Howard Roark
Retired Moderator
Undefeated, even against fierce illness
By Michael Carvell
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Even as his team wins game after game, coach Jeremy Williams is dying, slowly and inexorably.
ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, has stolen his strength to the point that this former quarterback can no longer throw a football. A golf cart carries him onto the field. By the end of a Friday night game, he is often so fatigued that he must lean on his players. The disease slurs his speech, so that an assistant coach stands near him to “echo” his play calls to the team.
And yet Williams, a young-looking 38, still stands on the sidelines, leading and inspiring his Greenville High School Patriots. And they still win every game — 10-0 this year, with five shutouts — for a coach they love.
Greenville plays in the opening round of the state playoffs tonight on its home field. The visiting Pelham Hornets, 5-5, could end the Patriots’ season this evening, but the Hornets could not face a team that will play with more purpose, nor a town that will root with more passion, nor a coach who knows more about adversity than Jeremy Williams.
Never give up
The Patriots are the biggest show in Greenville, a no-stoplight town 60 miles southwest of Atlanta and the seat of Meriwether County.
Greenville, population 946 in the last census, believes its Patriots will be crowned state champions on Dec. 12 at the Georgia Dome, and many of those hopes and dreams have come to focus not on a trophy but on a coach.
“It has been one of those years where everything has come together,” Williams said. “This group has overcome a lot of adversity ... not just me, but also the kids.”
The Patriots have adopted their coach’s never-surrender attitude. A few of them refer to Williams as a “second father,” and like loyal sons they quietly keep an eye on him.
When the coach walked out for practice last week, a couple of seniors stopped dressing at their lockers to hold open the heavy metal door for him. No words were exchanged, nor did anybody else in the room pay attention — one of the many unspoken courtesies for “coach.”
At practice, Williams blends in with his coaches but isn’t able to yell as loudly. When he has something important to say, the players quiet down to grasp every word. A few times, teammates look at each other and nod, to confirm that they heard the same thing.
“We’ve been around him for so long, and the disease now makes it hard for him to talk,” defensive end Vincent Warner said. “A lot of his words run together, but that makes us pay more attention to him.
“If he says anything and we don’t understand, we ask each other before we go back to Coach because we don’t want him to waste a bunch of words. If we really don’t understand, then we’ll ask him to repeat it.
“He’ll laugh about that, take it in stride and tell us again.”
Linebacker Dennis Benning, a junior at Greenville, leads the team in tackles for the season.
“Coach Williams told us, ‘As long as you’re standing, I’ll be standing right beside you all,’ ” Benning said. “We know it is hard for him to get out here. We know he is going through a lot. That’s why we want to win the state championship so badly for Coach. We want to do it for him.”
Discovering the illness
A “bad thumb” is how Williams describes what turned out to be his first ALS symptom. Five years ago, he tore ligaments in his left thumb while breaking up a scuffle at football practice.
During his playing days at Kendrick High in Columbus and then at the University of Memphis, he had experienced all the usual nagging pains that come with the game.
This time, however, the pain wouldn’t go away. During the next 18 months, he began feeling numbness in both arms from his fingertips to his elbows. He also noticed that the muscles in his forearms were deteriorating.
“We’d walk every morning at 5:30, and every so often Jeremy would mention his left hand, how it would hurt and then how he couldn’t control it,” defensive coordinator Tripp Busby said.
“It progressed to the point where you could see bones in his hand and arms because the muscle structure was going away. We just kept praying that it would be something the doctors would be able to cure.”
Williams was worried. He thought it could be ALS, but he wasn’t quite sure. He went to three doctors and got three different opinions. And the progression of the illness seemed so slow.
Then, in June of 2008, a team of doctors at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University confirmed ALS, an incurable disease of the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movements.
“The prognosis is ‘when’ ... as nobody has ever been cured of ALS,” Williams said. “It’s a matter of time. Some die within two to three years, some in five to 10 years, and some in 20. Now, I will be cured one day with Jesus Christ, and I believe that.”
For one so afflicted, Williams is absolutely unquestioning in his faith. His office walls feature numerous handwritten Bible quotations, including one from Matthew: “Keep on asking, and it will be given you; keep on seeking and you will find; keep on knocking (reverently) and the door will be opened to you.”
His ALS progressed slowly at first, but the illness began to accelerate last season. He knew things had really changed when he picked up a ball and found he no longer had the strength to throw it.
The nerves in his arms twitch so much that he began wearing long-sleeved athletic shirts, even in the summer, to avoid distracting others.
A fighter all his life
Long odds are nothing new for Williams, who played at Kendrick High of Columbus under one of the state’s coaching legends, Buzz Busby. As an undersized but scrappy quarterback, Williams was overlooked by college scouts in 1990.
After making plans to be a walk-on at a smaller school, Williams landed a last-minute scholarship offer from the University of Memphis, which was seeking safeties who could be the “quarterbacks of the defense.”
