From The Athletic. Yancy McKnight doesn't have a huge role in Butler's story...but I'm not sure if he gets a D1 scholarship offer without him. And even beyond that, this is just a tremendous story that makes you want to cheer for the kid.
IOWA STATE WR HAKEEM BUTLER GIVES THANKS FOR WHAT HE HAS AND WHAT HE HAD
Max Olson Nov 21, 2018 22
AMES, Iowa — Hakeem Butler has his own tradition for Mother's Day.
He makes a trip to the grocery on that Sunday in May to buy a card and a balloon. This year he picked out one with a dog on the front and a goofy and sweet message inside and wrote a note to his mom. He headed to Lake LaVerne, the peaceful pond on Iowa State's campus. He tied the card to the balloon and he let go.
Year after year, the day is a tough one for the Cyclones wide receiver. He's spent too many holidays without her. The balloon, gently floating up and away, is his ritual for sending her his thanks.
As badly as he misses his mother, he is deeply grateful for the path she set out for him. When Sherryl Ford died in 2012 after a two-year bout with breast cancer, her family made one of her longtime dreams come true: Her sons got out of Baltimore. Hakeem and his younger brother Khalil were taken in by the Harrisons, their relatives in far-away Houston. The 1,200-mile move to Texas granted them a chance to start a new life.
And six years later, with the help of all those who believed in him, Hakeem is here, becoming something most never could have anticipated: one of college football's finest playmakers.
"I think I appreciate it every time I score," he said, "just because I look around and all these people are cheering for me. They don't even know where I came from or all that stuff, how hard it was for me to get here. It's just crazy to me sometimes that I'm even here."
At the age of 16, he had a choice. He could use his heartbreak as his excuse, or he could focus on counting his blessings. And so many have come his way since. His mother made him strong, and when she passed, he was saved and supported by a veritable village of people who stepped forward to raise him. Her death didn't have to be his ending — it was his beginning.
"I always say she passed away to give me new life," he said. "That's how I look at it."
Sherryl Ford's children admiringly say she was a diva in the best way.
She loved to sing, especially Mary J. Blige songs. Her kids laugh when they look back on this and swear that, no, she couldn't sing. But that never stopped her. Hakeem remembers her living her life to the fullest, whether donning her Postal Service uniform or dressing for dancing on Wednesday nights.
"Most people would say when you saw her delivering mail, it was like a model delivering mail," her oldest daughter Amber Ford-McCallum said. "She walked up and down the street like a model."
Her mail route took her through Charles Street and a variety of neighborhoods — "from the hood to the very rich," Amber remembers — and she was embraced by all. She'd come home on holidays carrying gifts and cards given to her by the friends made on her route. And she'd do the same, buying gifts for less-fortunate children. This was her community, and she took pride in serving it.
"Everybody loved my mom," Khalil Butler said. "We'd go out to the store with her to get groceries and everyone would say, 'Oh hey, Miss Sherryl!' They'd stop and talk to her. Everybody knew who Sherryl Ford was. You couldn't go anywhere in Baltimore City without somebody saying, 'Hey! How you doing?' and her just standing there for an hour having a whole conversation with them."
Hakeem Butler is No. 3 in the FBS in yards per reception and 12th in yards per target. (Iowa Athletic Communications)
She was a resilient single mother who raised her three children right and worked hard for what she got. She put her all into her kids, teaching them to be respectful and thankful. Amber calls her the epitome of class and how a lady carries herself. If her mom struggled, she wouldn't show it.
For a time when Hakeem and Khalil were young, they lived in a one-bedroom house. Hakeem slept on the top of a bunk bed, Sherryl and Khalil slept on the bottom bunk and Amber slept in the living room. Amber says she'll never forget the day, during her mother's first month with the Postal Service, when that arrangement changed.
"She sat me down and pulled out her first check," Amber remembers, "and she said, 'You see this? This means we're never gonna have to struggle again.' And we never did after that. She moved us out of the one-bedroom the next week. We moved into a house where everyone had their own bedroom."
Sherryl and Amber, who is 9 years older than Hakeem, kept the boys out of trouble. A common warning they'd dish out: "Do you want to be another statistic?" Amber says their northeast Baltimore neighborhood wasn't too bad but admits they'd see the same things — drugs, crime, death — you'd find in the roughest areas. Hakeem and Khalil, born 18 months apart, kept their heads down and their focus elsewhere.
"Every day you'd see something new," Hakeem said. "Crackheads, drug addicts, drug dealers. Every day. For me, growing up, that's just the way it was. I thought that was normal. I thought that's what everybody saw. My mom kept us on the straight and narrow. She wasn't about none of that nonsense. I thank her for it every day."
Hakeem always thought he was the best football player in the neighborhood games, envisioning himself as Randy Moss and wearing the purple Vikings jersey to prove it. When he was 9 years old, he signed up to play in pads and was put on the offensive line. He was offended but did enjoy pushing guys around. But his initial foray with tackle football didn't last long. He remembers, during his first season, seeing a kid break an ankle.
"That was it for me," he said. "And it was too much running. I was like, 'This ain't for me.' So I played basketball. But I used to foul out all the time so they'd say, 'You should try football.' "
Many weekends they would leave northeast Baltimore and stay with an aunt outside the city. Sometimes they would hit the road and visit family in Georgia or Texas. The boys spent many summers in Houston with Sherryl's nephew, Aaron Harrison Sr., and his twin boys Aaron and Andrew, the five-star basketball prodigies. Because that always was safer.
"There's more to the world than Baltimore," Hakeem said. "That's something she always tried to get across to us."
Hakeem was close to turning 14 when Sherryl got sick. At that age, he didn't really understand what was going on, but he does remember the day she received the phone call about her diagnosis.
