Navy’s 6-2 1/2 Rebounder Beats Long Odds and Always Has

To understand Hassan Booker’s unique family background, start with the initials he inscribed on his Navy basketball shoes.

“JAB” stands for the late Joyce Astarte Booker, his biological aunt, who died of lung cancer in 1989.

“DDB” stands for Joyce’s husband, David Duke Booker, a white police officer who was left to raise four black children as a single parent.

The children shared the same birth mother -- Joyce’s younger sister, Mary -- but she was out of the picture because of a substance-abuse problem, and each had a different father.

Thus, even in a society full of broken homes and dysfunctional families, the Booker children faced longer odds than most.

An absent birth mother. A deceased adoptive mother. Birth fathers they never met.

And an adoptive father with a different skin color trying to keep them on a straight path in south central Los Angeles.

Yet, the Bookers not only survived, they have thrived.

The older son, David, 25, is a USC business school graduate teaching English in Japan.

The older daughter, Mataji, 20, is a professional dancer with a touring Los Angeles company.

And Hassan, 21, is a junior computer-science major with a 2.3 grade-point average at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Jameelah, 15, remains at home, completing high school.

At 6-foot-2 1/2, Hassan is Navy’s leading rebounder. Friday, he will attempt to stop Utah’s Keith Van Horn, a 6-10 All-American, in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

The Midshipmen are 19 1/2-point underdogs against the second-ranked Utes, but if they get trounced, it won’t be for Booker’s lack of effort or courage.

His AAU coach, Roger Millstein, calls him “the toughest ballplayer I’ve ever coached.” His sister, Mataji, says, “It’s always inspiring watching him play.”

Hassan’s fury is evident on the court, the way his face contorts with emotion, the way he muscles past larger opponents to the basket.

He is on a mission, a special mission.

“I’ve really started to use my mother as spiritual motivation for me,” he said. “I’ve dedicated the season to her.”

By his mother, Hassan means his adoptive mother, Joyce.

He didn’t meet his birth mother, Mary Graham, until he was a teen-ager, and maintains minimal contact with her now.

Joyce Booker always looked out for her younger sister, David Duke Booker said. And Mary Graham, he added, had an “ongoing” substance-abuse problem.

Graham moved in with the Bookers after they were married in 1972. She already had given birth to her first son. And when he was 2, she was institutionalized.

The boy stayed with the Bookers.

“There was no question about it,” David said. “Who is so hardened that they wouldn’t become attached to a young child living in their home? It just happened.”

Hassan and Mataji entered the family even sooner -- “essentially at birth,” David said. He still remembers getting the calls from the hospitals, bringing each of them home.

The Bookers completed the formal adoption of the three oldest children in 1979, when Hassan was 4. Jameelah later joined the family in much the same way.

“To know the whole story, you would have to have known my late wife,” David says. “This woman, she was a saint on this earth.”

The house was always buzzing, and not just with the Booker children. Kids from all over the neighborhood flocked to the Bookers’. Some stayed months, even years.

Even now, with only Jameelah home, visitors are frequent.

“There are thousands of children in big cities that need someone, either temporarily or permanently,” David said.

“My late wife was the kind of person that people with problems just kind of gravitated to. She was more than a match for anybody’s needs or problems.”

And David, 45, a member of the California State Highway Patrol, was her husband.

He was 22 when he and Joyce began caring for young David. But one by one, he embraced his wife’s nieces and nephews.

“To take on four kids and ask your partner to do that, that’s a lot to ask,” Mataji says. “But my father was willing. Even though my father wanted his own family, this is what my mother wanted. He didn’t even think twice. He loved my mother. This was her blood.”

And David, one of the few whites in the neighborhood, welcomed others’ children, as well.

“Our door was always wide-open,” Mataji said. “Most of the kids had parents who didn’t give a rat’s butt. He was like a father to the whole neighborhood.

“He would discipline them. He would whip them right along with us. They wouldn’t complain and whine and go home. They knew they deserved it. They knew they were getting love.

“To this day, I know people who say they appreciated that.”

But when it came to disciplining his own children, Joyce often served as mediator, Mataji said. Hassan, too, recalled his mother’s compassion, how she would give money to beggars on the street.

She ran her kids to all their activities without complaint.

And always - always - she stressed education.

Joyce Booker never earned a four-year college degree, and neither has David. But the children rarely were allowed to watch TV. And Joyce wasn’t enthralled with the idea of her sons playing sports.

“My wife had very serious reservations about black boys spending too much time involved in athletics,” David said. “She felt the black community overstressed athletics.

“Her take on the whole thing was, ‘Let’s send our black sons to the library instead of the football fields or gyms.’ She wasn’t against it. She was supportive. She just felt it shouldn’t be the priority.

“She was adamantly and vehemently determined about their education. I’m not overstating it when I say it was an obsession.”

And after her illness was diagnosed as lung cancer, her lessons expanded to real life.

“She taught us a lot about how to live by yourself,” Hassan said. “She taught my brother and I how to act. She prepared us for the day she died.”

Joyce was expected to live no more than four months. She hung on for approximately 18.

“The cancer had beaten her down so much, her body slowly emaciated,” Hassan recalls.

Her death almost seemed merciful.

“I was relieved because of the pain she had to go through and had finally stopped,” Hassan says. “I don’t know if I could say I was ready, but I was just more prepared to take on whatever responsibilities needed to be taken care of.”

