"Adversity off the field helps put goals in focus"

Every Mother’s Day, every Christmas and every 24th day of November, Charles Futrell visits his mom’s grave at Cross Creek Cemetery. Resting against her headstone, he leaves flowers, small gifts on holidays that would have been cause for big celebrations if she were still living.

He’s never needed to be reminded to go, not even as a boy. Since 1997, this has been his ritual, his time alone with her.

Miranda Cogdell Futrell should be alive today. She should be boasting about her blooming 21-year-old son and the All-American-type season he’s having as a wide receiver for North Carolina Central University. She should see how professional scouts are coming to Durham’s Division II school to watch her boy in action. And she should know that if a football career isn’t in his future, Charles will graduate this year with a degree in computer science.

But Miranda started using drugs long before Charles showed any glimpses of being an athletic star. She contracted AIDS when he was about 10 and died when he was 12.

Nine years later, Charles still feels robbed.

“When I lost my mom, I lost my best friend,” Charles said. “I think about my mother every day. Every day. She used to say things like, ‘Keep working hard and keep faith and keep God first.’ I think about those phrases every day. I miss her.”

Miranda would have cringed last weekend.

During Saturday’s game against St. Augustine’s, Charles dislocated his shoulder while catching his sixth touchdown of the year.

On Monday, X-rays showed no damage. The senior said he’s about 80 percent sure he will play Saturday night at Fayetteville State, just miles from where he grew up and went to high school.

The shoulder prognosis is welcome news to the 15 or so relatives scrambling for tickets to see the final homecoming of their most beloved and protected nephew, cousin or grandson.

“I tell everybody, ‘That’s my son, not my grandson,’” said 81-year-old Bertha Cogdell, Miranda’s mother and Charles’ childhood guardian. “I’m proud of him in all ways. He just put it in his head that he wanted to do good for himself.”

Charles was leading the CIAA in receiving yards per game before his injury. He’s still second in the league in touchdown receptions.

An all-conference quarterback at E.E. Smith High School, he has patiently danced between receiver and quarterback at N.C. Central. Now, he seems to have mastered one position. With 25 receptions this year, Charles has surpassed his previous three seasons’ total of 23.

His 6-foot-6, 200-pound size has earned him the nickname “Sticks.” But it’s also made him nearly impossible for most cornerbacks to cover.

“He’s made big plays after big plays,” N.C. Central coach Rod Broadway said. “We definitely need him in the lineup.”

The shoulder injury could have ended his senior season and may have shot N.C. Central’s undefeated season — thoughts that would give shorter-sighted people nightmares.

Not Charles. If his career ended today, he would lose four or five games. And nothing more.

He carries a 3.2-grade point average. Though he’d love to dream of being invited to an NFL camp next summer, he doesn’t like to talk about it.

A computer career, though — that’s something he can almost touch.

If his hurt shoulder had allowed other CIAA receivers to pass him statistically, even if it had brought an end to his football career, it’s hardly a tragedy.

Not to a man who once fed his mother her prescription medicine because she was too weak to walk up the stairs. Not to a man who kissed his mom goodbye when he was 12 and she was minutes away from dying in a hospital bed in Chapel Hill.

“He is one remarkable child,” Bertha said. “He knows when things aren’t going right, just hold on. Just hold your peace. He keeps on doing it.”

Charles’ difficulties in 1997 didn’t stop in September when Miranda died. That fall, he was cut from the Reid Ross Middle School football team.

Same with basketball that winter.

Same with track the following spring.

The future winner of the Leroy T. Walker Award, N.C. Central’s top athletic honor for a male athlete, Charles couldn’t make a single squad in the seventh grade.

Without his father around — Charles said he’s seen his dad a handful of times in the past 15 years — and without his mother, Charles knows he could have swerved into trouble. Maybe down the same tragic road his mom took.

But he’d already seen the effects of drugs. He had no desire to feel them.

“I pretty much knew what was going on,” Charles said. “I saw my mother getting into it and not being around as much. It taught me not to fall into the same trap.”

After being cut from three sports, Charles said, he worked out the entire summer. As an eighth-grader, he earned a spot on all three rosters.