"She just fell on the floor and was crying," he said. "I'm like, 'What's wrong?' She said, 'Call your aunt, call your uncle, tell them to get over here.' "
Sherryl was diagnosed with breast cancer in the spring of 2010, a revelation that turned their family's world upside down. She began chemotherapy and radiation, and everyone reassured Hakeem she was going to get better. He always believed she would pull through and they'd get past it together. His mother was Superwoman in his eyes, invincible and unstoppable.
This went on for more than two years. The cancer went into remission at one point, then came back more aggressively. But she kept fighting. And she never lost her positivity, her diva swagger.
"I have never seen anybody work a bald head like that," said Khalil, who was 12 when Sherryl was diagnosed. "I'm so serious. People used to tell me all the time, 'Your mom looks better without hair than she did with hair!' "
She never stopped telling her children how much she loved them and that everything was going to be OK, trying her best to shield them from knowing how serious her condition was becoming. Their support system through the hardest times was an extended family that Hakeem says exceeds 400 or maybe 500 in number. Sherryl had 10 siblings, and her father had 12. Their massive family tree of aunts, uncles and cousins stepped in to help as much as possible.
During this painful process, Hakeem was entering high school at Baltimore City College, a magnet school. He'd taken up football again when he got to middle school and all his friends were playing. He played quarterback and cornerback. He wasn't really meant for quarterback, he says with a laugh, because he had a tendency to yell at his linemen too much. He moved from the position during his freshman year and started catching passes at tight end on the JV team.
Away from school, Hakeem helped his mother get to doctor's appointments, take her medicine, run her errands. Before her illness, he'd been an excellent student, but he missed so much school during his sophomore year that he was failing his classes. To get his grades and life back on track, he was sent to live with relatives in Macon, Ga., for a semester in the fall of 2012.
"They didn't want me to mess my life up in high school and never have the opportunity to do anything else in my life because of those two years," Hakeem said.
He visited his mother in hospice care when she was nearing the end, still unaware of just how sick she was. He'd remained hopeful that her condition was improving.
"She was just my mom, making jokes," Hakeem said. "It just felt normal to me, talking to her and messing with her. All her friends were in there laughing with her. People were crying, just because adults are so emotional. Me, I was just like, 'Y'all gotta stop crying and just be happy right now.' "
Sherryl Ford died on Oct. 18, 2012. Hakeem was in Georgia at the time. Her funeral at United Baptist Church in Baltimore was a standing-room-only event. Aaron Harrison Sr. guesses there were easily 1,500 gathered to celebrate her life. Khalil remembers the endless line of people — family, friends, folks from all over the neighborhood and her mail route — who came to say farewell.
"At the funeral, my aunt stood up and said, 'Would the family of Sherryl Ford please stand,' " Amber recalls. "So, of course, the immediate family stands. And she said, 'No. Will the family of Sherryl Ford please stand.' And the entire church stood up. If you had a chance to meet her, to know her is to love her, absolutely."
To this day, she says, Hakeem doesn't talk much about how their mother's death affected him, about how hard those two years were. The funeral, he says, was the moment when he finally allowed himself to grieve.
"I think that's the first time I really cried over it," he said. "She's really not coming back. That was the toughest thing for me, seeing everybody in my family cry so hard. I kinda let it in. My whole time, it was like, 'Man, you gotta be strong.' Because they tell you men don't cry, so I can't cry. Seeing the men in my family cry like I've never seen them cry before, all my uncles and stuff? Hardest day of my life."
A family meeting was convened afterward, and Sherryl's wishes were conveyed: Her boys needed to stay together. They would be moving to Richmond, Texas, to live with Aaron Sr., who took Khalil home with him after the funeral. Hakeem finished out the semester in Georgia before relocating. And then he started over.
Hakeem always looked up to the man he called Uncle Ron. Because Uncle Ron made it out.
For Aaron Harrison Sr., bringing the boys to Houston was an easy decision, something he didn't question. There was never a thought, he said, of them going anywhere else.
The summers they'd spent together helped make for a smooth transition. And in some ways, the timing was ideal. Hakeem arrived eight months before Aaron and Andrew left for the University of Kentucky. Aaron Sr. says he would have been "smacked in the face with the empty nest" if Hakeem and Khalil hadn't come along.
Sherryl's sons gained the father figure they'd always lacked. Their biological father was in and out of the picture early on. He left when the boys were young and hasn't attempted to re-enter their lives. Anybody can be a father, Hakeem says resolutely, but it takes a real man to be dad. They call Aaron Sr. their dad and the twins their brothers. And Aaron Sr. calls them his sons, no different from the twins.
"For a while there, I looked at it like I don't have a mom or a dad now," Hakeem said. "But my dad now, he stepped up and did an amazing job. I could never be more grateful. I always text him on Father's Day to tell him he changed my life."
Hakeem Butler, Aaron Harrison, Aaron Harrison Sr., Andrew Harrison and Khalil Butler.
Aaron Sr. taught them about accountability and taking care of your business. He's strict with them, no question, but Khalil says they have fun together. When Hakeem first moved in, Aaron Sr. remembers seeing him wear a pair of Superman socks that had small capes hanging off the back. They were one pair in a large collection of colorful socks. Aaron Sr. wasn't having it.
"My uncle sees those and goes, 'Boy, what is this?' " Khalil recalled. "Keem says: 'It's my swag!' "
"Men don't wear them kinda socks," Aaron Sr. said. "I took all those."
He could easily tell, though, that the boys appreciated their new setting in the Houston suburbs in a way most kids might not.
"The culture here is so much different," Aaron Sr. said. "You've got these kids in Texas who want to be the tough, hard kids. Hakeem had a chance to see that life in Baltimore and then see this one and realize, 'I like this one much better.' The kids here don't appreciate safety. They want to be worse than what they are. Hakeem has told me, 'I always wanted to live here.' "
Aaron Sr. runs an AAU basketball team there, the Houston Defenders, and his new sons started playing hoops for him. Hakeem was a long and lanky 6-feet-6, but that didn't mean he could play. When he hit his growth spurt as a teen, he swears it threw off everything — his coordination, his dribble, his shot. And his dad gave him no special treatment when it came to minutes.
