Authors: Bryan Mealer
After beating Dwyer, the Raiders continued to roll undefeated, blowing out almost everyone they faced, including the struggling Suncoast Chargers. Unlike the Raiders, the kids on the Chargers’ roster did not see football as their sole escape, and usually their season record showed it. They were a team of college-bound, honor-roll students whose schedules more resembled Jonteria’s than Jaime Wilson’s. Many also commuted from across Palm Beach County, meaning Hester would often go weeks without a full practice because half his team had either to study or catch a bus home.
The game against Glades Central was played at Effie C. Grear Field to a packed house expecting fireworks. For Hester, it was tough enough standing on the visitors’ sidelines of his own alma mater, especially after what had happened. It was even harder watching his kids lose 44–3 and knowing the Raiders would’ve hung a hundred on him if they could. It was a classic beatdown in the muck, no different from the one the Raiders had given Suncoast the previous season. Still, Hester grew so upset that he lost his composure after the game. As Blackmon crossed the field to shake hands, Hester cursed and waved him off. A news camera captured the whole ugly exchange. “He was trying to rub it in,” Hester later told a reporter, the anger still surging through his voice.
By season’s end, the Raiders owned the best defense in the state of Florida. They demoralized Boynton Beach 70–7, then did the same to Pahokee the following week by beating them 70–0 in the Muck Bowl. Heading into the playoffs, Blackmon and the Raiders looked primed for a championship run to rival all others. They could do no wrong. As long as they won, it seemed, the fans thought little about Jessie the Jet and those victories he spoke about that never appeared in scoreboard lights.
That is, until the playoffs, when news broke that four Raiders were being accused of sexual assault. A freshman girl at Glades Central told administrators that four football players had pressured her to perform oral sex in a school bathroom. Two of the names she mentioned were Jaja and LeBlanc. The story surfaced during the national uproar over Penn State,
where assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was convicted of raping and fondling a number of young boys during his long tenure with the team. The school district quickly intervened at Glades Central and launched an investigation. In the meantime, all four boys were suspended from school and barred from playing football.
Without Jaja and LeBlanc in the secondary, the Raiders still steamrolled through the first two playoff games, shutting out both Astronaut and Merritt Island. But in the semifinals, at home against Miami Norland, Boobie and the defense could no longer hold. There before God and the Glades, running back Randy “Duke” Johnson rushed for 265 yards and four touchdowns, helping Norland eliminate the mighty Raiders 29–13.
Blackmon’s honeymoon was over, and you could bet the gamblers were calling for his head before the lights were even off. “Some of the guys had a really bad Christmas after that game,” said Frank Williams. Other fans questioned Blackmon’s ability to control his players, whose actions they felt led to the ultimate downfall of the team. But for the most part, the community remained by Tadpole’s side.
The scandal and season-ending loss, however, were quickly overshadowed by a much greater tragedy. On January 2, the community awoke to the shocking news that Jimmy McMillan, the owner of the beloved Alabama-Georgia Grocery Store on MLK Boulevard, had been shot and killed in an early-morning robbery. The McMillans had operated the store since the 1940s and were one of the few remaining white families to keep roots in Belle Glade. Everyone knew and loved Jimmy. On the streets, it was a well-abided rule that the Alabama-Georgia was off-limits.
After studying the store’s surveillance video, sheriff’s detectives brought in a suspect who later confessed to the murder. It was Corey Graham, the former offensive lineman for the Raiders. Corey’s dreams of football had ended after the team’s loss against Cocoa. He had not been recruited alongside his teammates. After graduation, he’d enrolled at the local community college and remained in Belle Glade. But it was not enough to keep him anchored against the pulling tide. On the still-dark morning of January 2,
while the town still slept, Corey slipped a bandanna over his face, walked into the store, and let himself be carried away.
Sadly, the tumultuous events distracted attention from one of Belle Glade’s brightest moments. The week after Corey’s arrest, while media attention still swirled around the murder, it was announced that Glades Central had raised its grade to a B, the highest in the school’s history. Anderson and his teachers had finally managed to lift the scores of the lowest 25 percent and hopefully, in the process, establish a pattern for the coming years. The school slogan, “Committed to Winning in Academics and Athletics,” no longer seemed such a joke when you walked through the halls.
For Anderson, the announcement was sweet validation after a three-year campaign to raise the status of the 96 percent. But in the process, he’d also come to accept the priorities of the community where he worked. As rewarding as the B grade was, he said, “we’re never going to overtake football.”
In the course of three years, the principal from Boca Raton had also received a rounded education on how the high school game worked in the Glades. A year after firing Hester and his staff, Anderson realized he may have acted too swiftly. Over time, he said, he’d discovered the rumors about Jet covering up his assistant’s sexual relationship may have been fabricated—the product of certain members of the community trying to sabotage the coach out of his job.
“Out here they eat their own,” Anderson said. “It’s pretty cutthroat.”
In hindsight, the principal acknowledged that Hester probably knew nothing about the incident. He now wished he’d conducted a more direct “intense conversation” with Jet about purging his staff before making the decision to fire him.
“It really wasn’t all of his fault,” he said, “even though it was on his watch.”
Anderson even said if the head coaching job were to open again, he’d probably hire Hester back.