He was 14.

His older brother David was 18. Mataji was 13, Jameelah 8.

“I remember telling them, ‘You children have faced the hardest thing this life is ever going to offer you,’ ” the elder David says.

At the time, David was in the middle of an 11-year stint with the California equivalent of the Secret Service. His job was to protect state officials. He frequently got called away from home.

“I worked a lot of hours, irregular hours,” David said. “Sometimes I had to leave town with very little notice. We had a structure, kind of a mutual obligation and responsibility, not unlike a rank structure, although it was not an army camp.

“It was a well-known fact in our family - the older children owed unswerving responsibility to the younger ones, and the younger ones owed unswerving obedience to the older ones. That’s what was expected.”

Each day, the entire family would sit down for a huge breakfast and divvy up responsibilities - it might be the only time that day the children would see their father.

The younger David, then at USC, was at the top of the hierarchy, buying groceries, cooking dinner. Hassan took over those duties after David left home.

“Hassan was worse than my first brother,” Mataji recalled, laughing. “He was worse than my dad. He was the strictest. And to this day, he has never changed.

“He wouldn’t let me do anything. He wasn’t harsh or mean. It was like, ‘How can you think about doing something wrong?’ ”

It was a harried, frenzied period, but David would save all his vacation time, and take a month off every summer.

“He took us on these road trips,” Mataji said. “Even though we were dirt poor, we never knew we were poor. He did a really good job covering up. He’s still in debt from those trips - still.”

The tradition started when Joyce was alive. One summer, the family drove to Belize, a Central American nation on the Caribbean Sea.

It was all about expanding the children’s horizons, exposing them to different places and cultures. Their own house was a stunning mix - a black mother, a white father and four black children of different shades.

The idea was to show them that all things were possible.

“I’ve always tried to teach all of my children to have respect for all people, to be aware of the roles of different ethnic groups and nations throughout history, be aware of the fact that nothing is absolute, things change,” David said.

And so the children learned tolerance. And sensitivity. And hope.

“My dad, he’s taught me how to live in a white world,” Hassan said. “The Naval Academy is pretty white. My dad is not like an average white man. He basically taught us respect for all cultures and lifestyles.

“You can’t be ignorant to different types of people and have no respect for them. Most people, when you hear them say something bad about somebody, it’s because they don’t know.”

All four Booker children took Japanese lessons at an early age - Hassan’s high school coach, Jim Nakabara, recalls his shock at hearing the player speak Japanese to him.

Roger Millstein, Hassan’s AAU coach, can recall him leading a discussion on race relations after a team dinner.

The Booker children always had a broader vision.

“I’ve always thought it was the coolest thing,” Mataji said of having a white father. “The thing that’s also incredible is that no one else seems to ever really notice.

“It was never like, ‘Your dad’s white, you’re black.’ It was the normal thing to everyone, if not immediately, then after sitting with us two minutes.”

Which is what David and Joyce wanted.

“My late wife was a very aware person regarding her African heritage; very proud, very astute in passing on those feelings to the children,” David said.

“I’ve tried to do the same, both for that and other parts of their heritage. They may not be genetically linked to me, but I am their father. I’m from West Texas. I grew up in the country, in a ranching community. The history of my people, I consider to be part of their history as well.”

And their history includes Mary Graham.

David Booker referred to her as “Aunt Mary,” though she was the children’s biological mother, and their adoptive mother was their biological aunt.

Today, Mary Graham lives in Cincinnati.

She could not be reached for comment.

“She’s not like a stranger. But she’s not really in my personal life,” Hassan says. “She still wants to have that bond. I don’t really take the time.

“I’m not trying to blame her for what happened. She’s never done anything bad to me. She placed me in a home that loved me. I don’t have any hatred for her. Maybe it’s pity or something, I don’t know. I really don’t make an effort. When she calls, I respect her enough to call her back.”

The children didn’t meet Mary Graham until 1990, when they traveled to visit their terminally ill grandmother -- Joyce’s and Mary’s mother -- in Cincinnati.

“I would never have had the children around her - it tended to be disruptive,” David said. “But they had a very good relationship with their grandmother. I wanted them to see her one more time. And when we went to see her, they of course met and developed some familiarity with Mary.

“Nothing was ever concealed from them as to the origins of our family. It was just a matter of trying to protect them. Growing up is hard enough without having something disruptive. That’s my feeling. Something like that, there aren’t any right or wrong answers. You do what your feel is best.”

Mataji said older brother David has the closest bond with Mary - he lived with her until he was 2. Hassan probably is the most distant. Mataji is in between.

“At first, I refused a relationship. I denied it. I hated her,” Mataji said. “As time goes by, we’ve gotten closer. It’s a little late in life. But the more I talk to her, the more I learn about her and respect her.”

Navy assistant Doug Wojcik, who recruited Hassan, got an early hint of those priorities. Few potential recruits transfer after their sophomore year to a better academic high school. But Hassan did just that, landing at University High.

Hassan was the most consistent student in the family, his father said. Even now, he prefers to sit in the back of the bus when Navy travels, studying or reading a book.

“You’d be talking about a principle of physics, and he’d get a gleam in his eye,” David said. “You can tell, he really enjoyed it. He was always in science fairs, academic pentathlons. I always viewed him as kind of a bookworm - not that he wasn’t athletic and all boy.”