As the story goes, Williams was No. 5 on the depth chart when he reported for his freshmen year. Three weeks into summer practice, he had moved up to second-string. In the opener for Memphis, the No. 1 safety suffered a season-ending injury in the first quarter. The wide-eyed Williams was inserted into the game and never relinquished a starting position over the next four seasons.
“Some of Jeremy’s college teammates wrote him e-mails after hearing about the ALS,” Greenville team chaplain Gerald Fowler said. “One guy said he couldn’t believe it when the coaches put Jeremy into that first game, and it took him about three plays to realize that Jeremy belonged and he didn’t.”
The Memphis coaches loved him and nicknamed him the “Georgia Assassin” for his fearless style of play. He was known for delivering crushing blows to running backs and wide receivers much larger in size. A few years after finishing college, Williams ran into former Mississippi State coaching legend Jackie Sherrill and said, “I bet you don’t remember me.”
Sherrill sized him up and said, “Yes sir, I do. You were No. 19, the safety at Memphis. How could I forget?”
Williams married his high school sweetheart 16 years ago.
First came daughter Josie, now 8, bright, gregarious and totally in love with her father.
Then came Jacob, who was born with spina bifida and likely will remain in a wheelchair for life.
“Our doctors advised us to abort, but we said that ‘it’s not an option,’ ” Jeremy recalled. “They said he would never function properly ... But he’s smart as a whip. He’s a true blessing.”
That feeling runs strong through the Williams family.
“When people ask me how I deal with our family’s health issues, I tell them for us life is different from your normal family,” said his wife, Jennifer Williams. “We don’t take anything for granted. Every day, every hour we spend together as a family is a blessing. We’re about as close as a family can get.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Jacob, 6, underwent “knee retraction” surgery at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite to straighten out his legs — his eighth operation, with many more to come. Jacob wants to walk so he can play football for his dad one day.
He asked to call his father about a big surprise as soon as he finished surgery.
“You got both of your [leg] casts in red in support of the Patriots? That’s great, Jacob ... I love you so much,” Williams said on the other end of the phone.
Last Friday, at Greenville’s road game at Marion County, the players gave high-fives to Jacob as they walked onto the field. A few minutes later, Jacob was leading a group of 40 Greenville fans in cheers.
“Let’s ... go ... Patriots,” Jacob yelled at the top of his lungs.
Passion for his players
Meriwether County is the birthplace of three Georgia governors, and the county seat of Greenville was named for Revolutionary War hero Nathaniel Greene.
The county is best known for Warm Springs, the home of alternative therapy for President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The temperature of the springs stays at 90 degrees, and the pools were considered therapeutic for polio victims, including Roosevelt. His “Little White House” in Warm Springs attracts more than 100,000 visitors annually.
Things move a little more slowly here. The county has two public high schools, including rival Manchester of Class AA.
Along with being one of the state’s smallest schools — the enrollment of 380 makes it a tenth the size of some Atlanta schools — Greenville also has a pint-sized football roster of 44 players. Last Thursday when the junior varsity was dressing for its game, Greenville’s assistant coaches had to “stand in” at various positions during varsity practice to have enough players to review formations.
Greenville has overmatched many opponents with its fleet defense, which posted shutouts in four of the final five regular-season games. Williams is so proud of his team that he jokes with the media that he won’t discuss ALS unless he gets a promise that his team also will be interviewed.
“Jeremy gets totally consumed by football,” said his wife. “He loves football, but his passion is his football players ... no doubt about it.”
And the feeling is mutual from the players.
“The kids love him,” said Greenville assistant coach Rob Fowler. “They will do anything for him. When they see him, I think it sends the whole message of not quitting and playing through adversity.
“The other team could have first down and goal at our 1-yard line, and the idea of not stopping them is not in our minds. I think they get that from [Williams], the whole mentality of being tough and fighting.”
Keeping up the fight
As Williams’ limitations increase, so does the support he gets from family and friends.
Little things such as walking from the field house to the football field are a time-consuming chore for Williams, who also has muscle atrophy in his left foot.
Last year, a group of community leaders put out the word that Williams needed a golf cart; they raised the money within 48 hours.
Williams has difficulty with buttons on clothes, and his wife sews metal rings on zippers to help with maneuvering them. Daughter Josie makes sure his shoelaces are tied each morning before school.
Some days can be grinding for Williams, but he says he has never entertained the thought of no longer coaching.
“I’ve had people ask me about [retiring], and I always reply, ‘For what?’ When I can’t do the job that I feel like I should be doing, then I will step away. Until then, I’m going to keep going.
“That’s what the doctor suggested, too. A lot of people when they get ALS, they forget about living. They sit down and wait. I’ve never been like that. I’ve always fought with everything I had.”
