No one understands.

Not that Latroy Oliver expects anyone to. After all, who could comprehend seeing the carcass of a relative, dead of an overdose? Selling drugs on a street corner in Hartford, Conn., just so his family could eat? Watching cancer devour the lives of those closest to him?

Perhaps that’s why the day Oliver left the Syracuse football team, he did so without a word to his closest teammates or coaches or older sister.

No one knew why Oliver walked away from the team two weeks ago. Teammates speculated he quit. Feeling left in the dark, coaches suspended him from the Oct. 12 game at Temple.

But Saturday, the senior cornerback returned against West Virginia. It took a few days of reflection while on the impoverished streets where he grew up, but Oliver finally came to understand his life.

Even if no one else can.

***

‘I saw my aunt lying in a tub of cold water after she just died of an overdose. In a way, I’ve seen so much, it wasn’t really devastating. I’d seen it before.’

— Latroy Oliver’s world at age 9

***

He was, by the popular definition, a bad kid. Oliver rode in stolen cars. He hung around with friends and family members as they peddled drugs. He never went to grammar school.

He was 6 years old.

Oliver lacked supervision and structure. He lived with his mother at the time, but she was too distant to give Oliver the discipline he badly needed.

By age 7, Oliver had to be sent to a school for troubled children. From 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. — at least on the days he didn’t climb out the cafeteria window to escape — it sheltered him from the violent streets he called home.

But Children’s Village, while keeping Oliver safe, only strained his home life. His mother, who battled a drug problem, couldn’t cope with the stresses of being a single parent.

‘It’s like my mom wasn’t the greatest person at times,’ Oliver said. ‘She hung out with the wrong crowd, didn’t do all the things families need. At a young age, I didn’t understand that. It frustrated me, made me mad.’

And no one could hide him from the violence that permeated his life.

‘The worst I ever saw,’ said Oliver’s older sister by three years, Ebony, ‘was when I was living on Nelson Street and one of my cousins, she would actually have sex with men, boys, to get money to get the drugs. That was bad.

‘One day I went with her. She didn’t have to do the sex part. She was just talking to her boy and doing whatever she needed to do. She came back with the money and got the drugs. I had to be like 13.’

Ebony spent most of her childhood with relatives in Greenville, N.C., too far away to keep Oliver out of trouble. Oliver’s biological father, Franklin Malcolm, lived nearby, but the two never shared a close relationship. Oliver’s older brother Tyrone, then a drug dealer, couldn’t keep his brother away from trouble either.

And Oliver struggled to understand why.

***

‘Football is a game that’s easy for me. That’s probably one of the reasons I picked it up. It’s just all the other stresses surrounding me and my personal life.’

— Latroy Oliver on why he plays football

***

Ten days ago was not the first time Oliver missed a game at Veterans Stadium against Temple.

In November 2000, while the Orangemen traveled to Philadelphia, Oliver drove home. A budding relationship with his mother was suddenly threatened by something that couldn’t be smoked, injected or fired.

Unlike the sudden and catastrophic violence that often snatched lives on the Hartford streets, liver cancer slowly ate away the life of Oliver’s mother, Barbara.

‘I never felt a connection (with my mother) until I got to college,’ Oliver said. ‘She started to be more of a participant in me and my football games. She became a part of my life that she never was.’

On Christmas Eve 2000, Barbara died.

‘I really don’t know how I made it through,’ Oliver said. ‘It’s something that you never get over. The college years are the times you need your mom the most because of all of the things that go on. There wasn’t anyone for me to really talk to. It was rough.’

On the field, Oliver hid the pain. Last season, he led the Orangemen with four interceptions. He recorded 45 tackles and forced three fumbles while starting all 12 regular-season games.

This season, though, Oliver and the Syracuse defensive backfield have been routinely victimized by opposing quarterbacks, yielding 264 passing yards per game, the worst average in the Big East.

Oliver, a fixture at cornerback last season, has been platooned with redshirt freshman Steve Gregory.

While Oliver was struggling to make sense of a 1-6 record and reduced playing time, Ebony called.

Cancer, she said, was striking their family again.

