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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2009 > June > 23
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Daequan Cook : “It’s important to give back to your community”
As his basketball talents took him from one glorious pinnacle to the next — from state title at Dunbar High to Ohio State to a first round pick in the NBA — Daequan Cook said his mom continually reminded him of one thing:
“Don’t forget where you came from. It’s important to give back to your community and when that moment comes, step up.”
Sad as it was, that moment came when he heard that DaQuan Sales — a 12-year old Dayton boy who idolized him, a kid who used to pretend he was Cook every time he played basketball and continually asked his aunt if he looked like his hero — was killed by a car while riding his bicycle, June 13.
“You always get a sign from somewhere and I felt this was my sign,” said Cook, who already was returning to Dayton for his youth camp which opened Monday and continues today at Dunbar — a camp DaQuan had signed up for and according to his 76-year-old great granddad, Garfield Sales, “had been counting down the days to until that terrible day.”
Cook said he’d help pay for the funeral, would dedicate the annual scholarship he plans to start in Dayton in DaQuan’s name and invited the Sales family to his camp.
Monday DaQuan’s mom, sister, little brother, aunt and his wheelchair-bound great grandfather took him up on the offer and — in as touching of a meeting as you can imagine — Cook spent nearly an hour with them.
“I’ll be up ‘til all hours of the night telling my wife about all that happened,” Garfield said. “Daequan really cared. You could see it in his eyes, in his face. My grandson picked the perfect role model and now I’m in awe just like he was.”
TweetCOLUMN: “What Daequan is doing is mind boggling”
Both came from Dayton’s West Side and loved basketball. Their first names were pronounced the same and they even had the same nickname — though one got his from Miami Heat teammate Dwyane Wade and the other, from his late grandpa.
“DaDa (day-day) would eat, sleep and talk Daequan Cook,” 76-year old Garfield Sales said of his 12-year-old great grandson DaQuan “DaDa” Sales and the NBA player from Dunbar High he so idolized.
Whenever DaDa played basketball, he pretended to be Cook. Sometimes he even told kids that they were brothers.
“He’d always ask me he if looked like Daequan,” smiled DaDa’s great aunt, Shirletta Freeman.
And when Cook put on a show during the NBA All Star Weekend in Phoenix last February — winning the Three-Point Shootout — DaDa was glued to the television at his North Antioch Street home
“He just cheered and cheered and cheered,” said Janell Sales, his 31-year-old mother. “He kept going, ‘He won, Mom. He won!’”
As soon as he heard Cook was coming back home and putting on a two-day youth camp at Dunbar — which began Monday June 22 for younger kids and continues today for eighth through 12th graders — DaDa got on his bicycle and rode to Deveroes clothing store on W. Third Street and picked up an entry form.
Janell said she was in the hospital getting treatment for her sickle cell anemia when DaDa called her: “He wanted to know if I’d be home when the camp started. I knew what it meant to him and I said, ‘Yeah, if I gotta sign myself outta here, I’ll be there. You are going to make that camp.’”
Garfield — who DaDa called PawPaw and loved to hang out with — said his great grandson had been “counting down the days to camp …until that terrible day.”
It was just past 7 p.m. on June 13. DaDa was riding his bicycle along the 300 block of Elmhurst Road when a white Buick driven by 25-year-old Antwonne McGinnis, a guy with a sizeable rap sheet but no valid license, tried passing another vehicle in a no passing zone and hit and killed DaDa.
McGinnis stopped momentarily, then drove off and later returned, smelling, police said, of marijuana. Three days later he was arrested.
The death stunned everyone who knew DaDa. “He was just a good, good boy,” said his mom. “He was my biggest helper. He’d give his little brother (three-year-old Dajuan) a bath, dress him and walk him to the store.
“One year I asked him what he wanted for Christmas and he refused to tell me. He said, ‘I don’t want anything, Mom, ‘cause you have bills to pay.’”