Within a few years, he would become one of E.E. Smith’s top athletes — an all-conference performer in football and basketball.

E.E. Smith football coach Milton Butts watched Charles closely, given the teenager’s background. But Butts said Charles rarely caused a problem.

“When Charles messed up, I called his grandma and it was taken care of,” Butts said. “We double-teamed him.”

Division I schools Wake Forest and William & Mary recruited Charles but backed off at the last minute. Broadway, then in his first year at N.C. Central, called and promised Charles a passing offense.

Charles committed after one visit.

Butts has continued to follow Charles. The longtime prep coach said he will be in the stands at Jeralds Stadium on Saturday.

“Each time I see him, he’s matured,” Butts said. “He’s really ready to walk into this world now.”

Near a corner on Rustland Drive, Bertha Cogdell’s house gives no hint that a drug addict would have lived there.

Remodeled several times during the 35 years she’s lived there, the home is befitting of a grandmother. It’s clean and crisp from the kitchen to the bedrooms. The only clutter is from pictures — hundreds of them, all framed and propped on any available flat surface.

Hanging over the mantle is a shot of Bertha and her nine children. Seven girls and two boys, crowded around their go-getter mother.

Like Charles, Bertha talks openly of her daughter’s death and dip into drugs.

“A lot of times, it’s the company you keep,” she says. “That’s how you get in trouble.”

Luckily for Charles, he had Bertha’s home. She raised him, with help from her oldest granddaughter, 37-year-old Letitia Cisco. Charles calls Letitia his aunt because of their age difference.

Bertha and Letitia had little trouble with Charles. They credit Miranda for that.

“Regardless of how she left the world, there are some things she instilled in Charles. She was a mother,” Letitia said. “We thought he would need counseling. But he just dealt with it.”

Whether you’re family or a stranger, you can expect two things when you walk into Bertha’s house.

The first is a kiss on the cheek.

The second is a tour of Charles’ old room.

Upstairs, the room has become a virtual shrine to the family’s athletic prodigy.

Medals are draped on trophies, trophies stand in front of certificates, certificates are placed around plaques.

Most are for athletics. Some are for academics. Others, Bertha and Letitia have forgotten their meaning.

Bertha’s favorite is the Walker Award Charles received last year at N.C. Central. He earned it because he played two sports for the Eagles. He made the All-CIAA rookie team for basketball.

This year, Charles isn’t sure about playing basketball, mainly because he doesn’t know what his future holds..

“That’s kind of a fly-by-night type of decision,” he said.

There’s no telling, then, where Charles will be in a month. The Eagles’ football team may go deep into the NCAA playoffs. The basketball season starts Nov. 17.

Fortunately, no games for either team are scheduled for Nov. 24.

It’s the day after Thanksgiving.

It’s also the day Miranda would have turned 51.

As always, Charles will bring flowers.
Staff writer Michael N. Graff can be reached at graffm@fayettevillenc.com or 486-3591.[b]
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I enjoy reading about stories like this about sports players, when lately all one hears in the news is T.O crap, NASCAR crashes,Phil Mickelson catching up with Tiger...it's great when a Sports writer finally gets it. Much Success to you-Charles Futrell and your 2006-2007 football career!

10/13/2006 8:09:08 PM

[words]

10/13/2006 8:36:20 PM

summary plz?

10/13/2006 8:41:11 PM

oh by the way, not earlier not now not later.. nobody gives a flying fuck about NCCU and the CIAA here

10/13/2006 8:42:26 PM

I do, so SHUT THE FUCK UP....regardless, it's a great article, a true sports fan could see that.

10/13/2006 8:50:24 PM

is this gonna come on tv or some sort of audio format sometime?

I tried to read it, but when I got to "Every Mother’s Day" I got bored and quit.

10/13/2006 8:57:26 PM

^^ then write a blog

10/13/2006 8:59:19 PM

10/13/2006 10:31:36 PM

liked the pic..it added to the story..

10/14/2006 12:16:28 AM

dammit man no one cares.

your nccu threads average like 10 responses, if that, and if more, then they are all "WE DON'T CARE" posts



[Edited on October 14, 2006 at 12:50 AM. Reason : gfsd]

10/14/2006 12:32:33 AM