Not long after Suncoast ended its dreadful 4–6 season, Hester resigned as head coach. After one year on the job, the academic pressures facing the students were too great for him to properly lead the team, he told the
Post
. “It was just too difficult to do the things I wanted to do in that situation,” he said.
The comments angered many Suncoast fans, players, and parents, many of whom filled the message board offering their stinging assessment of Jessie Hester and his brief tenure: the coach couldn’t care less about kids and their education. All he wanted to do was win.
Around this time, Hester was nominated for induction into the Palm Beach County Sports Hall of Fame. It was a league that included Rickey Jackson, Fred Taylor, Ben McCoy, and other legends from the Glades. The nomination recognized Hester’s contributions to the game, both his playing career and his 36–4 record coaching the Raiders to back-to-back state championship appearances.
It was an honor that would outlive any regrets of those three years back in Belle Glade, or the false start along the coast. For Hester, the induction was also free from the burden of his past: the absent father and family troubles, the scars, and the thousands of hours under the sun. But along with it came a new emptiness in his heart, where the love for a town once lived—a town with its haunted, self-defeating ways. In the long run, history would declare Jet the winner. And in doing so, it would keep safe his belief that he’d changed things for the better—that he’d won kids, not championships.
I
lived in Belle Glade for much of the reporting of this book, in a small room at the Horizon Inn on Main Street, where Dilip Patel, Lilian Brown, and Lola Robinson took great care of me and always had a kind word. Weekend nights I’d often drive over to Fort Lauderdale and stay with the Berube family. Many thanks to Brian, Sheila, John, Katherine, and Elizabeth, for their generous hospitality, good food, and fellowship, and for being my family away from home.
Thanks to Donna Rose at South Plantation High School for first bringing me into the muck. Donna invited me to her school to talk about Congo, then implored me to visit another forgotten, underreported place—this one less than an hour’s drive away. I’m glad I listened.
Thanks to Jessie Hester for opening his life and allowing me to become part of his team. And thanks to Jonteria Williams and the 2010 Glades Central Raiders for letting me ride along on their extraordinary journeys. It was an experience I’ll always cherish. In addition, I want to thank the Raiders for taking me rabbit hunting, and for introducing me to new, fancy handshakes (“We gotta work on your coordination,” Boobie concluded one day) and the slang and soundtracks of their lives (Lil Boosie’s “Mind of a Maniac” and Waka Flocka Flame’s “Hard in Da Paint” will forever remind me of riding in a school bus to football games).
Thanks to assistant coaches Sam King, Tony Smith, Randy Williams,
Greg Hall, Greg Moreland, Santonio Thomas, Andrew Mann, Sherman Adams, Charles Walker, J. D. Patrick, Milton Swift, Melvin Lockett, Bruce Hytower, Terry Morris, Preston Vickers, and Leroy Singleton for guiding me through the history and culture, and for the many laughs and good conversations we shared. Same goes for Mike Petrarca, Dennis Knabb, Willie McDonald, and Anthony Williams.
Thanks to Frank and Tangela Williams, Christine Benjamin, Shawanna and Xavier Evans, Julius and Nora Hamilton, Delia Hamilton Powell, Theresa Williams, Canisa Rowley, and Gail Beard (may she rest in peace) for opening their homes and allowing me to write about their children. I also want to thank them for sharing their own personal stories, even when doing so proved painful.
Thanks to Anthony Anderson, Angela Moore, Melanie Bolden-Morris, Sherry Canty, and Terence Hart for allowing me into their school and classrooms and offering guidance. Thanks to Rudean Butts and Kevin Wright for greasing the wheels along the way. Thanks to Norman Harrison for game film, and to Donald “Duck” Williams and Coguy Miles for providing that delicious muck cooking after home games (as Sherm once said: “Ol’ Duck can sure put the hurt on a backyard bird”) and for the many other times those two men fed me. On that note, thanks to the good folks at the Banyan Tree restaurant for the coffee and sweet potato pie, and for letting me use their dining room as my satellite office. Thanks to Jeff Greer and Matt Porter at the
Palm Beach Post
for throwing me stats and insight when I needed them, and for being pals. And many thanks to my trusted readers: Kiley Lambert, Brian Berube, Christopher Berend, and Ann Mentink.
Sean Desmond and Tina Constable at Crown recognized the rich story beyond the Friday-night lights. My heartfelt thanks goes out to them and the rest of the hardworking people at Crown who made this book possible: Stephanie Knapp, Ellen Folan, Paul Lamb, Matthew Martin, and Jaqui Lebow. As always, thanks to my wonderful agent, Heather Schroder, for her years of friendship and counsel, and for always having my back. And a hundred thanks to Nicole Tourtelot at ICM for being a phone call away.
Every book is a family affair. The reporting takes you away from home for many weeks at a time, and with small children, it can be a heavy burden on the ones you love. I couldn’t have written this story without the support and sacrifice of my wife, Ann Marie Healy, the woman who does it all. I’m grateful each day for her love, her lust for life, and her dedication to our dream of the everlasting adventure. This book is as much hers as it is mine.
B
ryan Mealer is the author of the
New York Times
bestselling
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
, which he wrote with William Kamkwamba, and the children’s book of the same title. He is also the author of
All Things Must Fight to Live
, which chronicles his years reporting the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the Associated Press and
Harper’s
. He and his family live in Austin, Texas.