Duckett: Time To 'Get It Done'

4/8/2002 12:00:00 AM | Football

April 8, 2002

He remembers that first phone call, although T.J. Duckett can't precisely pinpoint whether he was 10 or 11 years old when he saw the suddenly distant look in his mother's eyes as she slowly put down the receiver, her shoulders slumping.

Even for the next several years when Jackie Barham returned from the regular but unexplained absences of a few hours, her body weakened by the secret chemotherapy treatments, T.J. could not fathom why she slumped into a chair or always seemed so fatigued. Then, when Duckett was a senior at Loy Norrix High School in Kalamazoo, and his mother could no longer camouflage the symptoms of the lymphatic cancer that took her life two years later, he finally understood.

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