PAHOKEE, Fla. -- This is not a happy story. Maybe you heard otherwise, but if you did, you heard wrong. This story isn't happy. Dead teenagers don't giggle.
This story is about the two star receivers in Super Bowl XLIII who clawed their way out of the same nook of Florida, the Cardinals' Anquan Boldin and the Steelers' Santonio Holmes, but it's also about the death and destruction they left behind. People are dying. Towns are dying.
So don't believe a damn thing you've heard about the reunion of Boldin and Holmes in this Super Bowl. Not if all you've heard is hokey happiness. Because this story isn't hokey. It isn't happy.
"Kids are getting killed," Holmes says.
Yes they are.
"Our towns ... they're in trouble," Boldin says.
Yes they are.
This isn't a happy story.
But it should be.
Going home
On a per capita basis, no town in the United States has better football than Pahokee. Pahokee High has been to six straight state championship games, and won five. Pahokee products are all over college football, including Wake Forest All-American cornerback Alphonso Smith and starting defensive back Janoris Jenkins of national champion Florida. Pahokee has sent more than a dozen players to the NFL, a statistically staggering feat for a city of 6,000.
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| Arizona's Boldin: 'Our towns ... they're in trouble. ' (Getty Images) |
No town can match Pahokee for football, but Belle Glade comes close. The town's biggest high school, Glades Central, has won six state titles overall and has sent more than a dozen players to the NFL itself, another crazy number for a town of 14,000.
Santonio Holmes is from Belle Glade.
Pahokee and Belle Glade are less than 10 miles apart, and their football teams play every year. For some people, Boldin says, "It's bigger than the state championship game."
The Pahokee-Glades Central game is called the Muck Bowl, and 10,000 people -- roughly half the combined population of the two towns -- typically attend. Even with 42 Super Bowls before this one, and dozens of Muck Bowl players reaching the NFL, XLIII is the first Super Bowl to feature one Muck Bowl alum vs. another. Arizona vs. Pittsburgh. Boldin vs. Holmes. Pahokee vs. Glades Central.
It's a big deal back home. And as of this moment, there still is a back home. But for how much longer? Pahokee and Belle Glade are being eaten away on two fronts, from inside and out.
The region's biggest employer, U.S. Sugar Corp., is pulling out within five years, eliminating close to 1,700 jobs. For a big city like Miami or Tampa, the loss of 1,700 jobs would be painful. For Pahokee and Belle Glade, it's catastrophic.
Sugar hasn't just been the area's economy. It has been its identity. Drive into Belle Glade on Highway 80, and you'll see this sign: "Belle Glade ... her soil is her fortune." Adults work the thick, gummy fields -- known around here as "the muck" -- by burning the dead leaves away from the sugar cane and then harvesting the crop.
Kids also work the land, chasing the rabbits that come hurtling out of the burning fields -- catching them and killing them and selling their bodies. Black rabbits are the biters. Kids know. They chase rabbits into holes and reach their arms in, all the way to the shoulder, to pull the creature out. If it's a black rabbit, it'll bite the hand that's about to kill it. Dead rabbits go for about $1.50 apiece, but one that has been skinned and cleaned goes for closer to $3.
The rabbit chase, or so the story goes, explains the region's dominance in football. There are people in Pahokee and beyond who really believe that, and they might be right. Listen to Pahokee defensive coordinator Ricky Lammons, who grew up in Pahokee, played here, and saw his son, Ricky Gary, get a scholarship to Pittsburgh.
"To stay behind a rabbit takes great speed and balance," Lammons says. "Have you ever seen a rabbit run? Try to chase one. It's not easy. But if you can catch a rabbit, you can catch anything."
Like a football, for example. Holmes caught hundreds of rabbits, probably thousands of rabbits, as a kid. So did Lammons. So did Pahokee offensive coordinator Johnathan Johnson, who remembers the days when he pulled 60 or 70 rabbits out of the smoking fields. Boldin didn't spend much time in the sugar fields, but he and his siblings were in the cornfields. His parents saw to that.
"My mom and dad used to take us out to the cornfields and have us pick corn," Boldin says. "It was just to show us what we didn't want to do for a living. And trust me -- that was something I didn't want to do for a living."
But at least it is a living. When U.S. Sugar pulls out, people in these two cities fear for the future. Already, people there are fearing the present.
Gang violence has descended on the area. Since August, at least 10 young adults, most of them teens, have been shot in Pahokee and Belle Glade, a statistical anomaly to match the number of NFL players the towns have produced. One of them, Norman "Pooh" Griffin, was captain of the Pahokee football team. He was killed in September, the seventh youngster shot in a month. Two weeks ago, three more youths were shot. The violence has become so bad that the most recent Muck Bowl was moved to a Saturday afternoon, just to avoid the trouble that seems to come after dark.
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| Pittsburgh's Holmes has given money to the Belle Glade football program. (Getty Images) |
"There's no jobs," he says. "There's no after-hours opportunities for youths. This is a growing problem -- people are talking like it's a third-world country out there. Look, it is what it is. Kids have too much time on their hands to do nothing."
Boldin and Holmes have tried to help. Holmes has returned to Belle Glades several times to talk to kids about education and opportunity. He has given money to the Glades Central football program. He and his cousin, fellow Glades Central alum Fred Taylor, purchased practice gear and spent thousands of dollars this fall to provide Thanksgiving dinners for more than 100 town families.
Boldin has done enough to break your heart. He has given thousands of dollars to Pahokee High. He has given away barbeque dinners and organized celebrity basketball games to raise money for his hometown. He gave hundreds of Toys-R-Us vouchers to area kids to make sure they had a present this past Christmas. And when he met two years ago with Pahokee's football coaches to discuss the team's equipment -- some of which had been handed down from team to team since the 1960s -- Boldin was so moved that he bought new helmets and pads for the entire program.
"We tried to get something nice but inexpensive, and he wouldn't let us," Lammons says. "He said, 'No -- you're going to buy this.' And it was the nicest stuff in the catalog."
But Boldin and Holmes can't buy another heartbeat for Pooh Griffin. They can't buy an industrial giant to come into Pahokee or Belle Glade and pump up a dying economy. They can't stop the violence. Can't stop the killing.
"I wish there was an answer," Boldin says. "I don't know what it is."
Me neither, but I know this.
This isn't a happy story.
Boldin and Holmes made it out, and that's a victory for them and their hometowns. But the losses back home are mounting. One in three people in Pahokee lives under the poverty line, and that's with U.S. Sugar still in business. Belle Glade has some of the highest rates in America for violent crime and AIDS. These towns aren't getting better. They're getting worse.
"It's an awful story," Holmes says.
Yes it is.
