All for One, One for All : Football: It was a sad day when Chucky Mullins was paralyzed during an Ole Miss game last year, but the effort that helped him rebuild his life has united the state.

This is the story of a Rebel heart and a Southern miracle. On Oct. 28, 1989, Chucky Mullins took the last three steps of his life on a football field for the University of Mississippi. He crashed helmet-first into a Vanderbilt receiver and dropped to the field like a rag doll, his neck broken, his body paralyzed.

In that one moment, a man’s tragedy became Mississippi’s tragedy. A man’s hardship became a state’s responsibility. It didn’t matter that Mullins was poor and black.

A school now prays for him. A state waits for him to return.

At Ole Miss, they’ve raised $820,000 for Chucky Mullins. They’ve built him a home. They’ve bought him a motorized wheelchair. They’ve purchased a wheelchair-access van. They’ve promised to care for him the rest of his life.

Mullins, who arrived at that home in Oxford, Miss., Friday, has lived at Spain Rehabilitation Center in the University of Alabama Birmingham Hospital since February.

During a recent interview, Mullins sat in a wheelchair, his tapered legs and soft hands motionless. A hole in his throat enhanced his ability to breathe. A smile frequently creased his face between his precisely groomed mustache and goatee.

“I never ask why,” Mullins said. “God has reasons.”

He is 21.

“I’ve cried a lot of times,” he said in a voice that was soft and steady. “But I never felt sorry for myself. And I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me.”

The town of Oxford is an oasis of green in the red-clay country of northern Mississippi. A simple, elegant courthouse square anchors Oxford, but the campus of Ole Miss dominates the town. Author Willie Morris, a writer-in-residence at the school, wrote: “Almost no other American campus envelops death and suffering and blood, and the fire and sword, as Ole Miss does.”

They fought the Civil War here. They fought the civil rights battles of the 1960s here, too.

The football team is called the Rebels, and the Confederate flag, once the school’s official symbol, remains its unofficial banner. Ole Miss fans still wave the Stars and Bars, and their spirits soar each Saturday afternoon in the autumn when “Dixie” is played in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.

Twenty-eight years after two people were killed during riots triggered by the admission to Ole Miss of a black student, James Meredith, the school and the state are healing old wounds by rallying around a broken athlete.

“We’ve had to bear this burden so long because of ignorance and a lack of foresight from groups and individuals,” Ole Miss football Coach Billy Brewer said. “It appears that, as tragic as it is, Chucky Mullins really brought out the real Ole Miss and the real state of Mississippi.”

Chucky Mullins posters are tacked on walls throughout the campus. His jersey, No. 38, hangs outside the football locker room. A picture of Mullins, racing on the field to play Vanderbilt, dominates a wall of Brewer’s office.

“The bond on this campus should have been formed without such a tragedy,” said Lewis Gordon, a senior tight end. “A lot of people have come closer together. You keep asking, ‘Why does something like this have to happen to Chucky?’ But you realize, everything happens for a reason.”

As Mullins clung to life in Memphis, Ole Miss officials gathered in Oxford. They were distraught and heartbroken, but they decided immediately to begin raising money for a trust fund.

Their goal was relatively modest--$75,000.

Posters were printed. Letters were mailed to alumni. Buttons were made.

The next weekend, Ole Miss played host to Louisiana State. Students carried garbage bags and cans through the stands, collecting money for Chucky. The take was extraordinary--$175,000.

The money kept pouring in. A child in South Carolina saved his lunch money for one week and sent $6. Special education students in a school outside Atlanta collected $430. Bill Curry, then the Alabama coach, sent a check. So did Auburn Coach Pat Dye.

But this was a grass-roots campaign that swept the South. It was made of nickels and dimes, $1 bills and $10 bills. Students at the University of Tennessee collected $17,000. Another $3,500 came in from Arkansas. Louisiana State held fund-raisers. The University of Miami Alumni Assn. kicked in $12,000.