"Hakeem was terrible," Khalil said. "Awful. The worst. He wasn't gonna play. He might get you a couple rebounds. He's definitely going to foul somebody."
Hakeem stuck with it and improved over the years, but early on he asked Aaron Sr. if he could try getting back into football.
At Fort Bend Travis High School, he had so much catching up to do. Because he'd essentially failed a year of classes in Baltimore, his transcript was a mess and he had to repeat his sophomore year. He was quieter and more guarded as a new student, understandably so given what he'd been through.
Two women managed to bring him out of his shell. Lizzie Herring is an associate principal at Travis High and Becky Martinez is the school's college and career readiness adviser. They took the lead on helping Hakeem get back on track academically, which required full course loads plus online classes, summer school and credit recovery just to become a qualifier. The task required great grades and a lot of motivation.
"Those are like my second moms," Hakeem said. "I'm forever indebted to them."
Butler with Becky Martinez (left) and Lizzie Herring.
Herring says you won't find a staff member at Travis High who will say a negative word about Hakeem. He was polite, always smiling and adored by his teachers. Martinez got to know him well through basketball — her husband, Brian, was one of Hakeem's coaches — and through his visits to her office. She and her husband consider him one of their sons, and their twin sons Alex and Zack admire him like a big brother. He and Khalil like to stay at their house when they're back in town.
"It doesn't take long before Hakeem can become family for you," Becky Martinez said. "He just fits. He's just part of the family. I don't even know how to explain it. He walks in your life and you gotta love him. You just gotta take him in and love him. He does the same for us. He loves our kids right back. Any parent knows that if they're gonna love your kid right back, there's a special place in your heart for them."
They have a special place in his, too, for the way they helped fight for him. His efforts to restart his football career were full of hurdles. Butler had to six out six games as a junior because the University Interscholastic League (UIL), which governs Texas high school athletics, suspected his transfer was for athletic purposes. The next year, he had to apply to the UIL for a fifth year of athletic eligibility and prove he hadn't been playing during the year he missed school in Baltimore. When that request was denied, they traveled to Austin to plead his case at a UIL hearing.
To make those administrators understand why he deserved his senior season, Hakeem had to explain where he'd been.
"We had to have a conversation of, 'OK, I know this is not your comfort zone. This is not something you want to talk about,' " Herring said. " 'But we have to go in there and let them know why you want to play. This is what you've been working so hard for.' "
So he told his story of his former life in Baltimore. He opened up about what it was like to care for his sick mother and what it was like to lose her. And the panel listened and voted unanimously to let him play.
Butler played in eight football games the fall of his senior year and caught 28 passes. He showed flashes of potential but was still too raw. When the season ended, he had no scholarship offers. He figured he'd have to turn his attention back to basketball, where he was receiving some low-level recruiting interest. But then Lou Ayeni found him.
Hakeem still remembers what Ayeni said in the hallway outside the Travis basketball gym when they first met.
"I only recruit freaks."
Ayeni, then in his first year as the running backs coach at Iowa State, was in Houston recruiting in the winter of 2014 when he got word of a long, athletic kid worth looking into. The senior tape didn't show a ton. But there were four clips of him busting through lines and using his length to block kicks. There were clips of Hakeem delivering devastating blocks. There was enough there to pique Ayeni's interest.
He showed up to a Travis basketball practice and saw the 6-6, 175-pound senior slamming dunks and alley-oops. Ayeni was puzzled why nobody else was on the kid. What are his issues? What did he do wrong? His coaches vowed he was a great kid and explained his backstory. So Ayeni introduced himself in the hallway and they got to talking. Hakeem was intrigued, even if he'd never heard of Iowa State.
Ayeni went back to campus and didn't have much luck selling the rest of the Cyclones' coaching staff on the two-star steal he'd discovered. They didn't have room for him in their 2015 class. And Butler was clearly a risky take. Not too much tape. Too much work to be done in the classroom. But Ayeni liked the kid so much that he promised, even if the Cyclones couldn't sign him, he'd tip off other college coaches to check him out.
"One of our first conversations was about his mother," Ayeni said. "That's what kinda drew me to the kid. I could feel his pain and I could feel his desire and drive to make his mother proud. I just wanted to help him. I really did. I didn't want him to miss out on an opportunity to honor her with his ability."
Ayeni says one Iowa State staffer who backed him on wanting to take Hakeem was strength coach Yancy McKnight. So when McKnight left to join Tom Herman's staff at Houston that offseason, the Cougars gave Hakeem a scholarship offer and a chance to stay home.
"When those guys offered, I finally had my stand-on-the-table moment and was like, 'Tell me what's wrong with this kid,' " Ayeni said. "Finally, all the coaches and Coach (Paul) Rhoads were like, 'Yeah, absolutely, let's go for it.' "
They brought in Hakeem on a Monday in late January for his official visit. When Rhoads sat down with him and heard his story, he said it all made sense. He was ready to offer. Hakeem took his visit to Houston that weekend and then faced a difficult decision. Two days before signing day, he called Aaron Sr., who was out on the road with the twins for a Kentucky game, and told him he was going to be a Cyclone.
"I wanted to see something different," Hakeem said. "I'm all about new experiences."
He needed to finish out strong, getting all A's and B's in his senior year at Travis, in order to even make his 1,000-mile move here. Herring and Martinez kept him on track, and he put in the work. And when he finally qualified, he joined his new team eager to prove he belonged.
When he got to Iowa State, Hakeem found out just how raw he really was. In his first 7-on-7 drill, he ran a hitch and cornerback Sam Richardson raced in front of him for a pick-six. Welcome to college, kid. Everybody's fast here, a teammate told him, and everybody was the best at their school. He still had a lot to learn. He says he was a "knucklehead" during his redshirt season, showing up late too often and not taking things seriously. A lot of people, he says, didn't know if he would last at Iowa State. He had doubts, too. But in practices, his vast potential would intermittently reveal itself.
