Finding his Strength

0ne afternoon in early February, 1998, Dorothy Hammonds walked into Georgetown Associate Head Coach of Track and Field Andrew Valmon’s office to drop off some transcripts for her son Michael Williams, a sprinting recruit from DeMatha High School in Hyattsville, Md.

“Could you promise me one thing, that Michael will graduate?” Hammonds said to Valmon. “Please take care of my son.”

“I thought it was a routine statement from a recruit’s parent,” Valmon recalled, “but in hindsight, I believe she knew what was about to happen to her.”

Hammonds left Valmon’s office and drove to the Washington Hospital Center, where doctors checked her in overnight for symptoms of a seizure. She called Williams and told him she had left him some food for dinner and that he should go to school and track practice as usual the next day. Soon afterwards, Hammonds had a stroke.

She was never able to speak with her son again.

Michael Williams grew up at the corner of Benning Rd. and East Capitol St. in Washington, D.C., an area where nearly half of all young men who grow up enter the criminal justice system by the time they have turned 21.

“Of the guys that I grew up with, I can count on one hand how many haven’t done time,” said Williams, now a senior accounting major. “You don’t see people making it. If your role models are drug dealers and pimps, that’s what you think is successful.”

Williams lived alone with his mother, who held several jobs to support them and often worked from 8 a.m. until late in the evening. He discovered track in grade school, and used running as an escape from the perils of inner city life.

“Track was my release from my situation,” said Williams. “My mom equipped me to make decisions to avoid my downfall. She told me I couldn’t get into fights or drugs when I had so much going for me.”

In eighth grade, Williams caught the eye of DeMatha track coach Anthony Bryant, who convinced Hammonds to take her son out of D.C.’s public school system and send him to the Maryland prep school instead. At DeMatha, Williams was a two-time All-Metropolitan selection by the Washington Post and led the Stags to three Washington Catholic Athletic Conference championships.

Bryant introduced Williams to Valmon and Georgetown’s then-Director of Track and Field and Cross Country Frank Gagliano, who were especially impressed with his versatility and skill as a relay runner and began recruiting him, along with other schools like Kansas State.

“Coach Valmon told me he would take care of everything,” said Williams. “He told me, ‘If you’re there for us, we’ll be there for you.’”

After his mother’s stroke, however, Williams had more pressing concerns than college.

With all of his mother’s family in Huntsville, Ala., and his father mostly absent from his life and unaware of his situation, Williams was left to deal with his mother’s illness alone, often traveling back and forth to the hospital after school and practice. In April, he made the decision to take her off a respirator and let her sisters move her to Huntsville while he finished his senior year.

Hammonds died on May 7, 1998, the day before Mother’s Day, while Michael was in class at DeMatha.

“It was really, really rough—when they took Michael’s mother to Alabama that crushed him,” said Bryant. “At the time we were deciding what school he would go to, and I praise God for Georgetown. Coach Valmon and Coach Gagliano were the only ones that stuck with us through that.”

Not long after his mother’s death, Michael committed to run track for the Hoyas. That summer, Valmon began to realize the special responsibility he would have for the incoming first-year.

“Michael sold his mother’s house, and the Georgetown track office became his home mailing address,” Valmon said. “Everything happened so fast.”

Amid these drastic changes and uncertainties, Williams remembers that his coach seemed to have everything planned out for him. Valmon enrolled Williams in Community Scholars, a pre-orientation program for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and introduced him to Associate Director of Student Financial Services Sandra Baden, who gave him a job in the Student Financial Services office.

“When I met Michael he was such a scared little boy, really not knowing what to do,” Baden said. “We nurtured him along, acclimating him to how you work, how you dress, what you do with your paychecks. He’s someone you couldn’t help but want to take under your wing.”

Despite the support network awaiting him, Williams arrived at Georgetown feeling confused, alone, and unsure of his place at a university that seemed to cater to students at the opposite end of the socio-economic spectrum.

As a scholarship athlete at DeMatha, Williams had felt that his label and role were clear.

“You do your thing and they promise you you’ll get into college—you’re not there for academic pursuit,” he said. “I bought into the mentality that as a black athlete from my background, there wasn’t much expected of me and I had an excuse not to succeed. It was a hard sell for me to accept that I was at Georgetown to expand my mind, not because I was pretty smart but really fast.”

This attitude led Williams to excel on the track but struggle in the classroom. His sophomore year, he ran on an indoor 4×400 relay team that set a new Georgetown record, and on the distance medley relay team that placed ninth at the NCAA Indoor Championship, all the while teetering on the brink of academic ineligibility.

He was hanging out with people who he and his friends from the Community Scholars program sometimes referred to as “G-pop guys” (for “general population”)—students who were able to coast through their academics and never participated in extracurricular activities. He cut class and blew off work when they did, and resisted the concerned overtures of his mentors.

Williams especially clashed with Valmon, who began to play the role of father as well as of coach.

