Webb’s Toughest Test Came Early

Lee Webb is not sure why he said it.

Intuition? Fate?

After spending one sleepless night in a skid row homeless shelter and several more on bus-stop benches in Hollywood, Santa Monica and South Los Angeles, Webb slowly pushed a shopping cart of belongings up Figueroa Street near USC.

Webb, 12 at the time, stared as he moved past the brick campus buildings.

“I just made a comment, not thinking,” Webb recalled. “I said, ‘One day, I’m going to go here.’ I guess that kind of stuck with me.”

During the 11 years that followed his preteen proclamation, Webb has stayed the course.

On Jan. 4, the 6-foot, 240-pound fifth-year senior will start at fullback for top-ranked USC in the Orange Bowl. A victory over No. 2 Oklahoma in the bowl championship series title game would be the highlight of Webb’s college years.

At least until May, when Webb will graduate from USC.

“People always say adversity builds character, but I think it reveals character,” USC running backs coach Todd McNair said. “He just had it in him to overcome his circumstances. He’s a fighter.”

Webb, 23, survived a tumultuous and transient adolescence with the help of a surrogate big brother who preached responsibility, a foster mother who nurtured him with tough love, and a high school football coach who insisted on accountability.

Once he arrived at USC, Webb persevered through a period of academic challenges and a series of position switches before emerging as a role model and unheralded member of the Trojans’ star-studded backfield.

“He’s our backbone,” sophomore tailback LenDale White said.

Webb, who was born in Inglewood, took on responsibility at a young age, often bearing the load during a turbulent youth.

When he was 5, he boarded a Greyhound bus with his father, Arthur, and two older brothers, Lamarr and Damont, and headed to Detroit to be closer to extended family. Webb said his mother also was supposed to go to Michigan but did not show up.

As the bus made its way across the country, stopping at various points along the way, Webb said, the boys begged for food.

A few years after they’d arrived in Detroit, Webb said, his father struggled with substance-abuse problems. The brothers were put in a group home for six months before an aunt took in Webb and exposed him to football.

“All the other things that were going on in my life would kind of blur -- I really could block them out because I loved football so much, nothing else really mattered,” Webb said. “Even when I had to hustle up my own fee money to get into the thing, it was nothing because I knew it was what I wanted to do.”

At 12, Webb again boarded a bus and returned to Los Angeles with his father and Damont. They were supposed to stay with Webb’s mother, but the arrangement fell through, leaving them homeless. They walked from a downtown depot to skid row, and then spent days traversing the city with the grocery cart before a relative took them in at an apartment not far from USC.

A few weeks later, the family got its own place and Webb enrolled in junior high. But on the night of his graduation from eighth grade, Webb returned home to an empty house. The family had been evicted for not paying rent.

“I just slept on a bus-stop bench that night,” Webb said.

He said he coped with the help of Joseph Toliva, the owner of a car restoration shop who lived in the neighborhood.

“He always encouraged me to do right, to stay in school and not get involved in gangs,” Webb said. “He’s like a real brother.”

Toliva paid Webb for odd jobs around his shop and stayed in contact when Webb went to a series of foster homes after he’d begun classes at Crenshaw High.

“I told Lee that the game of life is one big poker game,” said Toliva, 42. “Everyone has a deck of cards. Some have a royal flush, some a pair of twos and some of us have nothing.

“Don’t cry about the cards you’re dealt. Just work them to your advantage. Take your adversity, whatever it might be, and make it an asset.”

Webb finally got a break after stays in foster homes and a boys’ group home.

Geraldine Turner, the foster mother of one of Webb’s friends, took in Webb and provided him with a stable home setting and plenty of food and love. Turner, 49, says she has been a foster parent for about 130 children since 1991. She became Webb’s legal guardian when he was 15.

“We had some tough things to go through together, but we managed,” said Turner, who also has helped Damont. “He taught me a lot. Children, given the opportunity and the chance, can make it.”

Said Webb: “She is a blessing, in so many ways, to my whole family.”

Robert Garrett, Crenshaw’s football coach, also helped Webb, refusing to let him slide. After Webb’s sophomore season, Garrett told the running back and linebacker that he was wasting an opportunity.

“He told me, flat out, ‘You don’t have a chance to get into college, even on scholarship, because your grades aren’t that good. Unless you do something drastic, right now, you don’t have a chance,’ ” Webb said. “I got my grades up to a 3.8, and all the rest of the year I was studying for the SAT test every day.... Coach Garrett showed me the meaning of work ethic.”

After rushing for more than 1,100 yards and scoring 20 touchdowns for Crenshaw in 1999, Webb chose USC over Wisconsin and Washington State.

“It was a dream come true,” Webb said. “It was hard to believe at first.”

Webb redshirted at fullback in 2000, then moved to linebacker in 2001, Pete Carroll’s first season as coach.

In 2002, he returned to fullback and played on special teams, then was switched to linebacker for the Orange Bowl against Iowa.

Last season, he started the first four games at fullback. This season, he has started eight times, and scored his first touchdown, against Brigham Young.

“He is a big factor on this team,” Carroll said. “The kids love him and respect the heck out of him.”

Though he has not reconciled with his mother, Webb speaks almost daily by phone with his father, who has worked through his problems and lives in Palm Springs.

As Arthur Webb prepared for his son’s arrival for Christmas Eve on Friday, he said he was looking forward to Lee’s impending graduation from USC.

“It means everything in the world,” Arthur Webb said. “He’s the man, and I’m very proud of him.”

Lee Webb, who will spend today with Turner, said he looked back on his youth, “with appreciation,” for the self-sufficiency the rough years taught him.

As he looks ahead to the national-championship game, a degree in public policy and management, and -- possibly -- a chance for a pro football career, Webb thinks about the day he predicted he would come to USC.

“It’s hard to believe sometimes,” he said. “I pinch myself sometimes to see if I’m dreaming.

“I’m just so thankful for all the people that made it happen. It’s all coming together.”