"I wasn't always consistent," he said, "but I would make a crazy play and you'd be like, 'This kid's a little different.' "
New coach Matt Campbell and his staff arrived after Hakeem's first semester in the program and pushed him. They urged him to dedicate himself to becoming the best possible version of himself. In his first college game against Northern Iowa, Hakeem delivered one of those crazy plays with his first career catch: a one-handed touchdown grab on a back-shoulder fade.
He's been adding to that highlight reel ever since. He's scored 15 touchdowns over the last two seasons, and many of them have been jaw-droppers, like the one-handed catch against Baylor last year on which he spun, ran through two tacklers and scored. He makes those look easy.
Now that he's playing with some long-sought consistency, Hakeem's game has reached an elite level. He's putting up 21.8 yards per catch, which ranks third best nationally. He only needs 85 more yards to reach 1,000 on the season and could do so on fewer than 50 catches. He set out to prove Ayeni was right about him. In doing so, he's become everything Ayeni hoped and much more.
"Oh, I literally think we're not even scratching the surface in a lot of ways," Campbell said. "The ceiling for Hakeem is really as high as he wants it to be."
Hakeem Butler emerged from the visitor's locker room at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium a little before 11 p.m. Saturday, one of the last to leave after Iowa State's 24-10 loss to Texas. About 30 people awaited him near Iowa State's team bus. Aaron Harrison Sr. was there with more than a dozen members of their extended family. So were Lizzie Herring, Becky Martinez and their families. Hakeem grinned as he waded his way through the crowd, stopping for hugs and chats and countless photos.
Whenever he plays Big 12 games in Texas, he gets a chance to reunite with so many of the people who played roles in his life since his mother's passing. The folks who made Houston feel like home even make trips up to Ames year after year to pay him visits.
Amber says she wishes she could have been there Saturday night. She's still in Baltimore, raising two boys and working as an assistant manager for Amazon. Her second child was born on Oct. 18, giving the family something to celebrate on that date. She misses Hakeem and watches all his games. She says it still hurts to this day that she doesn't get to see her younger brothers as much as she'd like, but she's proud of who they've become.
Khalil is playing basketball at McMurry University, an NCAA Division III school in Abilene, Texas, and studying biology to become a veterinarian. Hakeem appreciates their FaceTime chats, often held late at night, and likes to video chat with him from the locker room before every Cyclones games. Khalil sees the chiseled 225-pound version of his older brother — "I don't know what they did to him," he jokes — and confesses he can't quite believe all this. Years ago, if you'd told him when they first arrived in Texas how their lives would play out, he'd call you crazy.
Ayeni left Iowa State at the end of last season for a job at Northwestern, his alma mater. Saying goodbye to Hakeem was tough, but Hakeem still calls to catch up and to say he loves him. Ayeni wants to be there on the day Hakeem graduates, the day he gets drafted into the NFL.
"I would've loved to watch that and watch him be who he is, just so I could hug him and say, 'You did it,' " Ayeni said. "I'll be watching from afar and smiling ear to ear. He's helped put Iowa State on the map."
Andrew Harrison is playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers these days, and Aaron is in Istanbul playing for Galatasaray in the EuroCup. They're thrilled to watch Hakeem thriving. Their father has been hitting the road to see all four of his sons play. He made the trip to Ames for the season opener this year and later admitted he had tears in his eyes upon seeing Hakeem carrying the flag and leading his team onto the field. Hakeem's reply: "Man, you're getting soft on me!"
Campbell says he sat down with Hakeem recently and asked about his mother. He wanted to better understand the source of what makes his receiver special. He can tell Sherryl Ford's son embodies so much of what she stood for in raising him. She shines through in his personality and his play.
"I think Hakeem is one of those guys that, when you cut him open, the thing I love about him is he has an incredible heart," Campbell said.
Butler has a size/speed/strength combination that should impress NFL scouts. (Iowa State Athletic Communications)
His breakout star will have a decision to make soon about whether to enter the NFL draft. Whether he goes pro this year or next, Aaron Sr. says scouts will be in for a surprise. He says Hakeem is closer to 6-feet-7 than 6-6, with a 7-1 wingspan and a 40-inch vertical and size 3XL hands. He's even confident his son would run a sub-4.5 time in the 40. Hakeem admits he's kept an eye on guys like Arizona State's N'Keal Harry and Ole Miss' A.J. Brown this season. He doesn't get the media attention those receivers command. He can't say he's surprised.
"My whole life, I've been counted out and under-recruited and under the radar," Hakeem said. "I wouldn't expect nothing less. But at some point, you're gonna have to believe what you see. It's not a fluke."
Still, the mere idea of playing pro football is something he never, ever thought would happen. A few weeks ago, he made one of his greatest catches yet. He leaped and reached over a Kansas safety to bring in a ball with his left hand, then threw the defender out of his way with his right and finished a 51-yard touchdown.
The next morning, the highlight played on ESPN's "Sunday NFL Countdown." Randy Moss broke it down live on the air.
"There is nobody that can tell you, 'I knew this,' " Aaron Sr. said. "He can't tell you that he knew this. None of us knew this. I knew he was very athletic. But I never knew he had an opportunity to do this."
Sherryl never got to witness this. Hakeem has no doubt she'd be going crazy at his games if she were here today, the loudest and proudest diva in all of Jack Trice Stadium. He kneels and talks to her before every game.
But instead of dwelling on her absence, he gets to share all of this with people he loves, the community of family and friends and coaches with whom he's found kinship. As Khalil puts it, blood couldn't make them any closer. Becky Martinez can't help but get teary when she talks about wishing she could meet Sherryl. She just hopes they've all made her proud.
