Part 1: JMU sophomore guard grapples with the loss and memories of family
Posted on November 29, 2007
This is the first installment of a three-part series by Tim Chapman on the life of JMU basketball player Pierre Curtis.
As the starting lineup boomed over the public address system at the JMU Convocation Center, the Dukes’ second-year starting point guard waited patiently for his name and number to be called.
It was the season opener against Siena College and the wide-eyed, 20-year-old bowed his head as his heart pounded in anticipation for the start of 2007-08 season.
Finally P.A. announcer Jack Cavanaugh made the announcement.
“Sophomore point guard, number 51, Pierre Curtissss!”
Curtis bounded off the bench, slapping fives with his teammates as he made his way through the makeshift tunnel of reserves and cheerleaders. With the emotions of a tumultuous year racing through his mind all he could do was let out a scream to suppress the tears; tears stemming from three deaths in his family in just six months.
In April, Curtis lost his paternal grandfather Jimmy Bailey, 77, to natural causes. The connection was a deep one, as Pierre stayed close with his grandfather despite having a nearly estranged relationship with his own father, Bailey’s son.
In September, devastation struck two more times on consecutive days. On Sept. 7, Pierre’s mother, Carolyn Curtis Rice, 51, died of complications from her dialysis treatment which led to heart failure.
The following day Curtis was notified that his cousin and god-brother, Donnell Easterling, 27, died in a car accident as he was rushing home from Wisconsin to be with the family because of his Aunt Carolyn’s death.
Just two weeks into his third college semester, Pierre was at rock bottom.
Curtis and the basketball team had returned from a successful August trip to Spain and the program looked as promising as it had in a decade. The spindly Denver native returned as a reigning member of the Colonial Athletic Association All-Rookie team, and his second season was just two months away.
But basketball and school quickly became afterthoughts, wiped clean by the despair of losing the woman who raised him alone and the cousin who shared in those character-building years.
Fast-forward two months to Madison’s first game of the year. After 40 minutes of an emotion-filled 100-88 JMU win, the box score had Curtis down for 16 points on 7-for-9 shooting in 19 minutes.
How could he play so well in his first game after all of this? He couldn’t even go through his pregame routine of dialing his mom, whom he still considers his best friend. For the first time in his life, Curtis took the court without her words of encouragement ringing in his ears.
“After the game it was hard,” Curtis said the following week. “I cried for the simple fact that I couldn’t call her and tell her how I was and hear her excited voice.”
With a few reminders scrawled on his Nike game shoes, Curtis was able to feel like she was right there with him on the court. He also switched from jersey number 5 to 51, his mother’s age.
“On the botton part of the shoes it says R.I.P. Mama and then above it, it says C.C., which was her nickname,” Curtis explained while sitting in the empty, cavernous Convocation Center following a Tuesday practice. “It says BF [Best Friend] Forever underneath. Then on the other side is the initials DD, for my cousin Donnell, that was his nickname.”
The shoes also say ‘# 5’ because Carolyn was the fifth child in her family.
But it took more than just a sharpie to etch into his mind who he was playing for and why. For that a look into his past and his modest beginnings in the Chicago suburbs begins to paint the picture.
Pierre Jarrell Curtis was born on Jan. 29, 1987 at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. He was born the first and only son of Carolyn Curtis Rice and the only brother to three older sisters, Princine Williams, 25; Ryan Rice, 28; and Shaun Moody, 34.
For the first 10 years of his life Curtis grew up in the Chicago area community of Riverdale under the guidance of his mother and grandmother Norma Curtis. With kidney and heart problems, on top of diabetes and other personal reasons, Carolyn moved to
Denver when Pierre was 10-years old.
His sisters, Princine and Ryan, also lived in the single-family home on the southwest side of the city in what Ryan described as a “family atmosphere.”
“[Pierre] actually got a chance to grow up in a better part [of Chicago],” Ryan said in a phone interview from Chicago. “He got a chance to experience the good part of being a kid.”
Although Carolyn wasn’t always in their physical presence she kept keen eyes and sharp ears on her children and visited Chicago as often as she could.
“Pierre was always under the guidance of my mother,” Ryan said. “She did not play games. Everyone had to bring home the grades to get the rewards. She made it a point to always tell us how she felt.”
But like many young kids, the elementary-aged Pierre was wily and sometimes found himself in trouble. He needed a motherly guidance especially as his grandmother grew ill.
Installment two of the three part series will run Monday, Dec. 3.
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