“It happened at a university that through many years had a lot of racial tension,” Yoste said. “It happened in a state with 2.5 million people, the bastion of the South. It happened because the accident occurred in a football stadium filled with fans. It happened because this was a poor kid from Russellville, Ala., who didn’t even have enough money to report to campus in the fall.”

To those raising money, the color of Mullins’ skin was irrelevant. He was simply a man who needed help. But the campaign, viewed in the context of Ole Miss’ tumultuous racial history, was extraordinary. Dr. David Sansing, an Ole Miss history professor and author of a high school textbook on Mississippi, said: “I wonder if this is not our cathartic experience.”

“The South is an aberrant place, and you can never be sure what people will do,” said Margaret Walker Alexander, a poet and author who lives in Jackson, Miss., and is a frequent visitor to the Ole Miss campus. “There is always a pull between good and evil. One day, a good deed will be done for someone, and the next day, a heinous crime is committed. It appears that the right thing was done to take care of that man.”

Alvin O. Chambliss, an Oxford attorney who heads the local chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, said the fund-raising for Mullins is an isolated example of racial unity. The school’s Greek organizations remain segregated, and blacks make up less than 10% of the Ole Miss student body, even though the percentage of blacks in the state--38%--is the highest in the nation.

“Things haven’t changed at all,” Chambliss said. “They’ve made Chucky Mullins a special case. How are you going to be against Chucky Mullins? The more we talk about change, the more things remain the same.”

But in this one tragedy, things did change. Ole Miss came to the aid of a fallen player.

“People weren’t looking at it as a black-white issue,” said Ben Williams, who broke the Ole Miss color line in football in 1972, played 10 seasons in the NFL and now operates a construction company in Jackson. “The incident with Chucky has brought the university family and the state as a whole together. The kid is showing the heart it takes to be a champion.”

Money could not relieve the pain of Mullins’ rehabilitation. In Memphis, Mullins suffered. Screws were attached to his skull, and he was placed in a halo. He was breathing with the aid of a ventilator, which meant he was unable to eat or talk for nearly three months. His weight dropped to 128 pounds.

“Have you ever had screws in your head?” he said. “That’s pain.”

But he was determined to survive. The night of the accident, Karen and Carver Phillips arrived in Memphis, shaken and afraid, upset when they saw their foster son attached to machinery that kept him alive. But Chucky calmed their fears and moved his lips, acknowledging his career was over, but promising he would leave the hospital and return to school to get his degree.

“I was kind of scared,” Mullins said. “They didn’t have to tell me I broke my neck. I knew it.”

Mullins, paralyzed from the shoulders down, underwent two surgeries to relieve pressure on his neck, and has since regained some movement in his left arm and elbow. He overcame pneumonia and skin infections. He received visitors ranging from teammates to President Bush.

“Some man even came in with his son while I was sleeping,” Mullins said. “I opened my eyes, and they were right in my face. That scared me.”

Thousands of letters flooded the hospital, enough to fill three football equipment bags. Donations continued to pour in. And Mullins showed signs of improvement. Finally, last Dec. 28, Mullins left the hospital to attend the Liberty Bowl game, which matched Ole Miss and Air Force. Before the game, he was brought inside the Ole Miss locker room, a smile on his face. His teammates watched as Mullins mouthed a two-word battle cry: “It’s time.”

Ole Miss beat Air Force, 42-29, to finish the season with an 8-4 record.

Even now, Mullins and Carver Phillips are overcome with emotion when they recall those months in Memphis. Pain and joy mixed together. A victim had become a hero.

“I’ve thought about this for a long time,” Carver Phillips said. “The only thing I can come up with is that God is in the midst of everything. God didn’t plan the accident, but he planned for things to change, for people to come together. You don’t have to pretend. You can feel the love from others.”