Hakeem never really had a father. Then he lost his mother. He knows he'd be lost today without all the parental figures who've filled the void by taking him in and changing his life. They ensure he'll never feel alone.
IOWA STATE WR HAKEEM BUTLER GIVES THANKS FOR WHAT HE HAS AND WHAT HE HAD
Max Olson Nov 21, 2018 22
AMES, Iowa — Hakeem Butler has his own tradition for Mother's Day.
He makes a trip to the grocery on that Sunday in May to buy a card and a balloon. This year he picked out one with a dog on the front and a goofy and sweet message inside and wrote a note to his mom. He headed to Lake LaVerne, the peaceful pond on Iowa State's campus. He tied the card to the balloon and he let go.
Year after year, the day is a tough one for the Cyclones wide receiver. He's spent too many holidays without her. The balloon, gently floating up and away, is his ritual for sending her his thanks.
As badly as he misses his mother, he is deeply grateful for the path she set out for him. When Sherryl Ford died in 2012 after a two-year bout with breast cancer, her family made one of her longtime dreams come true: Her sons got out of Baltimore. Hakeem and his younger brother Khalil were taken in by the Harrisons, their relatives in far-away Houston. The 1,200-mile move to Texas granted them a chance to start a new life.
And six years later, with the help of all those who believed in him, Hakeem is here, becoming something most never could have anticipated: one of college football's finest playmakers.
"I think I appreciate it every time I score," he said, "just because I look around and all these people are cheering for me. They don't even know where I came from or all that stuff, how hard it was for me to get here. It's just crazy to me sometimes that I'm even here."
At the age of 16, he had a choice. He could use his heartbreak as his excuse, or he could focus on counting his blessings. And so many have come his way since. His mother made him strong, and when she passed, he was saved and supported by a veritable village of people who stepped forward to raise him. Her death didn't have to be his ending — it was his beginning.
"I always say she passed away to give me new life," he said. "That's how I look at it."
Sherryl Ford's children admiringly say she was a diva in the best way.
She loved to sing, especially Mary J. Blige songs. Her kids laugh when they look back on this and swear that, no, she couldn't sing. But that never stopped her. Hakeem remembers her living her life to the fullest, whether donning her Postal Service uniform or dressing for dancing on Wednesday nights.
"Most people would say when you saw her delivering mail, it was like a model delivering mail," her oldest daughter Amber Ford-McCallum said. "She walked up and down the street like a model."
Her mail route took her through Charles Street and a variety of neighborhoods — "from the hood to the very rich," Amber remembers — and she was embraced by all. She'd come home on holidays carrying gifts and cards given to her by the friends made on her route. And she'd do the same, buying gifts for less-fortunate children. This was her community, and she took pride in serving it.
"Everybody loved my mom," Khalil Butler said. "We'd go out to the store with her to get groceries and everyone would say, 'Oh hey, Miss Sherryl!' They'd stop and talk to her. Everybody knew who Sherryl Ford was. You couldn't go anywhere in Baltimore City without somebody saying, 'Hey! How you doing?' and her just standing there for an hour having a whole conversation with them."
Hakeem Butler is No. 3 in the FBS in yards per reception and 12th in yards per target. (Iowa Athletic Communications)
She was a resilient single mother who raised her three children right and worked hard for what she got. She put her all into her kids, teaching them to be respectful and thankful. Amber calls her the epitome of class and how a lady carries herself. If her mom struggled, she wouldn't show it.
For a time when Hakeem and Khalil were young, they lived in a one-bedroom house. Hakeem slept on the top of a bunk bed, Sherryl and Khalil slept on the bottom bunk and Amber slept in the living room. Amber says she'll never forget the day, during her mother's first month with the Postal Service, when that arrangement changed.
"She sat me down and pulled out her first check," Amber remembers, "and she said, 'You see this? This means we're never gonna have to struggle again.' And we never did after that. She moved us out of the one-bedroom the next week. We moved into a house where everyone had their own bedroom."
Sherryl and Amber, who is 9 years older than Hakeem, kept the boys out of trouble. A common warning they'd dish out: "Do you want to be another statistic?" Amber says their northeast Baltimore neighborhood wasn't too bad but admits they'd see the same things — drugs, crime, death — you'd find in the roughest areas. Hakeem and Khalil, born 18 months apart, kept their heads down and their focus elsewhere.
"Every day you'd see something new," Hakeem said. "Crackheads, drug addicts, drug dealers. Every day. For me, growing up, that's just the way it was. I thought that was normal. I thought that's what everybody saw. My mom kept us on the straight and narrow. She wasn't about none of that nonsense. I thank her for it every day."
Hakeem always thought he was the best football player in the neighborhood games, envisioning himself as Randy Moss and wearing the purple Vikings jersey to prove it. When he was 9 years old, he signed up to play in pads and was put on the offensive line. He was offended but did enjoy pushing guys around. But his initial foray with tackle football didn't last long. He remembers, during his first season, seeing a kid break an ankle.
"That was it for me," he said. "And it was too much running. I was like, 'This ain't for me.' So I played basketball. But I used to foul out all the time so they'd say, 'You should try football.' "
Many weekends they would leave northeast Baltimore and stay with an aunt outside the city. Sometimes they would hit the road and visit family in Georgia or Texas. The boys spent many summers in Houston with Sherryl's nephew, Aaron Harrison Sr., and his twin boys Aaron and Andrew, the five-star basketball prodigies. Because that always was safer.
"There's more to the world than Baltimore," Hakeem said. "That's something she always tried to get across to us."
Hakeem was close to turning 14 when Sherryl got sick. At that age, he didn't really understand what was going on, but he does remember the day she received the phone call about her diagnosis.
"She just fell on the floor and was crying," he said. "I'm like, 'What's wrong?' She said, 'Call your aunt, call your uncle, tell them to get over here.' "
Sherryl was diagnosed with breast cancer in the spring of 2010, a revelation that turned their family's world upside down. She began chemotherapy and radiation, and everyone reassured Hakeem she was going to get better. He always believed she would pull through and they'd get past it together. His mother was Superwoman in his eyes, invincible and unstoppable.
