Must-Read for ND Folks

Sid · Sep 29, 2006

Kind of long but definitely worth reading. IMO a very heart-warming story.

Mother’s sacrifice inspiring

Notre Dame cornerback fueled by tough childhood
By Michael Rothstein
The Journal Gazette

SOUTH BEND – Keetran Lambert folded clothes in her studio apartment, booted out of the bathroom by her son for the first time in his life. He wanted privacy while bathing. So she sat within eye’s distance when she heard a click.

Four-year-old Terrail locked the bathroom door while playing with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The landlord had told Keetran never to lock it because there were no keys to the old-fashioned door. Keetran, trying to keep her only child calm, told him not to worry but to stay out of the tub when he complained of it being cold.

Meanwhile, on her side of the door, she frantically banged on walls to alert neighbors she needed help because Keetran couldn’t afford a phone until Terrail was 6. When they had one, unpaid bills forced service disruption.

“My neighbor comes over and calls 911 and firemen come in and finally knock down the door,” Keetran said.

Terrail, now a Notre Dame junior cornerback, grew up in a single-parent household, his mother struggling to finish school and provide for both herself and her son.

Keetran played volleyball and ran track at Hueneme High School in Oxnard, Calif. She became pregnant her senior year and her mother sent her to St. Anne’s Maternity Home in Los Angeles, a hospital for unwed young pregnant women.

“I’m going to night school when I had him,” Keetran said. “Going to finish high school, going to college to try and finish on time and I did it.”

She was 17 years old when she had Terrail on Dec. 1, 1985. Keetran spent the next three years attending Los Angeles Business College and Oxnard College working as a bank teller and other odd jobs.

Keetran would buy trays of chicken on Mondays along with Ziploc bags. She’d separate the chicken into five bags in an attempt to turn one tray into a week’s worth of meals. She fed Terrail first and ate his leftovers so her son wouldn’t go hungry.

On weekends, he’d go to his great-grandmother’s house. Elsie Kelly would care for him while Keetran tried to earn extra income. Kelly, though, wasn’t the only one trying to help.

Yolanda Adams moved next door to Keetran when they were in middle school. By high school, they became best friends.

So when Keetran needed help with Terrail, there wasn’t a question. Yolanda and Steve Adams – who were dating then and are now married – helped. They watched Terrail and treated him as their own while Keetran went to school and worked.

The four of them – Yolanda, Steve, Keetran and Terrail – became inseparable. Steve took Terrail, decked out in a silver-and-black Raiders jersey, to play football in the park. When the boys came home, Keetran and Yolanda were making dinner.

In the Adams’ apartment in Camarillo, Calif., Terrail had his own bedroom, decked out in everything football. They played “Candy,” a song by Cameo, at least 100 times a day so Terrail could sing and dance.

So despite being poor monetarily, Keetran had wealth in family.

“My husband and I, when we first got married and even before, it was hard to find a picture without him in it,” Yolanda said. “He called my parents and my husband’s parents grandma and grandpa.”

Meanwhile, Keetran worked at Bank of Levy in Camarillo, among other places, slowly building a better life for her and her son.

Even though money came infrequently, Keetran insisted Terrail attend private school in Oxnard, first at Mary Law Private School and, after a stint in a public middle school, at St. Bonaventure.

It was at St. Bonaventure, when Terrail was a freshman, where things changed for the Lamberts.

Keetran received a sales and marketing job with Verizon Yellow Pages. Terrail attended one of the powerhouse football programs in the country. While there, he also discovered the rest of his family – a group of cousins on his father’s side called the “Balla Click.”

The “Balla Click” started with his cousin, Curtis Richardson, who became the legal guardian of Florida State running back Lorenzo Booker. All the cousins grew up in the same Ventura County area of Oxnard and Port Hueneme. The cousins – before Lambert was old enough – made a pact to all receive college scholarships when they played Pop Warner football for the Hueneme Rhinos, Oxnard Warriors and Gold Coast 49ers.

The Balla Click embraced Terrail because he played football like the rest, including Booker and Carolina Panthers wide receiver Keary Colbert.

“Our older family members, we’d sit around and they’d tell us stories about playing in college, but we got the idea that basically it was something we were going to do,” Terrail said. “It’s basically a family thing where we try to be as successful as possible in life.”

The original Click, with Booker as its youngest member, had tattoos on their right wrists. Terrail has yet to get it, but Booker said he will. Originally seven, the number grew to incorporate more family and close friends in pursuit of college.

“Some family members told us we couldn’t do it, and we all did it,” Booker said. “Everyone went to college for free.”

When Terrail plays now, his focus doesn’t stray. Keetran, 38, is his motivation. He recognizes, more than most 20 year olds, how much his mother sacrificed for him to be at Notre Dame. She sacrificed her life for him.

“That’s my hero,” Terrail said. “Not just what we went through but the poise she had when we were going through it. That was the first person that I learned what mental toughness is and what hard work can do for you.”

All the jobs, all the weeks of barely eating led to this. On Saturday night, Keetran, now a mortgage loan officer, sat in the backyard of her cul-de-sac home in Bakersfield, Calif., watching Notre Dame and Michigan State.

Then her son, her sacrifice, intercepted a pass and took off to the end zone, scoring the game-winning touchdown with USC fans inhabiting the firehouse behind her backyard. She started screaming and yelling, enough to grab the firefighters’ attention.

“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, my baby made a touchdown,’ ” Keetran said.

A hundred miles away, Steve Adams also started screaming at the television. He, his wife and their parents had three sets on in their Studio City, Calif., home, not quite believing what they were watching.

And a country away, Booker spent time with his girlfriend when his phone rang telling him Terrail had intercepted a pass, scored and completed Notre Dame’s improbable 40-37 comeback win. He went to his house and saw him pick off the second pass. He, too, started screaming. Florida State students couldn’t understand why the former Notre Dame prospect began rooting for the Irish.

It’s family. It’s the Balla Click. It’s coming from nowhere in life to making a massive play on national television.

Terrail couldn’t participate in the Balla Click stories before. Now, he can.

“He’s probably got a better story than any of us,” Booker said. “Keary won a national championship, but no one has ever done what he’s done in that kind of game on national television.”

All the double jobs and living without fueled Terrail. It became his way of living, of doing it for his mom.

“That’s my motivation every time I step on the field,” Terrail said. “In everything I do, I have this drive in me. Make her proud because I think she deserves at least that much.”

Keetran put it best: “We were one of those statistics that made it.”

mrothstein@jg.net
Click to expand...

Terry O'Keefe · Sep 29, 2006

Good story. Thanks

I'm not sure I understand the Balla Click though, Corey will probably have to explain it to me.

Tim Gentry · Sep 29, 2006

Lambert

<r>Sid,<br/>
<br/>
Nice story indeed! Thanks for posting it. <E>8)</E></r>

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