“I had to minimize athletics to make him reprioritize, and he resented that,” Valmon said. “But hook or crook he was going to get a degree because I promised his mom, even if I had to kick him off the track team.”

Feeling desperate, Williams considered transferring from the business school to the College, and sought the advice of McDonough School of Business Dean Ann-Mary Kapusta.

“With my educational background, I had to learn the hard way that I couldn’t cut corners like other kids,” Williams said. “Accounting was really difficult, but Dean Kapusta told me I had the tools to succeed. Before that, I never thought my graduation was guaranteed.”

Former track and field All-American Josh Rollins, who graduated from Georgetown in 2002, lived with Williams after his sophomore year, and the two became best friends. Williams had failed Statistics the first time he took it, but with Rollins’ tutoring, he received an A- the following summer.

“Michael needed someone to tell him he was intelligent enough to make it so he could believe in himself,” Rollins said. “Before that he didn’t realize he could actually handle both track and school successfully.”

For Williams, there was always more than just a Georgetown degree riding on his success.

“What made me turn things around so quickly was the realization that my mom was looking at me,” he said. “She saw me not putting forth 110 percent effort when I should have been.”

After his academic turnaround, Williams found himself continuing to flounder emotionally. He missed his mother.

“I couldn’t fall asleep at night because my mom and I used to sit up all the time just talking or watching TV,” Williams said. “When she worked until 11 p.m. I would come home from practice, nap a little, then get up and ask her how her day was. I’d never go to bed without talking to her.”

Rev. Raymond Kemp, S.J., who had known Michael since his first year, aided him in coming to terms with his loss.

“Father Kemp helped me get a grip on the fact that she’s in a better place and that I’ll see her soon,” Williams said. “The experience strengthened my religious beliefs.”

Williams got two tattoos of his mother during his first two years at Georgetown: a rose on his right biceps with the words “Dottie, Love Always,” and a picture of his mother’s face on his chest that reads “Together Forever.”

“I know that she is with me regardless of what other people believe,” he said. “Before races I pat myself on the chest because I know she is close to my heart.”

Williams also discovered companionship and acceptance in Georgetown track and field, and found his niche as the consummate team player.

“Michael has a very special role because he’s built a family out of our team,” said senior jumper and housemate Davin Williams. “He builds friendships with everyone on the team and connects them.”

“He was always willing to make sacrifices for the team or run an extra race,” Rollins added.

Williams has also grown closer to his aunt Mary Whitman in Alabama. Whitman has visited her nephew every month, kept in touch with his coaches, attended his track meets, and taken care of his finances since his mother’s death.

“Initially I was upset that I couldn’t be a regular college student because whenever anything happened my aunt would know about it,” said Williams. “But she never tried to play the big parent role, she just made suggestions. She knows what my mother tried to instill in me. I talk to her almost every day and I’ve become a lot closer to my family because of that.”

“When Michael got to Georgetown he couldn’t see how things would work out,” Whitman said. “I told him to take it one day at a time, that we’ll make it. Now he says, ‘I can’t believe we’re almost there, Aunt Mary!’ The goals he set with his mother—he’s still planning to reach them.”

Today, with his charming smile and soft-spoken, easygoing demeanor, it would be difficult to guess that Williams has triumphed over such a turbulent past. He makes mostly A’s and B’s, and will graduate in May. As part of a theology tutorial, he helps lead Father Kemp’s class, “Struggle and Transcendence,” and helped Georgetown to a third place finish at the IC4A Championships at Boston University earlier this month.

Five years after Williams arrived at Georgetown, Williams has finally come into his own.

Looking at an old picture of himself with cornrows, his newfound confidence and responsibility shows through. “I loved my braids, but I had to cut them at Christmas because I know I can’t have them for job interviews,” he says, running a hand over his close-shaven head. “I’ve got to be ready for the real world, you know?”

“The past 18 months, Michael is taking responsibility and making decisions for himself,” Whitman said. “Nobody has to tell him what to do anymore, and Georgetown was the foundation he needed to turn him into a man.”

“The whole notion of people for others that you hear about here, it’s not crap—it really does happen,” said Father Kemp. “Many professors like myself spend an awful lot of time with their students. Guys like Michael bring out the best in teachers.”

On Tuesday morning in Kemp’s class, fellow sprinter Monica Hargrove (CAS ‘04) is discussing a paper she wrote about a conversation she and Williams had after listening to a guest speaker from Covenant House, a D.C. children’s shelter.

“Mike makes me aware of why it’s necessary to listen to and understand other people’s struggles,” Hargrove explains, glancing at Williams, who slumps shyly into his chair. “He defended what he got out of the speech, that he could relate to her.”

“I think you can’t hide from your struggle,” Williams says. “I just found out some of my strengths and tried to build them.”

Father Kemp jumps up enthusiastically and writes “self appropriation” on the blackboard. “Yes!” he says. “Owning your own struggle. When you can say ‘I own me,’ you’ve got it—self appropriation.”

Williams sits up straighter in his chair and nods. He knows exactly what that means.