Post by wvumaryjane on Aug 24, 2007 17:47:31 GMT -5
COULDN'T BE PROUDER
IF YOU CAN'T HEAR SLATONS, THEY'LL YELL A LITTLE LOUDER FOR STAR SON
By DICK JERARDI
jerardd@phillynews.com
THEIR LEVITTOWN home is hard by Route 13, the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the old 3M Company building where M. Night Shyamalan filmed "Lady in the Water." Drive by the Slatons' and you really would not suspect anything out of the ordinary. Step inside and listen to the stories from Juanita and Carl, you begin to understand how their son Steve has gotten himself on regional covers of Sports Illustrated the last 2 years and is one of the best running backs in college football.
Hear about Slaton's breakout game as a West Virginia freshman that they had to miss because they had committed to attend a wedding in New Jersey. Hear about how they missed the wedding when Steve started to get the ball and was ripping off big gains. Listen as a mother describes her battle with doctors when her young son could not hear. Marvel when a father takes you on some of those big-rig hauls he took all over the East for 25 years, with his young son Steve along for some of the rides.
Carl had three daughters and a son. Juanita had a son. Together, they had Steve.
Carl and Juanita grew up in the same neighborhood, a gritty part of lower Bucks County. They didn't really know each other, but Juanita remembers Carl driving this "ugly, blue" car through the streets when she was very young. "She was checking me out even then," Carl says with a laugh.
Their families are still in the neighborhood. And so are they.
Now, they plan their autumns around West Virginia football. They know the 5-hour drive to Morgantown by heart. They missed one game in Cincinnati because of the $1,200 airfare. They did not see the Virginia Tech game in person when Slaton had his coming-out party. They could not pull themselves away from the television, though. And they were first at the reception.
They think they might have missed one of Steve's games at Conwell-Egan, where he ran for 6,000 yards - including 290 in his first start on the varsity, as a ninth-grader. Steve's home games were played less than a mile from home up Green Lane across Mill Creek Road at Truman High, where you never really knew when he would bust another long one. You just knew he would.
When asked when she knew Steve was going to be a really good football player, his mother says: "This year."
She keeps seeing her son on those magazine covers and says, "He must really be something special because they keep putting him there."
She knew nothing about football, just figured "everybody ran like that."
The message did not sink in when his youth coaches told her that he kicked off and still was the first one down to make the tackle.
Carl? He knew and he knew quickly.
When exactly?
"Playing pound ball," he says. First, 65 pounds at St. Mike's, then 75 pounds for the Levittown Tigers.
Carl was on the road in those days, so Juanita, not knowing the positions, would "draw circles and put Steven's initials wherever they placed him" so Carl would know when he returned.
She was told the coaches said, "He would hit the hole 99.9 percent of the time if he knew the holes."
"What's a hole?" she asked her husband.
When he got back, Carl took a bunch of flowerpots over to the baseball field next to 3M. They were the linemen. Carl called out the holes. Steve ran between the flowerpots.
His mother is a born storyteller and she loves telling stories about Steve, never running dry. After nearly 3 hours of stories, she says: "You're going to be here until midnight."
It was close.
Pictures of Steve surround his plaques and trophies in the living room that is bursting with so many awards that the older ones are being boxed. Neighborhood kids pop in to watch Steve's games on DVD during the offseason when the family admits to going through football withdrawal. The family watches, too.
If you ask the Slatons what they are most proud of, it is not all the hardware or the DVDs.
It is not the nearly 3,000 yards rushing and 37 touchdowns in 2 years at WVU, the 15 100-yard games, the three 200-yard games, the 204 yards and three touchdowns in the January 2006 Sugar Bowl upset of Georgia 2 days before his 20th birthday, the game against archrival Pittsburgh when he rushed for 215 yards and caught passes for 130 more, the 149 yards rushing in the first quarter against Maryland (the school that withdrew its scholarship offer), the school-record six touchdowns against Louisville, the fourth-place finish in the 2006 Heisman Trophy voting or his status as one of the frontrunners for the 2007 Heisman.