This went on for more than two years. The cancer went into remission at one point, then came back more aggressively. But she kept fighting. And she never lost her positivity, her diva swagger.
"I have never seen anybody work a bald head like that," said Khalil, who was 12 when Sherryl was diagnosed. "I'm so serious. People used to tell me all the time, 'Your mom looks better without hair than she did with hair!' "
She never stopped telling her children how much she loved them and that everything was going to be OK, trying her best to shield them from knowing how serious her condition was becoming. Their support system through the hardest times was an extended family that Hakeem says exceeds 400 or maybe 500 in number. Sherryl had 10 siblings, and her father had 12. Their massive family tree of aunts, uncles and cousins stepped in to help as much as possible.
During this painful process, Hakeem was entering high school at Baltimore City College, a magnet school. He'd taken up football again when he got to middle school and all his friends were playing. He played quarterback and cornerback. He wasn't really meant for quarterback, he says with a laugh, because he had a tendency to yell at his linemen too much. He moved from the position during his freshman year and started catching passes at tight end on the JV team.
Away from school, Hakeem helped his mother get to doctor's appointments, take her medicine, run her errands. Before her illness, he'd been an excellent student, but he missed so much school during his sophomore year that he was failing his classes. To get his grades and life back on track, he was sent to live with relatives in Macon, Ga., for a semester in the fall of 2012.
"They didn't want me to mess my life up in high school and never have the opportunity to do anything else in my life because of those two years," Hakeem said.
He visited his mother in hospice care when she was nearing the end, still unaware of just how sick she was. He'd remained hopeful that her condition was improving.
"She was just my mom, making jokes," Hakeem said. "It just felt normal to me, talking to her and messing with her. All her friends were in there laughing with her. People were crying, just because adults are so emotional. Me, I was just like, 'Y'all gotta stop crying and just be happy right now.' "
Sherryl Ford died on Oct. 18, 2012. Hakeem was in Georgia at the time. Her funeral at United Baptist Church in Baltimore was a standing-room-only event. Aaron Harrison Sr. guesses there were easily 1,500 gathered to celebrate her life. Khalil remembers the endless line of people — family, friends, folks from all over the neighborhood and her mail route — who came to say farewell.
"At the funeral, my aunt stood up and said, 'Would the family of Sherryl Ford please stand,' " Amber recalls. "So, of course, the immediate family stands. And she said, 'No. Will the family of Sherryl Ford please stand.' And the entire church stood up. If you had a chance to meet her, to know her is to love her, absolutely."
To this day, she says, Hakeem doesn't talk much about how their mother's death affected him, about how hard those two years were. The funeral, he says, was the moment when he finally allowed himself to grieve.
"I think that's the first time I really cried over it," he said. "She's really not coming back. That was the toughest thing for me, seeing everybody in my family cry so hard. I kinda let it in. My whole time, it was like, 'Man, you gotta be strong.' Because they tell you men don't cry, so I can't cry. Seeing the men in my family cry like I've never seen them cry before, all my uncles and stuff? Hardest day of my life."
A family meeting was convened afterward, and Sherryl's wishes were conveyed: Her boys needed to stay together. They would be moving to Richmond, Texas, to live with Aaron Sr., who took Khalil home with him after the funeral. Hakeem finished out the semester in Georgia before relocating. And then he started over.
Hakeem always looked up to the man he called Uncle Ron. Because Uncle Ron made it out.
For Aaron Harrison Sr., bringing the boys to Houston was an easy decision, something he didn't question. There was never a thought, he said, of them going anywhere else.
The summers they'd spent together helped make for a smooth transition. And in some ways, the timing was ideal. Hakeem arrived eight months before Aaron and Andrew left for the University of Kentucky. Aaron Sr. says he would have been "smacked in the face with the empty nest" if Hakeem and Khalil hadn't come along.
Sherryl's sons gained the father figure they'd always lacked. Their biological father was in and out of the picture early on. He left when the boys were young and hasn't attempted to re-enter their lives. Anybody can be a father, Hakeem says resolutely, but it takes a real man to be dad. They call Aaron Sr. their dad and the twins their brothers. And Aaron Sr. calls them his sons, no different from the twins.
"For a while there, I looked at it like I don't have a mom or a dad now," Hakeem said. "But my dad now, he stepped up and did an amazing job. I could never be more grateful. I always text him on Father's Day to tell him he changed my life."
Hakeem Butler, Aaron Harrison, Aaron Harrison Sr., Andrew Harrison and Khalil Butler.
Aaron Sr. taught them about accountability and taking care of your business. He's strict with them, no question, but Khalil says they have fun together. When Hakeem first moved in, Aaron Sr. remembers seeing him wear a pair of Superman socks that had small capes hanging off the back. They were one pair in a large collection of colorful socks. Aaron Sr. wasn't having it.
"My uncle sees those and goes, 'Boy, what is this?' " Khalil recalled. "Keem says: 'It's my swag!' "
"Men don't wear them kinda socks," Aaron Sr. said. "I took all those."
He could easily tell, though, that the boys appreciated their new setting in the Houston suburbs in a way most kids might not.
"The culture here is so much different," Aaron Sr. said. "You've got these kids in Texas who want to be the tough, hard kids. Hakeem had a chance to see that life in Baltimore and then see this one and realize, 'I like this one much better.' The kids here don't appreciate safety. They want to be worse than what they are. Hakeem has told me, 'I always wanted to live here.' "
Aaron Sr. runs an AAU basketball team there, the Houston Defenders, and his new sons started playing hoops for him. Hakeem was a long and lanky 6-feet-6, but that didn't mean he could play. When he hit his growth spurt as a teen, he swears it threw off everything — his coordination, his dribble, his shot. And his dad gave him no special treatment when it came to minutes.
