DUNN LEARNING TO LIVE WITH LOSS : AFTER MOTHER'S DEATH, FAMILY COMES FIRST.Byline: Mike Jensen Philadelphia Inquirer Philadelphia Inquirer Morning newspaper, long one of the most influential dailies in the eastern U.S. Founded in 1847 as the Pennsylvania Inquirer, it took its present name c. 1860. It was a strong supporter of the Union in the American Civil War. Warrick Dunn Warrick De'Mon Dunn (born January 5, 1975 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana) is an American football player who currently plays running back for the Atlanta Falcons of the NFL. Early life calls the last four years the best ones of his life. Even though he has had nobody to share them with. It has been like this for Dunn, Florida State's star tailback: One night he is a standout in a football game televised nationwide; the next day he is in a courtroom in East Baton Rouge Baton Rouge (băt`ən r  zh) [Fr.,=red stick], city (1990 pop. 219,531), state capital and seat of East Baton Rouge parish, SE La. Parish, La.,
testifying at the sentencing hearing of one of the two men convicted of
murdering police officer Betty Smothers, his mother.
Dunn has become a star while playing a game that has diminished in importance for him. ``We were closer than anything can be in the world,'' Dunn, the oldest of six children in a single-parent home, testified when a jury was deciding whether to impose the death penalty on the murderers. ``Any time I was hurting, she hurt. Any time she hurt, I was hurting.'' Dunn probably will scrawl a remembrance of his mother on his wristbands again before Thursday night's Sugar Bowl game against Florida. He calls this a fairy-tale ending to his Florida State career. He is back in the city where he was born, just down the Mississippi River Mississippi River River, central U.S. It rises at Lake Itasca in Minnesota and flows south, meeting its major tributaries, the Missouri and the Ohio rivers, about halfway along its journey to the Gulf of Mexico. from where he grew up, set to play his last college game with a national championship on the line. He just doesn't count on any happily-ever-afters. ``If I go out and have a bad game, fumble three times, we get blown out, it's just going to be a bad memory,'' he said. He said he feels a lot older and more mature than other guys on his team. He wishes he could have been more of a leader, counseling younger players, the way former Seminoles quarterback Charlie Ward counseled him. But he didn't have the time, he said, because ``I'm trying to take care of my family.'' He has to be like a father to his younger brothers and sisters. Two are freshmen in college. The three youngest, all teenagers now, live with their grandmother in Baton Rouge. Dunn wears a beeper beeper - pager so they can reach him at any time. He talks to them every day. He is amazed at how fast they are growing up. He has the route from Tallahassee, Fla., to Baton Route down. (``It's four hundred thirty-something miles.'') Occasionally, he told his coach, Bobby Bowden Robert Cleckler Bowden (born November 8, 1929 in Birmingham, Alabama), better known as Bobby Bowden, is the current head college football coach of the Florida State University Seminoles. , that he had to go home for a couple of days. Bowden understood that to mean that there was some discipline to be administered. ``It's going to be very sad for me to see him go,'' Bowden said. ``I've never taken to a player like I did to him.'' A 5-foot-9, 185-pounder, Dunn has scooted for more yards than any other back in Florida State history. If he manages 138 yards rushing at the Superdome on Thursday night, he will have gained 1,000 yards in his career against Florida alone. ``He had so many runs where he went into the line of scrimmage line of scrimmage n. pl. lines of scrimmage Football Either of two imaginary lines extending across the field parallel to the goal line at the ends of the ball as it rests prior to being snapped and at which each team lines up for , disappeared, and came out 25 yards downfield down·field adv. & adj. Sports To, into, or in the defensive team's end of the field. Adj. 1. downfield - toward or in the defending team's end of the playing field; "he threw to a downfield receiver" ,'' Bowden said. ``He's up in there in all that mess, you say, `Well, second and 10.' All of a sudden, there he goes.'' Bowden wasn't talking about Dunn's ability when he said he took to him right away. He didn't know Dunn would become one of the most elusive runners in college football and have three straight 1,000-yard seasons. ``I wrote him a letter and said, `Son, I'm going to do my best to take care of you, give you the leadership, even more than the other players,' '' Bowden said. ``I felt that way about him, and he never let us down.'' Dunn said he goes in and talks to Bowden two or three times a week about subjects other than football. ``I think he's lived up to his end of the bargain,'' Dunn said. ``He's more like a father to me.'' In his freshman year, Dunn roomed with Ward, who was a senior and won the Heisman Trophy Heisman Trophy Annual award given to the outstanding college gridiron football player in the U.S. The trophy was instituted in 1935 by New York City's Downtown Athletic Club and was officially named the following year for the club's first athletic director, the player-coach . Ward now plays basketball for the New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Knicks. ``From the first day we talked on the phone, we clicked,'' Dunn said. ``He's like a big brother. He's somebody who's going to be in my life forever.'' On Saturday, after the Seminoles arrived in New Orleans New Orleans (ôr`lēənz –lənz, ôrlēnz`), city (2006 pop. 187,525), coextensive with Orleans parish, SE La., between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, 107 mi (172 km) by water from the river mouth; founded for the Sugar Bowl, Dunn took some of his teammates home for a big dinner of crawfish crawfish: see crayfish. , gumbo and ribs - ``to say thanks,'' he said. (No, those weren't the Florida State players who got food poisoning food poisoning, acute illness following the eating of foods contaminated by bacteria, bacterial toxins, natural poisons, or harmful chemical substances. It was once customary to classify all such illnesses as "ptomaine poisoning," but it was later discovered that that night.) While virtually all of the other Seminoles were spending their summers in Tallahassee, Dunn would be home with his sisters and brothers. Responsibility was something he had gotten used to at an early age. ``My mom raised me, I guess, to prepare me for this day,'' he said. He says he passes for his mother's twin. A woman who was also shot but survived the 1993 attack gasped when Dunn walked into the courtroom while she was testifying. She hadn't known how much like his mother he looked. Betty Smothers, who was 36 and working two jobs when she died, had a system. She paired an older child with a younger one, expecting the older one to be in charge of baths, homework, and going to bed. When someone in the family had a ball game or a track meet, the whole family was expected to be there. And if she didn't like a grade on a report card, she wouldn't holler. She'd say, ``Well, if that's the kind of grade you can live with, then I can live with it.'' Knowing the dangers of his mother's police work, Dunn wouldn't close his eyes at night until she walked in the door. CAPTION(S): Photo Photo: Florida State running back Warrick Dunn, right, has taken care of his five brothers and sisters since his mother was murdered in 1993. Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. |
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