LEAN ON ME

There were times they cried together, times when the mother felt she had no choice.

Her son would promise to be good but would drift back toward trouble.

Irene Perry would look around the neighborhood and see kids going nowhere. She was smart enough to look at herself and see limitations.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” she would tell her boy. “I don’t want you to end up in jail. I don’t want you to end up a statistic.”

And then she would do the hardest thing a mother can do: She would send him away.

The tough times seem a distant memory now that her son, Chris Perry, is a young man. A star tailback for Michigan. A Heisman Trophy finalist headed for the NFL draft in spring.

Still, there is an edge to Perry’s voice when he recalls those days. Who wants to go to wilderness camp for 10 months? Who wants to go to military school?

“Was I upset?” he asks. “I hated it.”

It was the sort of thing that might have driven a mother and son apart.

But Irene and Chris would face more tribulations in the years to come. They would need each other too much to let that happen.

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Perry represents half of an intriguing matchup in the Rose Bowl between the fourth-ranked Wolverines and top-ranked USC on Thursday.

He rushed for 132 yards a game this season and is the first Michigan player to have won the Doak Walker Award as college football’s top running back.

“He’s not going to beat you with blazing speed,” USC defensive lineman Kenechi Udeze says. “He’s just a tough kid.”

The Trojans answer with a defense that has held opponents to an average of 61.1 yards. Of course, Perry faced an even stingier Ohio State defense last month and torched the Buckeyes for 154 yards and two touchdowns.

He says quietly, “I can say I’m satisfied with the way I’m playing.”

His 1,589 yards this season represent the most tangible evidence of a vast distance traveled since boyhood in North Carolina.

Not that he was a criminal. But Irene, who divorced in 1990 and was also raising a daughter on her own, kept getting calls from teachers. Her son was talking, acting up in class.

Christopher, as she calls him, was still in touch with his father, but it was Mom who called the shots. Irene came to a realization. A novelist and self-proclaimed bohemian, she feared her son needed more structure than she could provide.

“It may not have made sense to him,” she says. “But I was trying to do what was right.”

First came the stint at wilderness camp. Then, after more troubles, a summer at a military academy. Irene had hoped to enroll him in the fall, but he fell asleep during the entrance exam.

“Mommy,” he asked, “what are we going to do now?”

“There are other schools,” she told him. “Believe me, there are other schools.”

He wound up at Fork Union Military Academy in Virginia.

“I hated everybody there except my coach and a few professors,” he says. “I still hate Fork Union.”

Sports were his saving grace. Quicker and stronger than other kids, he had always shown promise. One day, he wandered down to the football field where the coach asked him whether he played.

“A little bit,” he said.

Three years later, Perry finished a dazzling high school career with 4,678 yards, 71 touchdowns and offers from colleges across the nation.

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No matter how angry he felt during the lonely days away from home, Perry never wavered in his love for Irene.

“I would never hate her over something like that,” he says. “She’s my mother.”

Ask him why he chose Michigan over other schools and he gives an interesting reply: “When I came for my visit, it felt like a family.”

When Perry arrived in Ann Arbor before the 2000 season, the starting tailback, Anthony Thomas, had a season remaining. Perry envisioned sliding into the lineup as a sophomore.

But the next season, he started only a few games and wound up with fewer than 500 yards. After the final game against Ohio State -- when he had a meager six carries -- he saw Coach Lloyd Carr about his playing time.

“Coach Carr went into his spiel about what I needed to do,” Perry says. “Either I had to change or I could leave.”

That sounded fine to the young man, who promptly called his mother to say he wanted to transfer.

“I’m like, ‘What?’ ” Irene recalls. “ ‘You’re going where? You’re not going anywhere.’ ”

Over the next few weeks, in meetings with Carr and running back coach Fred Jackson, Irene told them she was on their side.

“I think Christopher was stunned,” she says. “He was looking for outside support to validate what he was thinking and I did not give it to him.”

Perry downplays his mother’s role in the situation. He also spoke with his father, who told him to do whatever he thought best. Ultimately, he says, “I took Coach Carr’s statement as a challenge.”

His coaches say he began working harder. Perry says another change might have been even more important: “Kept my mouth shut a little bit more.... I think that was it right there.”

