“Every window in the house was broken out. The attic upstairs had holes in the roof. The upstairs bathroom, a few of the bedrooms, the kitchen, they all are totally gone. The basement was completely totaled. I couldn’t even get down there.
“When it comes to clothes, they lost everything. Their other belongings — TVs, everything — was lost. My basketball memorabilia — my high school news clippings, some of my UD clippings, my high school jersey I had framed — they were all lost, too.
“It was pretty sad to see.”
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The gritty and fearless Dayton Flyers guard from Chicago’s South Side — who in his four seasons at UD was part of a just-graduated class that won a record 102 games and made four straight NCAA Tournaments — was asleep in his Caldwell Street apartment April 4 when word came that the family home had been destroyed by fire.
The place was so special to him. It’s where he learned to play basketball with an uncle on a hoop in the alley. It’s where nine family members — his mom and sister, three great aunts, a great uncle, a cousin and her daughter — all were living when the fire hit.
The place has meant so much to him that he has commemorated the corner where the house stands — 86th and Union — with a likeness of the green street signs tattooed on the inside of his right forearm.
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