It is this.
When the Slatons were in Morgantown last weekend for Fan Day, Steve's father kept hearing the same thing.
"They talk about how good a football player he is, but most people talk about how good a man he is," Carl says. "I'd rather hear that. That really makes us feel good. Kids don't come with a how-to manual."
Even as Steve scored all those touchdowns, his mom reminded him that his on-field talent was a "God-given gift."
"I always told Steven, 'When you can hand the ball off to yourself, block for yourself, then you can get a big head,' " Carl says.
Carl Slaton drove that truck. Then, he started a home-heating-oil business close to home. Now, he has given up his stake in the business and just makes deliveries.
Juanita Tiggett-Slaton has been an engineering planner at Lockheed Martin and its predecessors in Moorestown, N.J., for a quarter century.
They raised their children separately until they got married. Carl had Natalie, Carla, Carl Jr. and LaShanda. Juanita had Charles.
Steve became especially close to Natalie. When she got sick in the early 1990s and then began to recover, she would take Steve everywhere. Trips to Sesame Place, practice, whatever. She was always there for him, sick or well. Then the leukemia, thought to be in remission, returned. And Natalie, 20 years older than Steve, died before her 30th birthday.
"That was the worst," Carl says. "She'd never been sick a day in her life."
The Slatons are extremely positive people, but you can tell the hurt lingers.
"She worked with little kids and she had this cough," Juanita says. "It got so bad she couldn't eat."
She recovered. And then she got sick again.
"Steven took it very hard when she died because he was the closest to her," Juanita says. "He was with her so much."
Steve and several of his teammates are in the Philadelphia airport on July 16 on their way to Providence, R.I., for Big East media day in Newport. From Morgantown to Pittsburgh to Philly, they have been delayed on each flight. And their connections are delayed, so they are right on the mark in summer-of-2007 airport time.
Steve is decked out in jeans, sneakers and a blue WVU T-shirt with a big football on the back. A pick sticks out from his grown-out hair, he is munching on a pizza in one of those miniboxes. The fastest man in college football is just hanging out on Concourse C.
An ESPN all-access crew is waiting to mike up Steve and WVU quarterback Patrick White when they get off the plane in Providence only 3 1/2 hours late with, incredibly, all their luggage waiting for them.
Slaton is looking dapper at the clambake that night and dressed out in a very nice suit for media day.
Everybody wants to know about the wrist injury that he played with last season that required offseason surgery. Good to go, he says.
"We're always putting on a show," Slaton says of himself and White. "That's what college football is about, putting on a show."
He was recruited mostly as a defensive back.
"It was a big incentive," he said. "A lot of schools wanted me to play defense. I think I had to prove to everybody that I could play offense."
His coach needed little convincing.
"When I watched Steve Slaton in high school, a highlight film, it was one of those watch-45-seconds-to-a-minute things, 'Who's this guy,' " WVU coach Rich Rodriguez says. "I can remember him wearing No. 22 running down the sidelines. It looked like everybody had an angle. All of a sudden, nobody had an angle. I remember saying, 'Wow, find out about this guy.' "
Rodriguez became more convinced in the summer before Slaton's freshman year.
"In camp, sometimes with freshmen, you can't tell because they don't know where the hell they're going," the coach says. "I said, 'If you don't know where you're going, just run in circles.' But you could tell he was really, really fast. You could tell how smart I was. He didn't start until the fifth game."
Then, he went off.
"I was telling my wife, I can remember Steve's first play as a starter against Virginia Tech," Rodriguez says. "Tossed him the ball, dropped the ball, kind of reversed directions. It was the most spectacular 6-yard run you've ever seen. I got on the headset and remember telling Calvin Magee, my offensive coordinator, 'Hey, I think this guy might be all right.' "
He was. And he is.
