Raiders Preserve the Memories

The Raiders dedicated the season to Eric Turner.

That was only natural.

What they couldn’t have known was the kind of season it would become.

“Man, it’s just very fitting,” cornerback Charles Woodson said.

“Right now, for us, the sky’s the limit. And that’s where we feel he’s at.”

Only a couple of yards away, Turner’s stall remains much as it was last May, when he died of abdominal cancer at 31.

His shampoo and mouthwash are still there, as if he’ll be coming back any time.

But you couldn’t say Turner’s locker is undisturbed.

Coach Jon Gruden has noticed how players will pick up something from Turner’s locker and wear it for a little while, just to remember him.

There in the middle of the stall, cornerback Eric Allen has placed the trophy he won as the Raiders’ top defensive player--the first Eric Turner defensive-player-of-the-year award.

The Raiders are not the only team whose uniform Turner wore.

He was drafted out of UCLA in 1991 by the Cleveland Browns with the second pick overall.

Five seasons later, the Browns became the Baltimore Ravens, the Raiders’ opponent in the AFC title game Sunday.

There are not many players left from Turner’s days as a Raven--linebacker Ray Lewis was a rookie on the 1996 team that was Turner’s last with the Ravens.

Turner was a veteran safety who played in his second Pro Bowl that season, signing with the Raiders in 1997.

It is the Raiders who remember No. 29 most.

“I know he’s still with us,” defensive tackle Darrell Russell said. “A lot of guys on this defense miss him.

“He was a big part of my development. He got here when I got here.”

Never mind that Russell played on the front line and Turner was the last line of defense.

“He helped me adjust to the mental side, how to handle myself,” Russell said.

Truth be told, it isn’t the uniforms he wore or even the big hits he made that stir memories of Turner.

Terry Donahue, his coach at UCLA, remembered him as “a really nice person and a marvelous player.”

Of course, Donahue mentioned the person before the player.

In fact, the NFL is so little a part of who Turner was to Phil McCune, his defensive coordinator at Ventura High and now the coach there, that McCune hadn’t thought about the fact Turner’s former teams are playing for a trip to the Super Bowl.

“When I think of Eric, I don’t think of the Raiders,” McCune said. “When I think of Eric, I don’t think of UCLA.”

It’s the young player he coached and the man he remembers--”a great son and a great father” of a young boy, Eric Jr.

Around the Raider locker room, what they remember is Turner’s great smile.

“If you were unhappy or having a hard day, you’d see that smile and your whole attitude would change,” backup safety Johnnie Harris said.

McCune doesn’t think that was it, not exactly.

“Not so much his smile. His willingness to affect other people,” he said. “The smile was just who he was.”

Wander among the Raiders, and you discover McCune is right: Turner wasn’t just the pal of Pro Bowl players.

“He took me under his wing,” backup linebacker Bobby Brooks said. “Last year I was on the practice squad, up and down. He kept telling me, ‘You’re going to be here. You’re a great player. Keep your head up.’

“When he passed, it was a shock to me. He was more than just your average football player.”

When Turner died, it was a shock to just about everyone.

That was his decision.

He and his family chose to keep his condition private, even issuing a statement denying he was gravely ill two weeks before he died at Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks.

“The only thing he ever said was it was hard to keep weight on,” said Harris, another player for whom Turner made time. “He didn’t want fans and friends to feel sorry for him.”

Art Modell, the Raven owner, was as stunned as anyone by the news of his former player’s death.

“In retrospect, he was extremely private,” Modell said after he heard the news. “It’s very sad that a young man that age has to be taken that way.”

Part of Woodson understands Turner’s wishes.

Part of him still finds it difficult.

“I wish I could have seen him,” Woodson said. “It would have brought some closure.

“I wasn’t able to do that. But I’ve got him in memories.”

Woodson keeps those memories close.

Among them are the shower shoes he still wears.

Turner gave them to him when Woodson was a rookie who didn’t know about such necessities of the NFL, and Turner made light fun of him for his ignorance.

“You’d rarely see him upset about anything,” Woodson said. “He was always joking. It was all love. That’s just the type of guy he was. Always happy, from what I could see.”

Turner didn’t let them see everything. They all know that now.

“Right now, he’s probably smiling,” safety Marquez Pope said. “Or he’s got that game face on. We know he’s with us.”

Knowing is one thing.

“Eric’s dancing in heaven,” McCune said.

“But that doesn’t help us down here.”