house. LeBron has said in interviews that he moved about 10 times by his eighth birthday. Most times the new house or apartment was worse than the last place they stayed. Gloria sometimes seemed overwhelmed by the responsibility of being a mother on her own at such a young age.
When LeBron was in the fourth grade, the family moved several times and he was enrolled in different schools. In interviews, he has said he missed between 80 and 100 days of school. He stayed up late, watching television with Gloria. There was no stability, no strong male influence, no sense of structure in his life -- except when LeBron played for the South Side Rangers. The Walker family and LeBron himself are very careful when they discuss this chaotic time of his life. They don't want it to reflect poorly on Gloria. At his MVP ceremony, LeBron stood in front of the crowd, looked at his mother, and said, "I still don't know how you did it." He meant how she managed to hold herself and LeBron together, despite all the challenges faced by a teenage single mother.
"Most people know LeBron as a superstar," said Pam Walker. "A while ago, my daughter said that -- 'Hey, LeBron is a superstar!'?" Pam Walker laughed as she said that.
That's because they knew LeBron long before he became The Chosen One, a 17-year-old on the cover of Sports Illustrated, the first pick in the 2003 NBA draft. They knew him simply as a young boy who was well-mannered, athletically gifted and at a stage in his life when he was vulnerable to being pulled in the wrong direction.
When the Walker family agreed to take in LeBron, it was not to take him away from Gloria. It was simply to give him a place to stay, a family to help him feel secure. They had no clue that the NBA was in his future; they just wanted to help him avoid a future that included drugs, jail or other destruction that ravaged inner-city boys and men. The Walkers told Gloria that they believed in her, that she could visit her son at any time -- that the arrangement was temporary, allowing her time to save some money and find a decent place to stay.
The identity of LeBron's biological father is not known, at least not publicly. A few men have made that claim, including one man who served some serious time in the Ohio prison system. But none produced any proof. Speculation in Akron has long been that the dad may have been Roland Bivins, who played basketball at Akron Central-Hower and was killed not long after high school. LeBron has never identified his biological father, and he does not welcome any questions about the subject. A close friend of Gloria's, Eddie Jackson, later came to be called "a father figure" by LeBron. He would help Gloria and LeBron during LeBron's high school years, and would be a key player in the early days of LeBron's negotiations with shoe companies. But Jackson never claimed to be LeBron's biological father, and he wasn't always there during LeBron's childhood.
LeBron needed stability. He needed a family.
To be an MVP, you need discipline. You need to understand that you are a part of a team. You need to respect authority. You can't always worry that someone else may be getting a more lucrative deal or better treatment. You need to know that being an MVP may mean you are the Most Valuable Player to the team, but you are not the only player.
It was with the Walker family that LeBron saw this modeled.
"I didn't know how he'd be when he moved in with us," said Pam Walker. "We had never brought anyone into our home before."
Would LeBron be angry because he wasn't with his mother? Would be rebel against authority, especially male authority? He'd never had any male authority figures in the home at this stage of his life. The Walkers also had two girls and a boy. Would LeBron battle with the other children? They had no legal authority over LeBron. They also didn't know how Gloria would react to them taking in her son.
The Walkers were a highly respected family. Frank Walker worked for the Akron Housing Authority (and later for the Akron Urban League). Pam Walker was an aide to Democratic congressman Tom Sawyer. (Later she worked for congressman Sherrod Brown and, when he moved up to the U.S. Senate, for Betty Sutton, who took his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.) Gloria James had held mostly low-paying service jobs; at the Walkers, LeBron now saw people with true careers, and who expected the same from their children. He was around people who assumed college was in the future for their children, and who had friends with good jobs and college degrees. He was being exposed to a new world.
The Walkers talk about how polite LeBron was when he came to them, how he already had a personality that "likes to please" -- traits he must have learned from his mother and grandmother. But he needed more. "We thought LeBron needed a routine," said Pam Walker. He learned to do homework after school. He learned to do chores such as dusting and washing dishes. He learned to get ready for school quickly because the Walkers already had three of their own children, so that made six in a house with one bathroom. He learned to get up by 6:30 a.m. He learned that if he didn't wash up the night before, he'd be awakened even earlier the next morning so he would use the bathroom before everyone else.