"There's other fast guys," the coach says. "I don't know if he's the fastest guy in college football, I know he ain't got caught much."
By the way, Slaton and his teammates flew back to Morgantown on the university plane with the coach.
The Slatons went to Morgantown for an unofficial visit when Steve was a junior in high school. It was Junior Day, a game against Temple. It rained to Harrisburg and snowed from there to West Virginia. The car often was limited to 5 mph. The trip took forever.
"I'm never going here, too far, too cold," Slaton told his parents.
By NCAA rules, since he was on an unofficial, the Slatons had to sit outside, even though there were some nice, cozy rooms out of the elements. Frostbite was not out of the question.
Steve misplaced an equipment bag and was sure it was lost. Some of the staff went out of its way to help him find it. When Maryland pulled its scholarship, Slaton did not forget about West Virginia. He was going.
From then to now, it has been about the people.
"Just to be with those West Virginia fans," Carl says. "They are the most friendly people."
The Slatons stay in hotels in Washington, Pa., Fairmont, W.Va., wherever. The locals tell them if they can't find a place, just to stay with them.
When Juanita's son Charles was stranded in Cumberland, Md., on the way to a game after a deer ran into his car, a WVU fan noticed his West Virginia cap and drove him to the game. And Charles didn't even have to tell him he was Steve Slaton's brother.
Steve Slaton wasn't always a football star. He was just Steve, the youngest of the Slatons' six children, the child who was always into something, always thinking of a response, always considering his options. He was also the child who could not hear.
"His adenoids would swell and it would keep the fluid in his tubes," Juanita says. "He would hear as if he was hearing underwater, but it was only during allergy season."
When she would take him to the doctors, she was told he was fine, that "little boys have a way of not hearing their mothers' voices."
She knew better. Steve often had to look at her lips to understand her.
Finally, after Juanita suggested to their doctor that he give her son a hearing test, he agreed. Steve failed.
The doctor told her Steve "flatlined" on both sides. A specialist quickly concluded that the 6-year-old needed to get his adenoids removed. So they were.
Slaton heard water rushing through the pipes for the first time. When a boy across the street yelled "Bye" one day, Slaton said, "Mommy, he can talk." He has heard perfectly ever since.
"It's bittersweet," his mother says. "You're happy that you found out, but upset that it took so long."
Slaton did the dishes as a 4-year-old, the laundry by 10. No trash, though. And when he comes home, his luggage, shoes and jackets are strewn from the front door to the washing machine.
He always wanted to be what his mom calls a "scientific engineer." They called him the "gadget man." His mom is still trying to figure out why he decided to study communications at WVU.
He made a wheelchair, a car out of cardboard. He took apart the remote just to see what was inside. He mixed things, making "potions." Then, Juanita says, he "gravitated to food."
The family always cooked together. Steve's specialty was deviled eggs. Sometimes, he would deal out a few and hoard the rest.
There were these bullies in front of the house one day when Steve was 4 or 5 years old. Steve told his mother. She told him to defend himself.
"Jesus didn't hit back," Steve said.
And his mother thought, "How profound," before saying, "But you're not Jesus."
When Steve was 4, Juanita remembers telling him to "Do what I tell you when I tell you."
"I live in America," he replied.
"And you also live in my house," his mom told him.
Slaton was the only African American kid on the bus to Immaculate Conception Grade School. The kids called him "Chocolate Boy."
"What's wrong with chocolate?" his mom asked him when he complained about what they had said. "What kind of milk do you like? Everybody likes chocolate."
His father knew the deal.
"They just wanted to hurt him, wanted to do it for a reaction," he says.
Mom turned it around so there would be no reaction.
"After that, he wanted me to call him Chocolate Boy," she says.
With a gifted storyteller, every story has a moral in it. And one story leads to the next.
"Every day, I had a Steven story," his mother says.
She still does.