The three-bedroom brick ranch house sits on Molly Bar Road in Oxford. A sign in the front yard proclaims: “Future Home of Ole Miss Football Player Chucky Mullins.”

The city donated the land, and a builder provided construction at cost.

Already, it looks like home. The Phillipses moved in two weeks ago, and the house is filled with their three kids and football players and neighbors.

They’ve been waiting for Chucky.

Mullins’ room bridges the driveway and the back yard. There are two entrances with double doors, a white linoleum floor and a shower room large enough to accommodate a wheelchair and dominated by a mirror donated by a fan and etched with the inscription: Ole Miss Rebels, Chucky.

An Ole Miss helmet sits on a table, and among a dozen trophies is an Ole Miss Quarterback Club player-of-the-week award, dated 10-28-89.

The sentiments are nice. But each day is a struggle.

Mullins’ hospital bills already have reached $1 million, halfway through the $2-million insurance settlement received after the accident.

The trust fund, bulging with $820,000, should eventually yield $100,000 a year. Mullins also will receive $3,000 a month from insurance tax-free for the remainder of his life.

But this is no longer a struggle for money. It is a battle to survive with a broken body.

Mullins arrived at Spain Rehab in Birmingham Feb. 19, left for a warm homecoming in Russellville the last week of May, and returned to Birmingham in late June.

“People don’t treat me any differently because I’m not any different,” he said.

Through the months of rehabilitation, the one constant in Mullins’ life has been Carver Phillips. He is 34 and unemployed, but he is a man who has opened his heart and his home and made sacrifices for Mullins. Phillips helps bathe and dress his foster son. He attends each therapy session, offering encouragement and charting progress.

“What I mainly want for Chucky is for him to become more independent,” he said.

Mullins is able to maneuver his wheelchair by moving his head. He uses a voice-activated computer to open doors and turn on appliances, and among the games he enjoys playing is “Wheel Of Fortune.” He has attended Birmingham Barons baseball games and was backstage at a recent Janet Jackson concert.

“I want him to do things on his own,” Phillips said. “He’d like a little privacy.”

But in Oxford, Mullins is unlikely to find privacy. The accident not only changed his life, it changed the lives of others.

“Chucky will never be a regular college student,” said the Ole Miss trainer, Leroy Mullins (no relation). “He’ll always be a part of Ole Miss and someone who will never be forgotten at Ole Miss.”

In the Ole Miss football office, a faded bumper sticker says: “Football is not a matter of life and death. It’s much more important.”

But clearly, they know better, now.

“I think about that play often,” said Billy Brewer, the Ole Miss coach. “I think of me running over to Chucky (before the play), not being able to pick him out from the other bodies. One minute, he’s beside me. The next minute, he’s paralyzed. You think you have problems, and then you see Chucky. Could you survive what he has survived and deal with what he has dealt with?”

Chris Mitchell, the first man to reach his fallen teammate, said he thinks often of Mullins. This season, Mitchell, a senior from Town Creek, Ala., will wear Chucky’s number--38. It’s an honor and a burden.

“We pray for Chucky every day,” Mitchell said. “We know now that football is a job, a way to get an education.”

The goal for Mullins now is to settle into his new home in Oxford. He is looking forward to continuing his studies in physical education and gaining his degree.

Doctors say he will never walk again. But Mullins whispers: “I think I’ll walk.”

No one will tell him otherwise.

“One of the doctors said to me that there is no way Chucky would live that first weekend after the injury,” Brewer said. “But Chucky is a different guy. If there is a chance for him to walk, well, I have a feeling. A guy like Chucky has to have a goal or a belief that if he keeps working, maybe a miracle will happen. The mind has to reach out for something.”

Mullins plans to attend each Ole Miss game this season, and is expected to lead the team on the field during the opener at home against Memphis State Sept. 8. Teammates will help him navigate the campus to attend class. He yearns to become merely a normal student.

“I’m glad I played football,” he said. “I loved it. And I still love it.”