Sad Homecoming

Al Lucas is all over Northeast High this week, in the halls he walked, the classrooms he studied and later taught in, in his cherished weight room.

His likeness is on television screens, hangs from the necks of students and is displayed on a special handout. His name, uttered in hushed tones, can be heard in outpourings of grief, prayers and stories.

Lucas died Sunday at 26 on the other side of the country, suffering an apparent spinal-cord injury while making a tackle on a kickoff in an Arena Football League game between the Los Angeles Avengers, his team, and the New York Dragons at Staples Center.

But it is here, in this town of 95,200 where he was born, that he will be buried Monday. And it is here, at Northeast, where he excelled in athletics, where he returned in the summer even after making it to the NFL as a Carolina Panther, where he became an assistant coach and substitute teacher, that he will be brought back Saturday for a memorial service.

“Even when he hit the big time, he always came back here,” said Ella Carter, Northeast’s principal and a Lucas family friend before Al was born. “He loved this school.”

Lucas played football, basketball and baseball, and also found time for track and field at Northeast. He still holds the school record with a 440-pound bench press.

“As large as he was, he moved well on the basketball court,” said Alvin Copeland, the school’s athletic director. “In baseball, he could hit the ball a country mile. But what I remember most about him was that he was a real jokester. When he was lifting weights, he would challenge me, saying, ‘A student shouldn’t be able to lift more than the teacher.’ ”

Teaching appealed to Lucas. He went on to Troy State in Alabama, then to pro football, but he saw his future at Northeast. Told by Copeland that it would cost him $325 and 12 hours of classroom time to be certified as a coaching assistant and substitute teacher, Lucas signed up, got his certificate and began at Northeast last fall.

Said Principal Carter of the 6-foot-1, 300-pounder, “The students respected him. But if I looked up and saw someone that big in front of me, I’d step in line too. “But he didn’t relate to the students in a loud way. If he was in the next room, you wouldn’t know he was there. He was not a showoff. He didn’t wear shirts that would reveal his biceps, like some young men do. That was not his style.”

Even when his football career took him far from his roots, Lucas kept in contact with Northeast.

“He never forgot where he came from,” said Bruce Mullen, Northeast’s football coach. “This year, he told me he was going to get some cleats and gloves for the players.”

When the word began to filter back from Los Angeles to Macon on Sunday that a fatal tragedy had befallen a favorite son, there was disbelief. “It couldn’t be,” Copeland said. “I couldn’t believe it, knowing how strong Al was, a great physical specimen.” Said Mullen: “It’s overwhelming that it happened in a game he loved so much. It’s devastating to our staff, our players and the whole Macon community.”

Each person is handling the grief in his own way.

Nathaniel Thrash, a football player, has laminated the article about Lucas’ death that appeared in the local paper, the Telegraph, punched holes to attach a strap and wears it hanging from his neck.

“He always told us to play every play as if it were our last,” Thrash said in a soft voice, eyes cast down. He still can’t believe Lucas has played his last play.

“When I look at the replay, I keep thinking he is going to get up,” Thrash said.

Another Northeast Raider, lineman Anthony Burney, has hung a photo of Lucas from his neck with the words: “RIP, Big Luke, 1978-2005.”

Fullback DeAngelo Dixon says he will always think of Lucas when he walks by the Hill, which looks down on one end zone of the school’s football field. Under Lucas’ supervision, Dixon and his teammates would run up and down and then back up that hill. They would run forward, then backward, and sometimes crawl on all fours.

“In full gear,” Dixon said.

And if a player had an unexplained absence from practice? Well, he would soon become very familiar with every pebble and blade of grass on that hill.

Twenty-five miles north of Macon, in the town of Forsyth, Steve Edwards, football coach at Northeast when Lucas played there, is now principal of the Hubbard Middle School.

This week, Edwards recalled a fond memory of Lucas.

“He was a lineman, but he always wanted the opportunity to put that ball under his arm and run it in,” Edwards said.

“I remember one game, we had the ball inside the other team’s five-yard line and we needed to punch it in. I called a timeout, went on the field and walked around our huddle, pondering what I should do. I knew Al’s eyes were following me as I walked. He was playing center, but I knew he had that expression on his face that said, ‘Well? Let me have it.’

“I didn’t and we scored anyway, but, in hindsight, I probably should have used Al on some of those short plays. I still laugh when I think of that impatient expression he would get on his face.”

Rendell Jackson wasn’t laughing this week. A fullback-linebacker for the South Georgia Wildcats, an Arena Football 2 developmental team, Jackson quit this week, saying he didn’t want to suffer the same fate as Lucas, a friend since boyhood.

The local Arena 2 team, the Macon Knights, will wear helmet stickers saying, “Al,” and is setting up a fund to benefit Lucas’ wife, De’Shonda, and his year-old daughter, Mariah.

At least 1,200 are expected at Saturday’s memorial service in the Northeast gym. The funeral is scheduled here Monday.

Students who have found it difficult to express their loss have been given handouts with the word “Sympathy” in bold next to a photo of Lucas.

Below it says:

What we have done for ourselves dies with us.

What we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.

-- Albert Pike