"I'll tell you another story . . . " *
www.philly.com/dailynews/sports/20070824_COULD
NT_BE_PROUDER.html
IF YOU CAN'T HEAR SLATONS, THEY'LL YELL A LITTLE LOUDER FOR STAR SON
By DICK JERARDI
jerardd@phillynews.com
THEIR LEVITTOWN home is hard by Route 13, the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the old 3M Company building where M. Night Shyamalan filmed "Lady in the Water." Drive by the Slatons' and you really would not suspect anything out of the ordinary. Step inside and listen to the stories from Juanita and Carl, you begin to understand how their son Steve has gotten himself on regional covers of Sports Illustrated the last 2 years and is one of the best running backs in college football.
Hear about Slaton's breakout game as a West Virginia freshman that they had to miss because they had committed to attend a wedding in New Jersey. Hear about how they missed the wedding when Steve started to get the ball and was ripping off big gains. Listen as a mother describes her battle with doctors when her young son could not hear. Marvel when a father takes you on some of those big-rig hauls he took all over the East for 25 years, with his young son Steve along for some of the rides.
Carl had three daughters and a son. Juanita had a son. Together, they had Steve.
Carl and Juanita grew up in the same neighborhood, a gritty part of lower Bucks County. They didn't really know each other, but Juanita remembers Carl driving this "ugly, blue" car through the streets when she was very young. "She was checking me out even then," Carl says with a laugh.
Their families are still in the neighborhood. And so are they.
Now, they plan their autumns around West Virginia football. They know the 5-hour drive to Morgantown by heart. They missed one game in Cincinnati because of the $1,200 airfare. They did not see the Virginia Tech game in person when Slaton had his coming-out party. They could not pull themselves away from the television, though. And they were first at the reception.
They think they might have missed one of Steve's games at Conwell-Egan, where he ran for 6,000 yards - including 290 in his first start on the varsity, as a ninth-grader. Steve's home games were played less than a mile from home up Green Lane across Mill Creek Road at Truman High, where you never really knew when he would bust another long one. You just knew he would.
When asked when she knew Steve was going to be a really good football player, his mother says: "This year."
She keeps seeing her son on those magazine covers and says, "He must really be something special because they keep putting him there."
She knew nothing about football, just figured "everybody ran like that."
The message did not sink in when his youth coaches told her that he kicked off and still was the first one down to make the tackle.
Carl? He knew and he knew quickly.
When exactly?
"Playing pound ball," he says. First, 65 pounds at St. Mike's, then 75 pounds for the Levittown Tigers.
Carl was on the road in those days, so Juanita, not knowing the positions, would "draw circles and put Steven's initials wherever they placed him" so Carl would know when he returned.
She was told the coaches said, "He would hit the hole 99.9 percent of the time if he knew the holes."
"What's a hole?" she asked her husband.
When he got back, Carl took a bunch of flowerpots over to the baseball field next to 3M. They were the linemen. Carl called out the holes. Steve ran between the flowerpots.
His mother is a born storyteller and she loves telling stories about Steve, never running dry. After nearly 3 hours of stories, she says: "You're going to be here until midnight."
It was close.
Pictures of Steve surround his plaques and trophies in the living room that is bursting with so many awards that the older ones are being boxed. Neighborhood kids pop in to watch Steve's games on DVD during the offseason when the family admits to going through football withdrawal. The family watches, too.
If you ask the Slatons what they are most proud of, it is not all the hardware or the DVDs.
It is not the nearly 3,000 yards rushing and 37 touchdowns in 2 years at WVU, the 15 100-yard games, the three 200-yard games, the 204 yards and three touchdowns in the January 2006 Sugar Bowl upset of Georgia 2 days before his 20th birthday, the game against archrival Pittsburgh when he rushed for 215 yards and caught passes for 130 more, the 149 yards rushing in the first quarter against Maryland (the school that withdrew its scholarship offer), the school-record six touchdowns against Louisville, the fourth-place finish in the 2006 Heisman Trophy voting or his status as one of the frontrunners for the 2007 Heisman.
