Pacman Jones is miles from home
A wish was fulfilled, but not without nightmarish twists01:13 AM CDT on Sunday, June 8, 2008
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ATLANTA – In a tattered, blue photo album bound by duct tape and love, Adam Jones' life is told in weathered photos, ticket stubs, school certificates and newspaper articles.
None of the mementos, however, tell you more about Adam than the poem he wrote as a 13-year-old living in one of Atlanta's most notorious housing projects.
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It is a dream
It is a lovely dream
My dream nobody will know because it is kept above
My dream is to be a very lovely person
I will do my very best in school
My dream is to be the one in my household to go to college
GOD will help me with my dream
These are my lovely 1996 dreams. What are yours?
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That dream came true.
So did another when the Tennessee Titans made Pacman Jones the sixth pick in the 2005 NFL draft, although this dream hangs precariously by a strand no thicker than a spider's web.
On Monday, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell partially reinstated Pacman, acquired by the Cowboys in April. Goodell had suspended Pacman for the 2007 season for repeatedly violating the league's personal conduct policy. Pacman should receive full reinstatement by Sept. 1 if he follows all of the league's mandates.
Pacman, one of the league's most dynamic players in 2006, must prove he can change a lifetime of bad habits created, in part, by being a spoiled, privileged athlete surrounded by a throng of well-intentioned enablers.
This is his last chance. He knows it. We all do.
If Pacman is involved in one more incident requiring a police report or if he makes one more poor decision, then Goodell could end his NFL career.
If so, it will be Pacman's fault.
Entirely.
Those who influenced Pacman as a child have placed everything he needs to succeed inside of him, but he must pull out those characteristics. No one can do it for him.
He must ensure Zaniyah, his 2-year-old daughter who lives with her mother, has no concept of government housing and sidewalks littered with crack pipes.
"I would be surprised if he fooled around and got in trouble again. A parking ticket would mess me up," said his mother, Deborah Jones. "I don't want him to jaywalk. I don't want him doing nothing.
"I'm serious about that. If he did, it would kill me. It would break my heart. I don't want to see nothing on the news but good things."
No one had ever really told Pacman no before Goodell entered his life.
Not his mama. Not his grandmothers. Not his coaches. Such an upbringing would give anyone a warped view of the world.
"He's just a brat," his mother said. "He thinks he's supposed to get everything his way."
Phenomenal athletes like Pacman learn quickly the rules usually don't apply to them. Coaches punish their stars with extra running, but they rarely bench them.
Pacman figured his athletic gift would bail him out of every foolish decision he made, and that's how he lived his life until the day Goodell suspended him.
It helps explain why he's been arrested multiple times and linked to nearly a dozen police investigations since he entered the NFL.
And that doesn't include the incident in October 2003, his freshman year at West Virginia, when he received a one-year jail sentence for beating another student with a pool cue in a bar fight.
The malicious assault charge was reduced to a misdemeanor. The court suspended the sentence and Jones received two years' probation.
Those who know Pacman best say he's been humbled by Goodell's suspension.
"He ain't never been told you can't play no more," said his uncle, Robert Jones. "Not playing really hurt his feelings because he figured he'd miss a game or two and then go back to work."
Pacman and two cousins who lived with him – James Jones and Lewis Kuffuor – always had the newest Jordans and the nicest school clothes. Pacman often walked around Boat Rock, a housing project in southwest Atlanta, with hundreds of dollars in his pocket or hidden in his shoes.
The money usually came from his daddy's mother, Willie Louise Davis. Everyone calls her Miss Louise.
Pacman was raised by Miss Louise and his mom's mother, Christine Jones, who was known as Miss Christine.
After Pacman's father died in 1988, Pacman moved in with Miss Christine because Miss Louise, who worked two jobs and earned $1,100 month, couldn't care for him during the week.
Every month, Miss Louise gave Miss Christine $300 for Pacman's support. When Pacman was 10, he phoned Miss Louise.
"Give me my money," Miss Louise recalled Pacman saying. "I can take care of myself."
So she did.
"I wanted him to know I loved him, and his daddy loved him," Miss Louise said. "I gave him love. Sometimes, I think I shouldn't have given him so much, but that was my grandbaby."
You can tell from photographs that Adam Davis cherished his baby boy. He often pinned to his shirt a button bearing his son's photo.
And that's before you hear the stories of the man playing football with his toddler. Or teaching him to throw a jab just like his friend, eventual heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield. So what if the boy hadn't started kindergarten yet?
In the hours before he died, Davis was supposed to take Pacman's mother some money along with a yellow outfit he had bought for his son.