The Walkers say LeBron embraced their style of living.
"What made it easy is that he loved it," said Pam Walker. "He really didn't fight us at all. He roomed with my son, Frankie, and it was Frankie who was being told to clean up his room. LeBron kept his side neat."
"They put the discipline act into me," said LeBron. "They made me get up every day and go to school. There were days I didn't want to go to school. Being part of a family, a mom-and-dad surrounding … you had a brother and you had two sisters … it was an unbelievable experience for me at a young age. It opened my eyes up to become what I am today, why I act the way I am today."
He spent weekdays with the Walkers, weekends with his mother, and in LeBron's fifth-grade year at Portage Path Elementary, he had perfect attendance and excellent grades, and began playing basketball at Summit Lake Community Center.
"LeBron has the knack of fitting in anywhere," said Frank Walker. "He liked the routine of our house. He learns things quick."
Pam Walker said LeBron wasn't the one who needed to be pushed to study. "That was our son, Frankie. We talked to LeBron and all our kids about school, and LeBron liked school."
After his fifth-grade year with the Walkers, LeBron became a solid student, averaging at least a "B" all the way through high school.
Psychologists say that people tend to react to chaos in one of two ways:
1. They treat chaos as normal. In fact, when life is calm it feels strange and so they often create situations involving conflict or extreme change.
2. They seek order. Because so little in their lives is under control, they try to control whatever they can. They keep their rooms neat. They dress neatly. They grab on to any sort of schedule just so they can have a sense of what is coming next.
"LeBron will do what is necessary to adapt to his circumstances," said Pam Walker. "He wants to be liked. For example, he ate about anything I'd give him. There was once an article about how he loved my German chocolate cake. He did. But he loved pies and other cakes that I made. He even liked to eat broccoli!"
The Walkers say LeBron enjoyed getting his hair cut by Frank Walker in the bathroom. He enjoyed going out to eat about anywhere they chose. He often spent the weekends with his mother, "and there was really no strain" in terms of managing the schedule, Pam Walker said. By Sunday night, LeBron was ready to be back with the Walkers and to go to school.
Gloria James said she "never had to spank LeBron." Those who knew LeBron when he was younger are not surprised by that. He was not perfect, but some children are "strong willed," and others willingly listen to adults who seem to have their best interest at heart.
When LeBron was about to start the sixth grade, Gloria James found an apartment, and he moved back in with her.
Pam Walker said that when LeBron was in the sixth grade, he stayed with his mother during the week, but was often at the Walker home on weekends. That pattern continued for years. The Walkers really were a family to him. So were many of his high school teammates, along with Coach Dru Joyce II and his son, Dru Joyce III.
It's not uncommon for children from single-parent homes to gravitate to larger families, especially if they are made to feel accepted. LeBron did; it was natural for him to blend in. You can see it in his professional life as he works to make new Cleveland Cavaliers teammates feel comfortable -- and enjoys mentoring rookies. He seems to remember what it was like to feel like an outsider and to need support from others.
These days, the Walkers go to nearly every Cavaliers game.
"I remind my wife that we were in the gym watching LeBron when no one else was around," said Frank Walker. "Now, we still watch him -- only everyone else is watching him, too."
http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2009/12/when_lebron_really_needed_it_a.html
When people talk about those who helped shape LeBron James into a Most Valuable Player, you hear many names: his mother, Gloria; youth basketball coaches Dru Joyce II and Keith Dambrot; several pro coaches; NBA stars such as Kobe Bryant and Jason Kidd, who were LeBron's teammates on the 2008 Olympic team …
But you seldom hear about the Walker family.
The Walkers met LeBron when he was a long-pencil-legged, sometimes scared, often shy 8-year-old. They remember him as a quiet, tall, skinny kid, a star on the peewee football field who scored 18 touchdowns in six games for the South Side Rangers coached by Frank Walker. They remember LeBron as a kid who needed some stability while his single mom went through a difficult time and they offered to take him in.