It is this.
When the Slatons were in Morgantown last weekend for Fan Day, Steve's father kept hearing the same thing.
"They talk about how good a football player he is, but most people talk about how good a man he is," Carl says. "I'd rather hear that. That really makes us feel good. Kids don't come with a how-to manual."
Even as Steve scored all those touchdowns, his mom reminded him that his on-field talent was a "God-given gift."
"I always told Steven, 'When you can hand the ball off to yourself, block for yourself, then you can get a big head,' " Carl says.
Carl Slaton drove that truck. Then, he started a home-heating-oil business close to home. Now, he has given up his stake in the business and just makes deliveries.
Juanita Tiggett-Slaton has been an engineering planner at Lockheed Martin and its predecessors in Moorestown, N.J., for a quarter century.
They raised their children separately until they got married. Carl had Natalie, Carla, Carl Jr. and LaShanda. Juanita had Charles.
Steve became especially close to Natalie. When she got sick in the early 1990s and then began to recover, she would take Steve everywhere. Trips to Sesame Place, practice, whatever. She was always there for him, sick or well. Then the leukemia, thought to be in remission, returned. And Natalie, 20 years older than Steve, died before her 30th birthday.
"That was the worst," Carl says. "She'd never been sick a day in her life."
The Slatons are extremely positive people, but you can tell the hurt lingers.
"She worked with little kids and she had this cough," Juanita says. "It got so bad she couldn't eat."
She recovered. And then she got sick again.
"Steven took it very hard when she died because he was the closest to her," Juanita says. "He was with her so much."
Steve and several of his teammates are in the Philadelphia airport on July 16 on their way to Providence, R.I., for Big East media day in Newport. From Morgantown to Pittsburgh to Philly, they have been delayed on each flight. And their connections are delayed, so they are right on the mark in summer-of-2007 airport time.
Steve is decked out in jeans, sneakers and a blue WVU T-shirt with a big football on the back. A pick sticks out from his grown-out hair, he is munching on a pizza in one of those miniboxes. The fastest man in college football is just hanging out on Concourse C.
An ESPN all-access crew is waiting to mike up Steve and WVU quarterback Patrick White when they get off the plane in Providence only 3 1/2 hours late with, incredibly, all their luggage waiting for them.
Slaton is looking dapper at the clambake that night and dressed out in a very nice suit for media day.
Everybody wants to know about the wrist injury that he played with last season that required offseason surgery. Good to go, he says.
"We're always putting on a show," Slaton says of himself and White. "That's what college football is about, putting on a show."
He was recruited mostly as a defensive back.
"It was a big incentive," he said. "A lot of schools wanted me to play defense. I think I had to prove to everybody that I could play offense."
His coach needed little convincing.
"When I watched Steve Slaton in high school, a highlight film, it was one of those watch-45-seconds-to-a-minute things, 'Who's this guy,' " WVU coach Rich Rodriguez says. "I can remember him wearing No. 22 running down the sidelines. It looked like everybody had an angle. All of a sudden, nobody had an angle. I remember saying, 'Wow, find out about this guy.' "
Rodriguez became more convinced in the summer before Slaton's freshman year.
"In camp, sometimes with freshmen, you can't tell because they don't know where the hell they're going," the coach says. "I said, 'If you don't know where you're going, just run in circles.' But you could tell he was really, really fast. You could tell how smart I was. He didn't start until the fifth game."
Then, he went off.
"I was telling my wife, I can remember Steve's first play as a starter against Virginia Tech," Rodriguez says. "Tossed him the ball, dropped the ball, kind of reversed directions. It was the most spectacular 6-yard run you've ever seen. I got on the headset and remember telling Calvin Magee, my offensive coordinator, 'Hey, I think this guy might be all right.' "
He was. And he is.
"There's other fast guys," the coach says. "I don't know if he's the fastest guy in college football, I know he ain't got caught much."
