A Long, Winding Road : Full of Detours, It Has Taken Richard Maddox From Army Towns to Rural South Carolina to Arizona and, He Hopes, to the NFL

If you are mapping a career in professional football, don’t follow the road chosen by Richard Maddox, for it has been long, indirect and strewn with obstacles.

And he’s not there yet.

It’s difficult to be 23, married and the father of five children with three different women. A sixth child is three months away. And the youngest, 11-month-old Kelvin, needs surgery to remove a tumor.

It’s not easy at all.

It’s not easy to support a family when NCAA rules prohibit a scholarship athlete from working during the school year.

It’s not easy to have to buy milk with food stamps.

It’s not easy studying in a cramped apartment ringing with noisy kids. Richard, his wife Robin, 21, and their three children share the quarters.

No, don’t follow Richard Maddox if you are looking for fun and fast times, for he has left those behind.

Maddox, standout linebacker and captain of the University of Arizona’s football team, is not living like other college seniors.

“A lot of the guys on the team tease me, call me ‘Dad.’ It doesn’t faze me at all,” Maddox said. “I grew up a lot faster than them. I was exposed to a lot more. The things they are ranting and raving about now, that’s old news to me. I’ve been through all that. Like I say to them, ‘You’ve yet to learn what I’ve already forgotten.’ I’ve walked on that street. No more.”

Maddox’s path to professional football, if he makes it, is far from typical, but it’s also not what it might seem. He was a father at 18 and made mistakes, but Maddox has admitted his responsibility and accepted it. He’s trying to do better.

“How hard is it, for real? It’s hard as hell,” Maddox said quietly. “I want to quit so many times. I just have to do the best with the situation I’m in. I can’t get out of it.

“My kids give me so much. Whenever you can step back and take off this armor and just let yourself be used to do something for somebody else . . . that’s when you learn how to love people--by putting yourself last.

“Going through this hell, trying to get on food stamps, scraping up pennies, it’s tough.

But when I see that kid smiling and he’s happy, that keeps me going. My biggest job in life is going to be those kids. And my job has just begun.”

COUNTRY ROADS

Maddox’s father, also Richard, was a career Army officer who liked to view his family as he would a military unit: Stay together at all times, be alert and watch your back.

The family moved often when the children were young, as Maddox went from post to post. And for years, the family operated on its own while Maddox served two infantry tours in Vietnam.

Maddox, a retired lieutenant colonel, taught in Ranger school at Ft. Benning, Ga., and was stationed at White Sands missile base in New Mexico when he decided to move his family to land he had bought in a small, quiet place in South Carolina.

The move from New Mexico was jarring for the Maddox children, who suddenly went from the disciplined environment of a military community to a wide-open country place where adult supervision was not always practical.

The 1,000 residents of Ridge Spring, S.C., live scattered over miles of peach orchards and dusty roads. The town scarcely occupies a city block, and half the stores are closed.

The four Maddox children, raised as little soldiers, were at first puzzled by their new home and what they perceived to be the wildness of both the land and its children.

People worked hard, surely, but many also spent weekends enveloped in the numbness that alcohol provided. By not participating, the Maddoxes were seen as aloof, as though they believed themselves to be better than their neighbors.

The situation worsened when the senior Richard began constructing impressive additions on his property.

He wanted his children to learn to play tennis, but the nearest courts were miles away. So he built a tennis court in his front yard.

Fay, his wife, wanted her children to be able to swim, both for their own safety and to ease the heat of the South Carolina summers. But she did not want her children swimming in the nearby ponds and murky fishing holes, as other children did. So the Maddox family built a swimming pool.

“People thought we were acting rich, but we didn’t have any more money than they did. We just spent it differently,” said Fay Maddox, who was raised in the area and now lives in Graniteville, S.C.

“It was hard on the children, to be brought up so different from their friends. After time, the peer pressure rubbed into them. They lost a lot of what was instilled in them. With all my children, though, I knew the background they had would not stay down. It would come out.”

Young Richard struggled against the lure of freedom and irresponsibility. He began to adopt the goals of his friends: to get a fast car, and, perhaps, work at the mill.

“The kids around here talk about buying a car and driving up to the Star (recreational) Center,” Fay Maddox said. “We’d laugh and say, ‘The Star Center is just a raggedy old broken-down place. Don’t you want your car to go someplace better?’ This is a backward place, in many ways.”

But young Richard was in the grip of the place. He had strayed from the family’s path, and the way back was through brambles and thorns.

DO AS I DO

Richard Maddox Sr. set a high standard for his children. He demanded discipline, personal pride and maximum effort. Both he and his wife, from whom he is now divorced, are college graduates, and they stressed academic achievement. When his back was turned, however, Richard Maddox’s children mimicked his speeches about quality control, a favorite topic.

“I say I preached,” he said. “They say I lectured.”

The father devoted his most keen attention to his only son:

--The father had received a college scholarship to play basketball; the son learned the game as a 7-year-old.