Gloria James was 16 when her son was born on December 30, 1984. She lived with her mother, Freda, who was known in her neighborhood as a giving woman, an excellent hairstylist and an anchor to her daughter, who now was a single mom. They lived in a large house on Hickory Street in Akron. But on Christmas Day, 1987, a week before LeBron's third birthday, Freda James died of a heart attack. Gloria was 19, on her own and unable to make enough money for her and her only child to stay in the house. LeBron has said in interviews that he moved about 10 times by his eighth birthday. Most times the new house or apartment was worse than the last place they stayed. Gloria sometimes seemed overwhelmed by the responsibility of being a mother on her own at such a young age.
When LeBron was in the fourth grade, the family moved several times and he was enrolled in different schools. In interviews, he has said he missed between 80 and 100 days of school. He stayed up late, watching television with Gloria. There was no stability, no strong male influence, no sense of structure in his life -- except when LeBron played for the South Side Rangers. The Walker family and LeBron himself are very careful when they discuss this chaotic time of his life. They don't want it to reflect poorly on Gloria. At his MVP ceremony, LeBron stood in front of the crowd, looked at his mother, and said, "I still don't know how you did it." He meant how she managed to hold herself and LeBron together, despite all the challenges faced by a teenage single mother.
"Most people know LeBron as a superstar," said Pam Walker. "A while ago, my daughter said that -- 'Hey, LeBron is a superstar!'?" Pam Walker laughed as she said that.
That's because they knew LeBron long before he became The Chosen One, a 17-year-old on the cover of Sports Illustrated, the first pick in the 2003 NBA draft. They knew him simply as a young boy who was well-mannered, athletically gifted and at a stage in his life when he was vulnerable to being pulled in the wrong direction.
When the Walker family agreed to take in LeBron, it was not to take him away from Gloria. It was simply to give him a place to stay, a family to help him feel secure. They had no clue that the NBA was in his future; they just wanted to help him avoid a future that included drugs, jail or other destruction that ravaged inner-city boys and men. The Walkers told Gloria that they believed in her, that she could visit her son at any time -- that the arrangement was temporary, allowing her time to save some money and find a decent place to stay.
The identity of LeBron's biological father is not known, at least not publicly. A few men have made that claim, including one man who served some serious time in the Ohio prison system. But none produced any proof. Speculation in Akron has long been that the dad may have been Roland Bivins, who played basketball at Akron Central-Hower and was killed not long after high school. LeBron has never identified his biological father, and he does not welcome any questions about the subject. A close friend of Gloria's, Eddie Jackson, later came to be called "a father figure" by LeBron. He would help Gloria and LeBron during LeBron's high school years, and would be a key player in the early days of LeBron's negotiations with shoe companies. But Jackson never claimed to be LeBron's biological father, and he wasn't always there during LeBron's childhood.
LeBron needed stability. He needed a family.
To be an MVP, you need discipline. You need to understand that you are a part of a team. You need to respect authority. You can't always worry that someone else may be getting a more lucrative deal or better treatment. You need to know that being an MVP may mean you are the Most Valuable Player to the team, but you are not the only player.
It was with the Walker family that LeBron saw this modeled.
"I didn't know how he'd be when he moved in with us," said Pam Walker. "We had never brought anyone into our home before."
Would LeBron be angry because he wasn't with his mother? Would be rebel against authority, especially male authority? He'd never had any male authority figures in the home at this stage of his life. The Walkers also had two girls and a boy. Would LeBron battle with the other children? They had no legal authority over LeBron. They also didn't know how Gloria would react to them taking in her son.
The Walkers were a highly respected family. Frank Walker worked for the Akron Housing Authority (and later for the Akron Urban League). Pam Walker was an aide to Democratic congressman Tom Sawyer. (Later she worked for congressman Sherrod Brown and, when he moved up to the U.S. Senate, for Betty Sutton, who took his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.) Gloria James had held mostly low-paying service jobs; at the Walkers, LeBron now saw people with true careers, and who expected the same from their children. He was around people who assumed college was in the future for their children, and who had friends with good jobs and college degrees. He was being exposed to a new world.