By the way, Slaton and his teammates flew back to Morgantown on the university plane with the coach.
The Slatons went to Morgantown for an unofficial visit when Steve was a junior in high school. It was Junior Day, a game against Temple. It rained to Harrisburg and snowed from there to West Virginia. The car often was limited to 5 mph. The trip took forever.
"I'm never going here, too far, too cold," Slaton told his parents.
By NCAA rules, since he was on an unofficial, the Slatons had to sit outside, even though there were some nice, cozy rooms out of the elements. Frostbite was not out of the question.
Steve misplaced an equipment bag and was sure it was lost. Some of the staff went out of its way to help him find it. When Maryland pulled its scholarship, Slaton did not forget about West Virginia. He was going.
From then to now, it has been about the people.
"Just to be with those West Virginia fans," Carl says. "They are the most friendly people."
The Slatons stay in hotels in Washington, Pa., Fairmont, W.Va., wherever. The locals tell them if they can't find a place, just to stay with them.
When Juanita's son Charles was stranded in Cumberland, Md., on the way to a game after a deer ran into his car, a WVU fan noticed his West Virginia cap and drove him to the game. And Charles didn't even have to tell him he was Steve Slaton's brother.
Steve Slaton wasn't always a football star. He was just Steve, the youngest of the Slatons' six children, the child who was always into something, always thinking of a response, always considering his options. He was also the child who could not hear.
"His adenoids would swell and it would keep the fluid in his tubes," Juanita says. "He would hear as if he was hearing underwater, but it was only during allergy season."
When she would take him to the doctors, she was told he was fine, that "little boys have a way of not hearing their mothers' voices."
She knew better. Steve often had to look at her lips to understand her.
Finally, after Juanita suggested to their doctor that he give her son a hearing test, he agreed. Steve failed.
The doctor told her Steve "flatlined" on both sides. A specialist quickly concluded that the 6-year-old needed to get his adenoids removed. So they were.
Slaton heard water rushing through the pipes for the first time. When a boy across the street yelled "Bye" one day, Slaton said, "Mommy, he can talk." He has heard perfectly ever since.
"It's bittersweet," his mother says. "You're happy that you found out, but upset that it took so long."
Slaton did the dishes as a 4-year-old, the laundry by 10. No trash, though. And when he comes home, his luggage, shoes and jackets are strewn from the front door to the washing machine.
He always wanted to be what his mom calls a "scientific engineer." They called him the "gadget man." His mom is still trying to figure out why he decided to study communications at WVU.
He made a wheelchair, a car out of cardboard. He took apart the remote just to see what was inside. He mixed things, making "potions." Then, Juanita says, he "gravitated to food."
The family always cooked together. Steve's specialty was deviled eggs. Sometimes, he would deal out a few and hoard the rest.
There were these bullies in front of the house one day when Steve was 4 or 5 years old. Steve told his mother. She told him to defend himself.
"Jesus didn't hit back," Steve said.
And his mother thought, "How profound," before saying, "But you're not Jesus."
When Steve was 4, Juanita remembers telling him to "Do what I tell you when I tell you."
"I live in America," he replied.
"And you also live in my house," his mom told him.
Slaton was the only African American kid on the bus to Immaculate Conception Grade School. The kids called him "Chocolate Boy."
"What's wrong with chocolate?" his mom asked him when he complained about what they had said. "What kind of milk do you like? Everybody likes chocolate."
His father knew the deal.
"They just wanted to hurt him, wanted to do it for a reaction," he says.
Mom turned it around so there would be no reaction.
"After that, he wanted me to call him Chocolate Boy," she says.
With a gifted storyteller, every story has a moral in it. And one story leads to the next.
"Every day, I had a Steven story," his mother says.
She still does.
"I'll tell you another story . . . " *
www.philly.com/dailynews/sports/20070824_COULD
NT_BE_PROUDER.html