--The father was an All-American football player at South Carolina State, a 6-foot-4, 255-pound linebacker nicknamed “Madman;” the son played the same position and was nicknamed “Mad Dog.”

--The father loved tennis; the son was sent to Hilton Head, S.C., to enroll in an elite tennis camp.

Young Richard’s role model was his father--an artist, a champion at chess. The two played the timeless game of fathers and sons, learning about competition by competing against one another. And, as the father instilled in the son the ethic of competition, his message was also to play fair, be relentless, win.

Some of that indoctrination revealed itself in Richard at an early age. His high school did not have a tennis team, so his father organized and coached his own. One day, Richard was playing a championship match against a team from an all-white private school. Richard beat his opponent, and soon tournament officials buzzed around the court, conferring and pointing.

Richard was accused of having cheated, the only explanation the officials could come up with for this black youngster from a farm town beating a privileged white.

Richard was stoic throughout the discussions, then finally suggested that the match be replayed with tournament officials observing. Again, Richard won. The officials grudgingly admitted he was the champion.

“Then the lady who ran the private school came up to me,” Maddox said. “She had the first- and second-place trophies with her and showed them to me. She wanted me to take the second-place trophy and told me that it was no big deal, they were the same size. But, you know, one of them said ‘Champion’ and one said ‘Runner-up.’ I guess she didn’t think I could distinguish between the two.”

THERE AND BACK AGAIN

Rebellion must run its course. It can be put down, but it will only spring up at another time. Maddox’s rebellion lasted for a few anxious years.

“I started being a problem to my parents when I was 16,” he said. “I was making bad grades in school, getting suspended. I went through a period when I was just mean--really mean.

“There were times they had to pull me off people in practice. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I thought I had to beat everybody because that’s the way Dad was. With football being the tough sport that it is, it would be easy to keep that attitude all the time. Knowing how to turn it on and off was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do.”

Teachers were perplexed by the puzzle Maddox presented. He tested well and was consistently placed in advanced classes. But he didn’t do his schoolwork and he coasted on his natural ability.

The situation exploded in his senior year of high school. Poor grades left him ineligible to play football. He eventually failed 12th grade. Maddox didn’t care. By then, he had joined the Army reserve, had already been through basic training and was preparing to go on active duty. His parents were upset, though, and refused to allow him to take the GED test. Go back to school, they told him.

Repeating his senior year, Maddox said, was the most humbling experience of his life.

But even that year of humiliation was not enough to snap him out of his stupor. Because he wanted to continue to play football, Maddox knew he had to to go to college. He scored 750--700 is the minimum requirement--on his Scholastic Aptitude Test while nursing a head-pounding hangover.

Maddox was admitted to Lee-McRae College, a private junior college in Banner Elk, N.C. His mother took out loans to pay the tuition of more than $4,000 a year.

By then, Maddox already had one son, Richard Bush, now 5. But even as his responsibilities mounted, Maddox continued to be the life of the party. His grades slipped again. Finally, in his second year at Lee-McRae, his coach spelled it out for him: Get yourself straight or get out.

“I quit partying and went to class,” Maddox said. “I wanted to play professional football, and I told myself I would never again make myself ineligible. I was really struggling financially, and to know that my mother had taken out loans to help me, I used that as motivation. I couldn’t mess up again.”

Maddox made the most of his second chance. He made first team junior college All-American and got the kind of recruiting attention that had passed him by in high school. Choosing Arizona from a group of mostly Southern schools was the easiest decision he made.

By the time he arrived in Tucson, Maddox was married and had three sons. He received $650 a month from his scholarship. Rent for their modest apartment was $380. They couldn’t afford a phone, and Maddox took the bus to school.

Maddox was turned down three times for a Pell grant, a federally funded grant based on economic need. No one believed that his income was as low as it was. Worst of all, he was having trouble proving eligibility for food stamps.

“It had a lot to do with people who abuse the system,” he said. “I don’t have any reason to lie. My family was going hungry. It got to that. I’m trying to go to school. I’m trying to juggle all these things. I’m honestly trying to do it. There’s no shame in food stamps. If someone is trying to better their life and they go through a period when they need help, it’s not wrong.”

It is natural to judge someone in Maddox’s position. He’s heard all of it. Lectures about having too many children.

“People judge, they do that,” he said. “I’ve heard it. But I let it go past me. They don’t know my plan. Being married is hard. Having kids is a lot of responsibility, but it’s something I want to do. I knew what I was getting into.

“Where I came from, people had very limited goals. Their motto was, ‘I just want enough to get by.’ My goals are way up there. I don’t want my kids to be raised in that environment. I want them to be around people who are successful. One of my goals is to expose my kids to as much as possible. I want to broaden their scope.

“My father has a great vocabulary. When I was growing up, I used to ask him, ‘What’s that word, what does it mean?’ I found out that I need an education so that I can talk to those people who are important. That’s how they talk. That’s the way I need to talk. Kids made fun of me, but I knew what I had to do.”

Maddox still knows what he has to do. People are still making fun. But he’s back on the road, walking it with his family. Just as he planned.