The Walkers talk about how polite LeBron was when he came to them, how he already had a personality that "likes to please" -- traits he must have learned from his mother and grandmother. But he needed more. "We thought LeBron needed a routine," said Pam Walker. He learned to do homework after school. He learned to do chores such as dusting and washing dishes. He learned to get ready for school quickly because the Walkers already had three of their own children, so that made six in a house with one bathroom. He learned to get up by 6:30 a.m. He learned that if he didn't wash up the night before, he'd be awakened even earlier the next morning so he would use the bathroom before everyone else.
The Walkers say LeBron embraced their style of living.
"What made it easy is that he loved it," said Pam Walker. "He really didn't fight us at all. He roomed with my son, Frankie, and it was Frankie who was being told to clean up his room. LeBron kept his side neat."
"They put the discipline act into me," said LeBron. "They made me get up every day and go to school. There were days I didn't want to go to school. Being part of a family, a mom-and-dad surrounding … you had a brother and you had two sisters … it was an unbelievable experience for me at a young age. It opened my eyes up to become what I am today, why I act the way I am today."
He spent weekdays with the Walkers, weekends with his mother, and in LeBron's fifth-grade year at Portage Path Elementary, he had perfect attendance and excellent grades, and began playing basketball at Summit Lake Community Center.
"LeBron has the knack of fitting in anywhere," said Frank Walker. "He liked the routine of our house. He learns things quick."
Pam Walker said LeBron wasn't the one who needed to be pushed to study. "That was our son, Frankie. We talked to LeBron and all our kids about school, and LeBron liked school."
After his fifth-grade year with the Walkers, LeBron became a solid student, averaging at least a "B" all the way through high school.
Psychologists say that people tend to react to chaos in one of two ways:
1. They treat chaos as normal. In fact, when life is calm it feels strange and so they often create situations involving conflict or extreme change.
2. They seek order. Because so little in their lives is under control, they try to control whatever they can. They keep their rooms neat. They dress neatly. They grab on to any sort of schedule just so they can have a sense of what is coming next.
"LeBron will do what is necessary to adapt to his circumstances," said Pam Walker. "He wants to be liked. For example, he ate about anything I'd give him. There was once an article about how he loved my German chocolate cake. He did. But he loved pies and other cakes that I made. He even liked to eat broccoli!"
The Walkers say LeBron enjoyed getting his hair cut by Frank Walker in the bathroom. He enjoyed going out to eat about anywhere they chose. He often spent the weekends with his mother, "and there was really no strain" in terms of managing the schedule, Pam Walker said. By Sunday night, LeBron was ready to be back with the Walkers and to go to school.
Gloria James said she "never had to spank LeBron." Those who knew LeBron when he was younger are not surprised by that. He was not perfect, but some children are "strong willed," and others willingly listen to adults who seem to have their best interest at heart.
When LeBron was about to start the sixth grade, Gloria James found an apartment, and he moved back in with her.
Pam Walker said that when LeBron was in the sixth grade, he stayed with his mother during the week, but was often at the Walker home on weekends. That pattern continued for years. The Walkers really were a family to him. So were many of his high school teammates, along with Coach Dru Joyce II and his son, Dru Joyce III.
It's not uncommon for children from single-parent homes to gravitate to larger families, especially if they are made to feel accepted. LeBron did; it was natural for him to blend in. You can see it in his professional life as he works to make new Cleveland Cavaliers teammates feel comfortable -- and enjoys mentoring rookies. He seems to remember what it was like to feel like an outsider and to need support from others.
These days, the Walkers go to nearly every Cavaliers game.
"I remind my wife that we were in the gym watching LeBron when no one else was around," said Frank Walker. "Now, we still watch him -- only everyone else is watching him, too."
http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2009/12/when_lebron_really_needed_it_a.html