As a junior, he started 11 games and had his first 1,000-yard season. After all the ups and downs, it seemed that Perry finally had it made.

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There are limits to any mother-son relationship, even a close one.

After several visits to Ann Arbor, Irene decided to move there and start a magazine. Chris quickly laid down the ground rules.

“No stopping by the apartment without calling first,” he says. “She did that one time and I didn’t let her in.”

A hint of defiance marks his words -- a big part of going away to college is to become independent. Yet, once she arrived, they saw each other several times a week and spoke on the phone. School, football, girls -- he could talk to her about anything.

So it was puzzling last summer when his mother mentioned going for medical tests. When he asked about the results, she danced around the subject.

“I knew something was wrong,” he says.

Irene had been diagnosed with breast cancer but did not want to worry her son. She evaded his questions until, just before the season, she confided in Carr, who had lost his mother to breast cancer. Carr was certain in his advice.

“Look, he’s going to find out,” he told Irene. “As difficult as it is, the sooner you tell him, the better.”

Just weeks before the start of his senior season, the defining moment of his career, Perry was staggered by the news.

“When you think of cancer,” he says, “you don’t think of a good outcome.”

This was nothing like the other troubles he had faced. When he struggled in school, he studied more. If there were problems on the football field, he practiced harder.

Of his mother’s illness, he says, “I can’t control it.”

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Football has been his refuge. It doesn’t matter whether he is carrying the ball in front of 100,000 fans or at practice with no one watching.

“When you’re on the field, you have got to be 100% in the game,” Perry says. “I can leave what’s happening with my mom for a few hours.”

Funny thing, it has been the same for her.

The chemotherapy usually hits hardest a day or two after the treatment. Those are the tough days.

Watching her son play, Irene sees the wristband with “Mom” scrawled on it. She thinks about all they have been through. She has lost her hair but not her bright smile.

“I’ve watched him become a man,” she says, “this wonderful young man.”

Mother and son are enduring difficult times in a familiar way.

“Together,” Carr says, “they’ve been able to handle this.”

Earlier this season, when Perry ran for 219 yards against Michigan State, he looked to the stands as he always does, unaware that she had stayed home, too weak to make the trip.

Three weeks later, she postponed a treatment to be at the Ohio State game. They walked onto the field for a ceremony honoring senior players and the crowd erupted in applause.

“She’s always there with me,” Perry says. “She’s been with me from the beginning.”

They are together this week, Irene traveling from Ann Arbor to help Chris celebrate his 22nd birthday Saturday. She will be at the Rose Bowl to watch him against USC.

The days when they cried together seem very far away.

“Oh, there are still moments when we disagree,” she says. But recently she told him, “If you were not my son, you would still be my friend.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

CHRIS PERRY’S GAME-BY-GAME STATISTICS

*--* RUSHING RECEIVING DATE, OPPONENT RESU ATT YARDS AVG TD REC YARDS AVG TD LT Aug. 30, Central Won, 22 232 10.5 2 1 17 17.0 0 Michigan 45-7 Sept. 6, Houston Won, 27 184 6.8 2 5 23 4.6 0 50-3 Sept. 13, Notre Won, 31 133 4.3 3 4 44 11.0 1 Dame 38-0 Sept. 20, at Oregon Lost 11 26 2.4 0 2 -3 -1.5 0 , 31-2 7 Sept. 27, Indiana Won, 21 112 5.3 0 2 8 4.0 0 31-1 7 Oct. 4, at Iowa Lost 24 87 3.6 1 2 11 5.5 0 , 30-2 7 Oct. 10, at Won, 20 85 4.3 1 11 122 11.1 1 Minnesota 38-3 5 Oct. 18, Illinois Won, 24 140 5.8 3 1 6 6.0 0 56-1 4 Oct. 25, Purdue Won, 28 95 3.4 0 2 16 8.0 0 31-3 Nov. 1, at Won, 51 219 4.3 1 2 17 8.5 0 Michigan State 27-2 0 Nov. 15, at Won, 25 122 4.9 2 5 50 10.0 0 Northwestern 41-1 0 Nov. 22, Ohio State Won, 31 154 5.0 2 5 55 11.0 0 35-2 1 TOTALS 315 1,589 5.0 17 42 366 8.7 2

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