"Hakeem was terrible," Khalil said. "Awful. The worst. He wasn't gonna play. He might get you a couple rebounds. He's definitely going to foul somebody."
Hakeem stuck with it and improved over the years, but early on he asked Aaron Sr. if he could try getting back into football.
At Fort Bend Travis High School, he had so much catching up to do. Because he'd essentially failed a year of classes in Baltimore, his transcript was a mess and he had to repeat his sophomore year. He was quieter and more guarded as a new student, understandably so given what he'd been through.
Two women managed to bring him out of his shell. Lizzie Herring is an associate principal at Travis High and Becky Martinez is the school's college and career readiness adviser. They took the lead on helping Hakeem get back on track academically, which required full course loads plus online classes, summer school and credit recovery just to become a qualifier. The task required great grades and a lot of motivation.
"Those are like my second moms," Hakeem said. "I'm forever indebted to them."
Butler with Becky Martinez (left) and Lizzie Herring.
Herring says you won't find a staff member at Travis High who will say a negative word about Hakeem. He was polite, always smiling and adored by his teachers. Martinez got to know him well through basketball — her husband, Brian, was one of Hakeem's coaches — and through his visits to her office. She and her husband consider him one of their sons, and their twin sons Alex and Zack admire him like a big brother. He and Khalil like to stay at their house when they're back in town.
"It doesn't take long before Hakeem can become family for you," Becky Martinez said. "He just fits. He's just part of the family. I don't even know how to explain it. He walks in your life and you gotta love him. You just gotta take him in and love him. He does the same for us. He loves our kids right back. Any parent knows that if they're gonna love your kid right back, there's a special place in your heart for them."
They have a special place in his, too, for the way they helped fight for him. His efforts to restart his football career were full of hurdles. Butler had to six out six games as a junior because the University Interscholastic League (UIL), which governs Texas high school athletics, suspected his transfer was for athletic purposes. The next year, he had to apply to the UIL for a fifth year of athletic eligibility and prove he hadn't been playing during the year he missed school in Baltimore. When that request was denied, they traveled to Austin to plead his case at a UIL hearing.
To make those administrators understand why he deserved his senior season, Hakeem had to explain where he'd been.
"We had to have a conversation of, 'OK, I know this is not your comfort zone. This is not something you want to talk about,' " Herring said. " 'But we have to go in there and let them know why you want to play. This is what you've been working so hard for.' "
So he told his story of his former life in Baltimore. He opened up about what it was like to care for his sick mother and what it was like to lose her. And the panel listened and voted unanimously to let him play.
Butler played in eight football games the fall of his senior year and caught 28 passes. He showed flashes of potential but was still too raw. When the season ended, he had no scholarship offers. He figured he'd have to turn his attention back to basketball, where he was receiving some low-level recruiting interest. But then Lou Ayeni found him.
Hakeem still remembers what Ayeni said in the hallway outside the Travis basketball gym when they first met.
"I only recruit freaks."
Ayeni, then in his first year as the running backs coach at Iowa State, was in Houston recruiting in the winter of 2014 when he got word of a long, athletic kid worth looking into. The senior tape didn't show a ton. But there were four clips of him busting through lines and using his length to block kicks. There were clips of Hakeem delivering devastating blocks. There was enough there to pique Ayeni's interest.
He showed up to a Travis basketball practice and saw the 6-6, 175-pound senior slamming dunks and alley-oops. Ayeni was puzzled why nobody else was on the kid. What are his issues? What did he do wrong? His coaches vowed he was a great kid and explained his backstory. So Ayeni introduced himself in the hallway and they got to talking. Hakeem was intrigued, even if he'd never heard of Iowa State.
Ayeni went back to campus and didn't have much luck selling the rest of the Cyclones' coaching staff on the two-star steal he'd discovered. They didn't have room for him in their 2015 class. And Butler was clearly a risky take. Not too much tape. Too much work to be done in the classroom. But Ayeni liked the kid so much that he promised, even if the Cyclones couldn't sign him, he'd tip off other college coaches to check him out.
"One of our first conversations was about his mother," Ayeni said. "That's what kinda drew me to the kid. I could feel his pain and I could feel his desire and drive to make his mother proud. I just wanted to help him. I really did. I didn't want him to miss out on an opportunity to honor her with his ability."
Ayeni says one Iowa State staffer who backed him on wanting to take Hakeem was strength coach Yancy McKnight. So when McKnight left to join Tom Herman's staff at Houston that offseason, the Cougars gave Hakeem a scholarship offer and a chance to stay home.
"When those guys offered, I finally had my stand-on-the-table moment and was like, 'Tell me what's wrong with this kid,' " Ayeni said. "Finally, all the coaches and Coach (Paul) Rhoads were like, 'Yeah, absolutely, let's go for it.' "
They brought in Hakeem on a Monday in late January for his official visit. When Rhoads sat down with him and heard his story, he said it all made sense. He was ready to offer. Hakeem took his visit to Houston that weekend and then faced a difficult decision. Two days before signing day, he called Aaron Sr., who was out on the road with the twins for a Kentucky game, and told him he was going to be a Cyclone.
"I wanted to see something different," Hakeem said. "I'm all about new experiences."
He needed to finish out strong, getting all A's and B's in his senior year at Travis, in order to even make his 1,000-mile move here. Herring and Martinez kept him on track, and he put in the work. And when he finally qualified, he joined his new team eager to prove he belonged.
When he got to Iowa State, Hakeem found out just how raw he really was. In his first 7-on-7 drill, he ran a hitch and cornerback Sam Richardson raced in front of him for a pick-six. Welcome to college, kid. Everybody's fast here, a teammate told him, and everybody was the best at their school. He still had a lot to learn. He says he was a "knucklehead" during his redshirt season, showing up late too often and not taking things seriously. A lot of people, he says, didn't know if he would last at Iowa State. He had doubts, too. But in practices, his vast potential would intermittently reveal itself.
