At 13, boy recalls his father’s support

At 13, Tyler is the man of the house, but he’s up to it.

“My dad died when I was about 5 years old, so I didn’t really develop a memory of him,” Tyler says. “So when I want to get a glance at him I look at that picture right there.”

He points to a family portrait on the wall. There’s Tyler, perfectly recognizable even though it was eight years ago, and siblings Taylor and Tiana. There’s his mother, Linda, and Tyler’s dad -- a larger-than-life presence with his massive arms around his family. Tyler’s father, a talent manager, was killed in a car accident in Los Angeles.

Taylor, 12, zips around the room like a random thought while his sister Tiana, 10, listens closely to Tyler and enthusiastically interrupts from time to time. But Tyler is calm and steady throughout.

“My heroes,” he says, “are my mom and dad. She always has my back. If I’m at the bank and somebody robbed it and I looked just like the person, she’d do whatever she could -- she’d bring pictures, fingerprints and DNA.”

Linda sees her late husband’s lasting effect on her son even if the boy does not. “When Tyler was little, he’d say, ‘I can’t make it’ when he’d try to shoot the ball. And his dad would say, ‘You’re a baller, you can do it!’ ”

Now Tyler is a basketball fiend, with a 4-foot-tall trophy for being named best player in the Gardena Park League.

He says, “My dad used to say, ‘You’re gonna be a baller, you’re gonna have money,’ and I was like, ‘What’s a baller?’ But I’m glad I still remember, ‘cause I know what he meant now.”

Outgoing Tiana was 2 when her dad died, so she has no recollection of the man. She had life-threatening cyst problems as an infant but is fine now. The same cannot be said of her would-be suitors. Tiana is a lovely girl and in the summer, Tyler says, “she wears a lot of braids and the boys be lookin’ at her. I tell ‘em if you want to be with my sister, you gotta talk to me.

“She reminds me of my dad. I don’t know why.”

All three kids attended the Circle V Ranch Camp in the Los Padres National Forest this summer courtesy of the Los Angeles Times Summer Camp Fund.

About 11,000 children went to camp this summer thanks to $1.6 million raised last year.

The annual fundraising campaign is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which this year will match the first $1.1 million in contributions at 50 cents on the dollar.

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