By Michael Carvell
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Even as his team wins game after game, coach Jeremy Williams is dying, slowly and inexorably.
ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, has stolen his strength to the point that this former quarterback can no longer throw a football. A golf cart carries him onto the field. By the end of a Friday night game, he is often so fatigued that he must lean on his players. The disease slurs his speech, so that an assistant coach stands near him to “echo” his play calls to the team.
And yet Williams, a young-looking 38, still stands on the sidelines, leading and inspiring his Greenville High School Patriots. And they still win every game — 10-0 this year, with five shutouts — for a coach they love.
Greenville plays in the opening round of the state playoffs tonight on its home field. The visiting Pelham Hornets, 5-5, could end the Patriots’ season this evening, but the Hornets could not face a team that will play with more purpose, nor a town that will root with more passion, nor a coach who knows more about adversity than Jeremy Williams.
Never give up
The Patriots are the biggest show in Greenville, a no-stoplight town 60 miles southwest of Atlanta and the seat of Meriwether County.
Greenville, population 946 in the last census, believes its Patriots will be crowned state champions on Dec. 12 at the Georgia Dome, and many of those hopes and dreams have come to focus not on a trophy but on a coach.
“It has been one of those years where everything has come together,” Williams said. “This group has overcome a lot of adversity ... not just me, but also the kids.”
The Patriots have adopted their coach’s never-surrender attitude. A few of them refer to Williams as a “second father,” and like loyal sons they quietly keep an eye on him.
When the coach walked out for practice last week, a couple of seniors stopped dressing at their lockers to hold open the heavy metal door for him. No words were exchanged, nor did anybody else in the room pay attention — one of the many unspoken courtesies for “coach.”
At practice, Williams blends in with his coaches but isn’t able to yell as loudly. When he has something important to say, the players quiet down to grasp every word. A few times, teammates look at each other and nod, to confirm that they heard the same thing.
“We’ve been around him for so long, and the disease now makes it hard for him to talk,” defensive end Vincent Warner said. “A lot of his words run together, but that makes us pay more attention to him.
“If he says anything and we don’t understand, we ask each other before we go back to Coach because we don’t want him to waste a bunch of words. If we really don’t understand, then we’ll ask him to repeat it.
“He’ll laugh about that, take it in stride and tell us again.”
Linebacker Dennis Benning, a junior at Greenville, leads the team in tackles for the season.
“Coach Williams told us, ‘As long as you’re standing, I’ll be standing right beside you all,’ ” Benning said. “We know it is hard for him to get out here. We know he is going through a lot. That’s why we want to win the state championship so badly for Coach. We want to do it for him.”
Discovering the illness
A “bad thumb” is how Williams describes what turned out to be his first ALS symptom. Five years ago, he tore ligaments in his left thumb while breaking up a scuffle at football practice.
During his playing days at Kendrick High in Columbus and then at the University of Memphis, he had experienced all the usual nagging pains that come with the game.
This time, however, the pain wouldn’t go away. During the next 18 months, he began feeling numbness in both arms from his fingertips to his elbows. He also noticed that the muscles in his forearms were deteriorating.
“We’d walk every morning at 5:30, and every so often Jeremy would mention his left hand, how it would hurt and then how he couldn’t control it,” defensive coordinator Tripp Busby said.
“It progressed to the point where you could see bones in his hand and arms because the muscle structure was going away. We just kept praying that it would be something the doctors would be able to cure.”
Williams was worried. He thought it could be ALS, but he wasn’t quite sure. He went to three doctors and got three different opinions. And the progression of the illness seemed so slow.
Then, in June of 2008, a team of doctors at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University confirmed ALS, an incurable disease of the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movements.
“The prognosis is ‘when’ ... as nobody has ever been cured of ALS,” Williams said. “It’s a matter of time. Some die within two to three years, some in five to 10 years, and some in 20. Now, I will be cured one day with Jesus Christ, and I believe that.”
For one so afflicted, Williams is absolutely unquestioning in his faith. His office walls feature numerous handwritten Bible quotations, including one from Matthew: “Keep on asking, and it will be given you; keep on seeking and you will find; keep on knocking (reverently) and the door will be opened to you.”
His ALS progressed slowly at first, but the illness began to accelerate last season. He knew things had really changed when he picked up a ball and found he no longer had the strength to throw it.
The nerves in his arms twitch so much that he began wearing long-sleeved athletic shirts, even in the summer, to avoid distracting others.
A fighter all his life
Long odds are nothing new for Williams, who played at Kendrick High of Columbus under one of the state’s coaching legends, Buzz Busby. As an undersized but scrappy quarterback, Williams was overlooked by college scouts in 1990.
After making plans to be a walk-on at a smaller school, Williams landed a last-minute scholarship offer from the University of Memphis, which was seeking safeties who could be the “quarterbacks of the defense.”