"I wasn't always consistent," he said, "but I would make a crazy play and you'd be like, 'This kid's a little different.' "
New coach Matt Campbell and his staff arrived after Hakeem's first semester in the program and pushed him. They urged him to dedicate himself to becoming the best possible version of himself. In his first college game against Northern Iowa, Hakeem delivered one of those crazy plays with his first career catch: a one-handed touchdown grab on a back-shoulder fade.
He's been adding to that highlight reel ever since. He's scored 15 touchdowns over the last two seasons, and many of them have been jaw-droppers, like the one-handed catch against Baylor last year on which he spun, ran through two tacklers and scored. He makes those look easy.
Now that he's playing with some long-sought consistency, Hakeem's game has reached an elite level. He's putting up 21.8 yards per catch, which ranks third best nationally. He only needs 85 more yards to reach 1,000 on the season and could do so on fewer than 50 catches. He set out to prove Ayeni was right about him. In doing so, he's become everything Ayeni hoped and much more.
"Oh, I literally think we're not even scratching the surface in a lot of ways," Campbell said. "The ceiling for Hakeem is really as high as he wants it to be."
Hakeem Butler emerged from the visitor's locker room at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium a little before 11 p.m. Saturday, one of the last to leave after Iowa State's 24-10 loss to Texas. About 30 people awaited him near Iowa State's team bus. Aaron Harrison Sr. was there with more than a dozen members of their extended family. So were Lizzie Herring, Becky Martinez and their families. Hakeem grinned as he waded his way through the crowd, stopping for hugs and chats and countless photos.
Whenever he plays Big 12 games in Texas, he gets a chance to reunite with so many of the people who played roles in his life since his mother's passing. The folks who made Houston feel like home even make trips up to Ames year after year to pay him visits.
Amber says she wishes she could have been there Saturday night. She's still in Baltimore, raising two boys and working as an assistant manager for Amazon. Her second child was born on Oct. 18, giving the family something to celebrate on that date. She misses Hakeem and watches all his games. She says it still hurts to this day that she doesn't get to see her younger brothers as much as she'd like, but she's proud of who they've become.
Khalil is playing basketball at McMurry University, an NCAA Division III school in Abilene, Texas, and studying biology to become a veterinarian. Hakeem appreciates their FaceTime chats, often held late at night, and likes to video chat with him from the locker room before every Cyclones games. Khalil sees the chiseled 225-pound version of his older brother — "I don't know what they did to him," he jokes — and confesses he can't quite believe all this. Years ago, if you'd told him when they first arrived in Texas how their lives would play out, he'd call you crazy.
Ayeni left Iowa State at the end of last season for a job at Northwestern, his alma mater. Saying goodbye to Hakeem was tough, but Hakeem still calls to catch up and to say he loves him. Ayeni wants to be there on the day Hakeem graduates, the day he gets drafted into the NFL.
"I would've loved to watch that and watch him be who he is, just so I could hug him and say, 'You did it,' " Ayeni said. "I'll be watching from afar and smiling ear to ear. He's helped put Iowa State on the map."
Andrew Harrison is playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers these days, and Aaron is in Istanbul playing for Galatasaray in the EuroCup. They're thrilled to watch Hakeem thriving. Their father has been hitting the road to see all four of his sons play. He made the trip to Ames for the season opener this year and later admitted he had tears in his eyes upon seeing Hakeem carrying the flag and leading his team onto the field. Hakeem's reply: "Man, you're getting soft on me!"
Campbell says he sat down with Hakeem recently and asked about his mother. He wanted to better understand the source of what makes his receiver special. He can tell Sherryl Ford's son embodies so much of what she stood for in raising him. She shines through in his personality and his play.
"I think Hakeem is one of those guys that, when you cut him open, the thing I love about him is he has an incredible heart," Campbell said.
Butler has a size/speed/strength combination that should impress NFL scouts. (Iowa State Athletic Communications)
His breakout star will have a decision to make soon about whether to enter the NFL draft. Whether he goes pro this year or next, Aaron Sr. says scouts will be in for a surprise. He says Hakeem is closer to 6-feet-7 than 6-6, with a 7-1 wingspan and a 40-inch vertical and size 3XL hands. He's even confident his son would run a sub-4.5 time in the 40. Hakeem admits he's kept an eye on guys like Arizona State's N'Keal Harry and Ole Miss' A.J. Brown this season. He doesn't get the media attention those receivers command. He can't say he's surprised.
"My whole life, I've been counted out and under-recruited and under the radar," Hakeem said. "I wouldn't expect nothing less. But at some point, you're gonna have to believe what you see. It's not a fluke."
Still, the mere idea of playing pro football is something he never, ever thought would happen. A few weeks ago, he made one of his greatest catches yet. He leaped and reached over a Kansas safety to bring in a ball with his left hand, then threw the defender out of his way with his right and finished a 51-yard touchdown.
The next morning, the highlight played on ESPN's "Sunday NFL Countdown." Randy Moss broke it down live on the air.
"There is nobody that can tell you, 'I knew this,' " Aaron Sr. said. "He can't tell you that he knew this. None of us knew this. I knew he was very athletic. But I never knew he had an opportunity to do this."
Sherryl never got to witness this. Hakeem has no doubt she'd be going crazy at his games if she were here today, the loudest and proudest diva in all of Jack Trice Stadium. He kneels and talks to her before every game.
But instead of dwelling on her absence, he gets to share all of this with people he loves, the community of family and friends and coaches with whom he's found kinship. As Khalil puts it, blood couldn't make them any closer. Becky Martinez can't help but get teary when she talks about wishing she could meet Sherryl. She just hopes they've all made her proud.
Hakeem never really had a father. Then he lost his mother. He knows he'd be lost today without all the parental figures who've filled the void by taking him in and changing his life. They ensure he'll never feel alone.