He never returned home. Davis' best friend, Sammy, shot him in the back of the head.
"Sammy came to my house and told me he was paid to kill Bug," Miss Louise said, referring to her son by one of his nicknames. "He told me he was giving himself up. I had raised that boy. They went to school together. He slept in my house. I fed that boy.
"I never cried. I still haven't. I had a massive heart attack after he was killed. That's what has me in the shape I am today."
Study the black-and-white photo in the gold frame sitting on Miss Louise's glass coffee table in her tidy one-bedroom apartment, and the resemblance between father and son is obvious.
The smoldering eyes. The broad nose. The ebony skin.
"They're emotional people," Miss Louise said. "They will give you the shirt off their back, if you need it. But when they get mad, all hell might bust loose."
For years after his daddy's death, Pacman's anger festered. When Miss Louise told him the man who killed his father had died in prison, it frustrated him.
"Pacman used to say all of the time that when he was grown up he was going to kill the man that killed his daddy," Miss Louise said.
Pacman thinks about his daddy often. Perhaps, it's because he's a father now and understands the job's importance. Or maybe, it's because he never had a chance to ask his father about all of the things a boy needs to know.
A few weeks ago, he phoned Miss Louise.
"Tell me something about my daddy," he asked
"I started talking about him," Miss Louise said. "I told him about how he was a ladies man when he was growing up. Everybody in school wanted him. He wasn't fat, but he was husky because he had lifted so many weights. I told him whatever I could remember."
Pacman's mother, Deborah Jones, had her own wild side.
"I have probably been to every jail in Georgia," Jones said. "I've sold dope. Disorderly conduct. I've done everything. That life is over for me.
"He was going into high school, and he needed me. I could see him headed down that same road. I had to get my life back."
Deborah Jones, who was 20 when Pacman was born, spent hundreds of quarters playing Pac-Man, while pregnant with her only child.
When her premature son arrived on Sept. 30, 1983, doctors told her to nurse the baby because he needed the extra nutrients. His voracious appetite reminded Deborah of her favorite video game character, so she nicknamed the baby Pacman.
From the start, he loved sports.
He played baseball, basketball and football at the Sandtown Recreation Center a couple of miles from his home because Miss Christine, who died of cancer while Pacman was at West Virginia, didn't want him mingling with the kids at the Boat Rock recreation center.
"On Saturdays we either had to be at Sandtown playing or we had to go with her while she ran errands," James Jones remembered.
Although he was always among the smallest kids on his team, Pacman was usually one of the best.
He loved basketball, and made the varsity as a freshman at Westlake High School, which finished 33-0 and won a state championship. They added another title Pacman's senior year.
As a senior on the football team, he rushed for 1,850 yards and recorded 120 tackles and six interceptions.
Pacman starred at West Virginia, intercepting eight passes as a junior, while becoming one of college football's most dangerous kick and punt returners. He entered the draft after his junior season.
Now, he had the money to take care of his loved ones.
Jones bought his mom a house about 20 minutes south of downtown Atlanta in a nice subdivision where the spacious homes have red, tan or brown brick facades and aluminum siding, and the homeowners association leaves fliers on the front doors of residents whose lawns aren't manicured.
A black Ford pickup and a silver Dodge Charger sit in the driveway because the garage contains a white sofa, a big-screen TV, a pool table, a full-sized refrigerator and an assortment of boxes.
Newspaper clippings from Jones' high school, college and the NFL days cover one wall. Illustrations of Pac-Man and Pinky from the video game decorate the others.
A shrine to Pacman's athletic triumphs is in the living room. That's where his trophies, awards and plaques are neatly displayed.
Down the road a few miles, Pacman bought a house where Kuffuor and a couple of his long-time friends live. Kuffuor takes care of Pacman's prized Presa Canario dogs – Scar and Sassy.
Pacman's cousins and his two friends are all that's left of the entourage that helped him spend much of the $11.7 million in bonus money he received in the first two years after the Titans signed him.
No one from Pacman's past is in Dallas except his girlfriend.
"We don't need no new people in his life," Deborah Jones said. "I told him that everyone that's true to him will be there until the end. The others were just using him for his name or his money, but they're gone because he ain't making it rain no more."
Kids in Boat Rock don't grow up with Big Wheels. Or 10-speed bikes. Or ATVs.
They're just trying to survive.
Pacman has spent much of his suspension trying to recapture some of the childhood he never had. He spent his days playing paint ball, billiards and bowling, when he wasn't working out.
Last week, he stopped at an Oak Cliff park and joined a pickup basketball game. He promptly dunked just to prove he could.
No one knew it was Pacman. He couldn't have been happier.