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Saturday, August 22, 1998
UT's Williams strikes remarkable friendship
with Doak Walker
By JONATHAN FEIGEN
Houston Chronicle
HOUSTON -- Every day when Ricky Williams reports to Texas'
new football locker room, he will see Doak Walker. But he won't
see the old man whose life has been taken over by paralysis. He
won't even see the young man whose 1940s magazine-cover-perfect
photograph Williams ordered to have pinned to the middle of his
new locker.
He sees a friend. He sees a mentor and inspiration, a role
model from a half century earlier whom Williams has chosen for
his own.
And every few weeks, sometimes more often and sometimes less,
when Walker's wife, Skeeter, reads her husband the letters and
faxes he has received in bulk since his horrible skiing accident
seven months ago, they find another note from Ricky Williams.
"After what happened, I try to get something in the mail
to him just so he knows he's in my thoughts and in my prayers,"
said Williams, who struck a friendship with Walker just days before
the accident. "With what he accomplished and what he was,
and the way he was -- so selfless -- he is who I want to be."
As far as Williams was concerned a year ago, Doak Walker was
just the name of an award. But before Williams would accept the
honor last season as the nation's top running back, he decided
to learn about the player for whom the trophy was named. He read
first about the former SMU and Detroit Lions star's place in football
history as the first post-World War II sports hero, perhaps the
last before television made players legends.
But when reading about Walker's personal style and values,
Williams recognized that what mattered most to him, he and Walker
shared. And when they met, first in Orlando, Fla., for one awards
ceremony and then in Dallas for the Walker Award, they clicked.
"They just became very good friends," Skeeter Walker
said, as if the mix of Walker, 72, and Williams, 21, were just
that simple. "They're very, very good friends. That's why
Ricky's letters mean so much to Doak."
When asked how Walker reacts to the letters, Skeeter would
rather not say. But the only interview Walker has agreed to since
the accident was for a cable-television piece about Williams.
And when he was asked about the letters, a man who makes hospital
visitors laugh to relax them was moved to tears.
"They sent me the tape," Williams said. "I had
to brush a tear from my eye, too. I didn't know they had so much
of an effect on Doak."
That is what has bonded them, what they share. The player who
50 years ago was every mother's choice for her son's role model
saw through another generation's dreadlocks, tattoos and pierced
body parts to find much in common.
Just as Williams has written Walker now, Walker wrote notes
to fans he had somehow touched or magazine editors he believed
treated him kindly.
Both are dramatically shy, uncomfortable with the praise their
talents draw. Both even earn unrelenting grief from teammates
about their inexplicably high-pitched voices. Each seemed to appreciate
the other's ability to look beyond appearances to the basic kindness.
"Ricky writes his thoughts and thoughts between the two
of them," Skeeter Walker said. "I think it's unbelievable.
I'm very, very fond of Ricky. I understand why they hit it off.
They're both very humble -- genuine and humble."
To Williams, there can be no greater compliment than to be
compared to Walker, particularly by the person closest to Walker.
And it has nothing to do with yardage, records or awards but rather
the reminder Williams plans for each time he opens his locker.
"He is," Williams said, "the way I want to be
every day of my life, on and off the field."
------
Distributed by The Associated Press
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