Garfield — whose emphysema has him on oxygen and in a wheel chair — has similar stories: “His (great) grandmother and I would come from the store and he’d carry our groceries in. He’d do the same for Miss Pauline, the 82-year-old lady across the street. And when another of our neighbors was raking the yard, he’d go help.
“He was just a special boy. Everybody felt it.”
Including Daequan Cook.
“THIS WAS MY SIGN”
Cook said he got a text message about the death and when he called back to Dayton and talked to Albert Powell, the Dunbar assistant coach who is running his camp, he learned more about the boy and wanted to help.
As Cook’s basketball talents have taken him higher and higher up the basketball ladder, he said his mother, Renae, has reminded him of one thing: “Don’t forget where you came from. It’s important to give back to your community and when that moment comes, step up.”
With that in mind, he said, “You always get a sign from somewhere and I felt this was my sign.”
While his camp — which Monday drew an overflow crowd of 192 third through seventh graders — was a way to help kids in general, DaDa’s death gave him a particular kid, one with a golden heart and, as his mom put it “that million-dollar smile.”
Powell said Cook told him, “Let’s make something happen.”
Cook said he’d help pay for DaDa’s funeral and would dedicate the annual scholarship he plans to start in Dayton in DaQuan’s name.
“We hope Pat Riley will be a guest speaker at a dinner we have here and we can eventually raise $100,000,” Powell said. “That way we can help a couple of kids get a start every year.”
Cook also said he’d sponsor 10 of DaDa’s friends to his camp every year and he invited the Sales family to come this year if they felt up to it.
“The Daequan that’s doing this here is the same one we see in Miami all season long,” said Heat assistant coach David Fizdale, who joined Cook here Monday. “And what he did for (the Sales family) isn’t some kind of public relations move. It means a lot to him. When that little boy passed away, he tried to imagine what it would be like if it were his family. That’s why this is so heartfelt for him.”
“DAEQUAN REALLY CARED”
Although the other advertized pros didn’t show up Monday — Greg Oden (Portland Trail Blazers) and Mike Conley (Memphis Grizzles) are scheduled to assist today — it didn’t seem to matter to any of the kids who attended.
All they cared about was Daequan Cook.
And if you could have seen the way he embraced the Sales family in private, you would have seen he even out did the hype.
Janell and her two other children — Dajaun and nine-year-old sister Daziah — were accompanied by her aunt and granddad.
While they were given Cook’s autographed Heat jersey, a bag full of camp goodies and a big box filled with Heat souvenirs, the thing they’ll treasure most from this day was the time with him.
He spent nearly an hour with them in private. He held Janell and whispered some comforting thoughts in her ear. “He said he’s family now and we can’t get rid of him,” she said with a smile later.
After playing with the kids and then — with Janell’s make up still smudged on the right shoulder of his white t-shirt — he sat next to Garfield’s wheelchair and they talked for a long time.
“(DaDa) was a lovely young man and he looked up to you,” Fairfield told Cook. “You were a great role model.”
As he stood off to the side and watched — Alfred Powell, Albert’s brother and himself a coach — just smiled: “It’s almost like Divine Intervention. Daequan’s doing so much for them, but all this is doing something for him, too. He’s learning what it means to be a role model.”
And more than just her family benefitted from it Monday, said DaDa’s great aunt.
“The impact he had on one little’s boy’s life is one that hundreds of other young people throughout this community feel, too,” Freeman said. “He’s really important to so many kids here.”
And to one old man, as well.
“Daequan really cared,” Garfield said later on in a voice that was wavering, not so much from the emphysema as from the emotion that still welled up inside. “You could see it in his eyes, in his face. He almost made me cry. What he’s doing is mind boggling.
“Some little girl or boy will go to school because DaDa was on this earth and he chose Daequan Cook to be his role model.
“Though DaDa’s life was cut short, he’ll live on. Because of Daequan Cook, DaQuan Sales will live for a long, long, long time.”
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