***

‘I never got caught doing it, but probably selling drugs (was the worst thing I ever did). The reason I did it was to provide food for my house and my mom. It was the only thing I could do to help out in the house.’

— Latroy Oliver’s world at age 14

***

Oliver nearly ended up like the rest of the drug dealers and thieves and murderers that lined his neighborhood sidewalks. He sold marijuana and cocaine on street corners to feed his younger sister, Neshia, and mother.

“She was my mom,” Oliver said, ”and I felt like it was my obligation to provide food for the family at the time.’

Eventually, the father figure Oliver longed for pulled him away.

Oliver’s grandfather James has, by Oliver’s count, more than 100 grandchildren. He rescued at least one.

‘Even with him having a whole lot of grandchildren,’ Oliver said, ‘he took me and made sure if I needed something for school, he got it for me. I never had to worry about food.’

Instead, he worried about football.

After leaving Children’s Village, Oliver sporadically attended middle school. When he moved in with his grandfather, who lived nearby, he became a high school student.

James, unlike Oliver’s mother, lived within the district lines of Weaver High School, allowing Oliver to play football. The gridiron lured Oliver from the streets.

‘It helped me realize that, having family members who were into drugs, selling drugs, the type of stuff I’d seen growing up,’ Oliver said, ‘I realized that I didn’t want to do that.’

As a high school junior, he rushed for 2,425 yards and a state-record 35 touchdowns. Although he suffered a knee injury his senior year, Syracuse signed him.

Finally, Oliver would escape the violence.

***

‘It’s hard for me to sleep at night. I wake up and start thinking about things, situations that came up, things I’ve done, things I haven’t done. It’s really overwhelming.’

— Latroy Oliver’s world at age 23

***

About five months ago, Oliver learned in that fateful phone call from his sister that his grandfather had cancer. Days before the Temple game, he found out his James might soon die.

Oliver panicked. The rapid deterioration of Syracuse’s season and his grandfather’s health broke him. Quietly, without telling coaches, teammates or family, Oliver slipped away from Manley Field House.

Some of his teammates thought he’d left the team because cornerback Jeremiah Mason was taking more snaps in practice, quarterback R.J. Anderson said.

‘I didn’t know what happened,’ safety Keeon Walker said last week. ‘I just saw him walk off the field. I thought he was going to come back, but then I didn’t see him for a whole week.’

‘He didn’t tell me what was going on,’ Anderson said. ‘Usually, he talks to me about everything. He’s not a guy who opens up to a lot of people, but he always talks to me. He didn’t open up right away, and I think that confused a lot of people.’

Including Oliver’s sister, Ebony. She planned to attend the Temple game, but Oliver urged her not to go. Later that same day, he left the team.

Ebony, 26, later learned what happened from Oliver’s girlfriend. Still, when Oliver showed up in Hartford that weekend, Ebony played along and acted surprised to see him:

‘Why,’ she asked, ‘are you home?’

‘Because,’ Oliver said, ‘my knee’s messed up.’

‘The same knee you had surgery on?’

‘No, other knee.’

‘So you didn’t go with the team?’

‘I can’t play, so I don’t go.’

Oliver was truthful about one thing: He couldn’t have played. Upset that Oliver never explained his reasons for leaving, Syracuse coaches docked him with a one-game suspension. As additional punishment, Oliver was forced to shave his dreadlocks, Ebony said.

‘I don’t like that,’ Ebony said. ‘He loves his hair. He’s been growing it for so long. He’s really upset.’

But he understands. At home, he considered his situation and decided to return to the team.

‘I could see the coaches’ frustration,’ Oliver said. ‘They probably wish I took it in a different way.’

***

‘I don’t know how I made it through these last four-and-a-half years.’

— Latroy Oliver, trying to comprehend his life at Syracuse

***

Oliver earned his sociology degree last spring.

‘My biggest goal is to help out unfortunate kids like myself in the city,’ Oliver said, ‘like a big brother type of thing that helps kids make better lives for themselves.’

After this year, he plans to return to Hartford, where his grandfather has stayed since being released this week from the hospital. Perhaps it’s not so hard to understand why.

‘Going back there,’ Oliver said, ‘they understand me.’

Published on October 21, 2002 at 12:00 pm