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May 20, 2018

Davis Grateful for Family

Emaunel Davis gives the thumbs up at his first practice with the Stampeders. Photo by Candice Ward

The sound of a hammer pounding in a downstairs bedroom. A no-taboos heart-to-heart around a kitchen table deep into the night. A flower gifted to a loved one on high-school graduation day.

Small things. Normal things.

Family things.

“It took him a long time to call us ‘mom’ and ‘dad’,’’ admits Julia Owens, from the homestead in Manteo, N.C. “He needed time to trust us, to realize we weren’t in this for any other reason than to help him, to be there for him.

“At first he’d stay out nights, sneak away and stay with a friend. Gradually, he began to feel more and more at ease with us. And then one night I heard the hammering. I snuck down there and he was hanging pictures in his room. I was like: ‘Yes! We’re making progress.’

“Later on, a few months later, he and I sat here in the kitchen, ’til 2 or 3 in the morning, and just talked. About … everything. He told me about that first day here, with us, and how he had no intention of staying. His hopes, his fears.

“That night was a real breakthrough.”

Following graduation from Manteo High, the school football star presented the lady who’d become, in every meaningful sense, his mother with a rose given to graduating students and told her: “I couldn’t have done this without you guys.”

“That,’’ says the recipient, “was such a wonderful, tender moment for me, for all of us.

“We’d broken down so many barriers.”

Emanuel Davis arrives for his first season in the Calgary Stampeders defensive backfield, now 28, all grown, a known CFL talent and two-time East Division All Star with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

His is the remarkable story of a high school volunteer football coach and family accepting a 17-year-old inner-city black youth into their lives to raise as their own.

“I’m forever grateful for my situation,’’ says Davis today. “I feel like it made me the person I am. Going through adversity builds character.

“The hardest part was not having any stability for so long. Moving from household to household, wondering how long it would last, working around other people’s schedules so I wouldn’t offend anybody or p—- anybody off or overstay my welcome.

“Nobody wants to feel like an inconvenience.

“I had my ups and downs but it’s real life, man. People go through some awful stuff. The way it’s turned out, the people I have in my life … I’m thankful and I’m blessed.”

Awful stuff doesn’t begin to describe what Emanuel Davis went through.

He was all of nine years old and living in Burlington, N.C., when a transport truck slammed into a small car he, his father Emanuel Sr., and younger brother were riding in.

Emanuel Sr. died right there, in the lap of the son named for him.

Davis’s birth mother was already in prison, struggling with the offshoots of drug addiction.

Released from prison, the damaged family moved 250 miles away, to Manteo, pop. 1,400, but soon Davis’s biological mom was back in prison.

Confused and rebellious, he went to live with a local church deacon. One evening, that benefactor suffered a stroke and died while Davis frantically called for help.

With nowhere else to go, volunteer coach R.V. Owens – whose family owned the oldest-operating restaurant, Outer Banks, in the state – suggested Davis move in with a local guidance counsellor until he could graduate and find some footing in his life.

“Emanuel,’’ recalls Owens now, “told me: “No. I want to go home with you.

“I said: ‘With me?’”

As a family, R.V., Julia and their two children, Bo – a teammate of Davis on the football team but not a close friend – and Shannon, sat down and discussed what promised to be a challenging situation. This wasn’t an adaptable child they were accepting into their lives. This was a teenager, with all that entails, who had already undergone a tremendous amount of hurt, of upheaval, in his life.

“It was kind of a Perfect Storm,’’ says Julia. “He was at that age. And here we are, a white family in a very small community, so it was a day-to-day process.

“Looking back, I never concerned myself with the ‘What if?s’ of the situation. There was such a need and the picture was so clear.

“But our kids, they were the ones who made the decision easy.”

So Emanuel moved in. Even if it took him awhile to actually unpack.

“Wasn’t always a bowl of cherries,’’ confesses R.V. “This wasn’t The Blind Side. This wasn’t a movie. This was real life.”

Not only did Davis work up to calling his new parents mom and dad, he nicknamed Julia ‘Mama Jules’, while R.V. answers to ‘Pun’, short for the South Bronx, N.Y. rapper Big Punishment.

“He’s a rapper, right?’’ laughs R.V. “Don’t know where Emanuel got that from other than this guy was a big guy and I used to be pretty big, too, before a lost a bit of weight, thank the lord.

“Honestly, don’t know what any of it’s got to do with me but, yeah, he calls me Pun.”

The move to Canada, says R.V., has been a perfect fit for Davis.

“I told (TiCats) owner Bob Young and (former Hamilton defensive co-ordinator) Orlando Steinhauer this, and I meant it: I want to thank you for taking a boy and making him a man.

“If he’d gone to the NFL and made a bunch of money, who knows what would’ve happened. But the people in Canada are so welcoming. They don’t see colour, they don’t see socio-economic issues.

“There’s such diversity. It warms your heart. Friends of mine here ask me: ‘Why do you go to Toronto? Why do you go to Hamilton? Why do you go to Montreal?’

“And I say: ‘Dude, because the people are so friendly, so considerate.’ Man, it’s unbelievable.

“It’s a long flight but we can’t wait to come out and see Calgary, too.

“I think Canada has helped round Emanuel out as a man. Sounds corny but it really isn’t. I could probably do any Infomercial for you if you want.”

Signed as a free-agent in mid-February, Davis joins a Stampeder team on a three-in-four run of Grey Cup appearances and re-tooling its defensive secondary.

“I went through a lot last year, getting hurt, first time in professional football, and finding out the business aspect of the game,” he says.

“But now, to get the chance to go to Calgary, one of the best franchises in the CFL, and start again … it worked out great.

“I just want to get there and hit the ground running.”

Running is something Davis did a lot of in his youth. But that’s over now.

“Along the way,’’ says Mama Jules, “family became very important to Emanuel. I’m not just talking about us. He has a brother and a sister he loves dearly, and grandparents. They’re never far from his thoughts and he does everything he can for them.”

A few months after arriving in the Owens’s lives, the 17-year-old Davis brought Julia a picture, terribly bent, of Emanuel Sr. standing in front of the car he’d died in. Davis didn’t have any other pictures of his dad and entrusted it to her for safekeeping.

That picture is still downstairs, on the dresser mirror in his room.

“So there was,’’ Mama Jules adds softly, “already a lot of good in him when I got him.”

At 28, with a new lease on professional life and the backing of people who love him, Emanuel Davis arrives at new working home, McMahon Stadium, on Sunday.

“To watch him grow up a good man, well, I am so, so … proud,’’ says R.V. “Hey, lots of people got tough stories. He ain’t the only one. I think down deep everybody’s got good in them but sometimes their environment causes them to go sideways.

“I mean, I go to church every Sunday. I’m not one of these bible thumpin’/throw it out there/sky’s falling/chicken little types but this, this had to be some type of God’s plan.”

Before travelling north to Calgary, Davis made sure to head home to Manteo for Mother’s Day weekend. There was the customary big cookout in the backyard with a lot of his favourite foods.

He’s engaged to be married next March, and the event will be a two-family affair.

“To see him so comfortable in his own skin,’’ says Mama Jules, “is such a blessing.

“Emanuel’s always had an over-abundance of confidence. But sometimes confidence can mask an awful lot of insecurity.

“I don’t see that insecurity anymore.

“He’s at peace with himself, with who he is, where he came from, where he is and how he got there.

“Which makes us all so happy, so grateful.

“Because you know what they say: A mother, any mother, is only as happy as her most unhappy child.”