As the story goes, Williams was No. 5 on the depth chart when he reported for his freshmen year. Three weeks into summer practice, he had moved up to second-string. In the opener for Memphis, the No. 1 safety suffered a season-ending injury in the first quarter. The wide-eyed Williams was inserted into the game and never relinquished a starting position over the next four seasons.
“Some of Jeremy’s college teammates wrote him e-mails after hearing about the ALS,” Greenville team chaplain Gerald Fowler said. “One guy said he couldn’t believe it when the coaches put Jeremy into that first game, and it took him about three plays to realize that Jeremy belonged and he didn’t.”
The Memphis coaches loved him and nicknamed him the “Georgia Assassin” for his fearless style of play. He was known for delivering crushing blows to running backs and wide receivers much larger in size. A few years after finishing college, Williams ran into former Mississippi State coaching legend Jackie Sherrill and said, “I bet you don’t remember me.”
Sherrill sized him up and said, “Yes sir, I do. You were No. 19, the safety at Memphis. How could I forget?”
Williams married his high school sweetheart 16 years ago.
First came daughter Josie, now 8, bright, gregarious and totally in love with her father.
Then came Jacob, who was born with spina bifida and likely will remain in a wheelchair for life.
“Our doctors advised us to abort, but we said that ‘it’s not an option,’ ” Jeremy recalled. “They said he would never function properly ... But he’s smart as a whip. He’s a true blessing.”
That feeling runs strong through the Williams family.
“When people ask me how I deal with our family’s health issues, I tell them for us life is different from your normal family,” said his wife, Jennifer Williams. “We don’t take anything for granted. Every day, every hour we spend together as a family is a blessing. We’re about as close as a family can get.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Jacob, 6, underwent “knee retraction” surgery at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite to straighten out his legs — his eighth operation, with many more to come. Jacob wants to walk so he can play football for his dad one day.
He asked to call his father about a big surprise as soon as he finished surgery.
“You got both of your [leg] casts in red in support of the Patriots? That’s great, Jacob ... I love you so much,” Williams said on the other end of the phone.
Last Friday, at Greenville’s road game at Marion County, the players gave high-fives to Jacob as they walked onto the field. A few minutes later, Jacob was leading a group of 40 Greenville fans in cheers.
“Let’s ... go ... Patriots,” Jacob yelled at the top of his lungs.
Passion for his players
Meriwether County is the birthplace of three Georgia governors, and the county seat of Greenville was named for Revolutionary War hero Nathaniel Greene.
The county is best known for Warm Springs, the home of alternative therapy for President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The temperature of the springs stays at 90 degrees, and the pools were considered therapeutic for polio victims, including Roosevelt. His “Little White House” in Warm Springs attracts more than 100,000 visitors annually.
Things move a little more slowly here. The county has two public high schools, including rival Manchester of Class AA.
Along with being one of the state’s smallest schools — the enrollment of 380 makes it a tenth the size of some Atlanta schools — Greenville also has a pint-sized football roster of 44 players. Last Thursday when the junior varsity was dressing for its game, Greenville’s assistant coaches had to “stand in” at various positions during varsity practice to have enough players to review formations.
Greenville has overmatched many opponents with its fleet defense, which posted shutouts in four of the final five regular-season games. Williams is so proud of his team that he jokes with the media that he won’t discuss ALS unless he gets a promise that his team also will be interviewed.
“Jeremy gets totally consumed by football,” said his wife. “He loves football, but his passion is his football players ... no doubt about it.”
And the feeling is mutual from the players.
“The kids love him,” said Greenville assistant coach Rob Fowler. “They will do anything for him. When they see him, I think it sends the whole message of not quitting and playing through adversity.
“The other team could have first down and goal at our 1-yard line, and the idea of not stopping them is not in our minds. I think they get that from [Williams], the whole mentality of being tough and fighting.”
Keeping up the fight
As Williams’ limitations increase, so does the support he gets from family and friends.
Little things such as walking from the field house to the football field are a time-consuming chore for Williams, who also has muscle atrophy in his left foot.
Last year, a group of community leaders put out the word that Williams needed a golf cart; they raised the money within 48 hours.
Williams has difficulty with buttons on clothes, and his wife sews metal rings on zippers to help with maneuvering them. Daughter Josie makes sure his shoelaces are tied each morning before school.
Some days can be grinding for Williams, but he says he has never entertained the thought of no longer coaching.
“I’ve had people ask me about [retiring], and I always reply, ‘For what?’ When I can’t do the job that I feel like I should be doing, then I will step away. Until then, I’m going to keep going.
“That’s what the doctor suggested, too. A lot of people when they get ALS, they forget about living. They sit down and wait. I’ve never been like that. I’ve always fought with everything I had.”
Congrats to the Patriots and to the opposing coach for a tremendous show of sportsmanship
