Feeling the Burn of a Sting

Basketball Star, Community Try to Recover After Drug Bust

MEBANE, N.C.

Now is the time for moving past it. Nearly everyone agrees on that. The family and friends of JamesOn Curry, would-be county hero. Other townspeople, too, because if you live in these parts, you're sick of hearing "Alamance County" and "drug bust" lumped in the same sentence in newspaper article after newspaper article, broadcast upon broadcast. This is, after all, the kind of place where, as school board member Gayle Gunn said, "neighborhoods are neighborhoods, kids play in the streets."

No player in North Carolina high school history -- not David Thompson, not James Worthy, heck, not Michael Jordan -- scored more points than Curry, bringing the spotlight to Eastern Alamance High School, enrollment 1,006. He was to play at the University of North Carolina, about 25 miles from home.

"He'd always dreamed of that," said his father, Leon. "Who wouldn't?"

Yet, as everyone around here knows by now, on the morning of Feb. 4 -- not 12 hours after Curry scored 47 points in another victory for the Eagles -- the kid's circumstances changed, the county's stillness changed, it all changed.

Before dawn, law enforcement officials from two towns and the county sheriff's office had a magistrate sign arrest warrants for 50 students at five high schools. Curry was among them, charged with six felony counts of possessing marijuana and selling it on school grounds.

The reaction from those who knew Curry was nearly uniform: Not him, not the kid who, his father said, "came home with a basketball pacifier in his mouth." No way.

"Not true," said Fred Quartlebaum, a former assistant at North Carolina and Curry's chief recruiter for the Tar Heels. "Can't be. Just not true."

The talk took off. It was a sports story. It was a news story. It was an editorial. More. The raid was right. It was wrong. We have a drug problem. Oh, Lord.

"Some said it shouldn't have been done," said John Moon, Curry's coach at Eastern Alamance. "Some said it should've been done. The kids should've been handled different. The kids were handled the right way.

"It'll probably be talked about forever."

Last Wednesday night, in his little white house tucked down a country road just before the county line, JamesOn Curry ended a three-month period of his young life that felt like forever. He put pen to paper, signed with Oklahoma State, and ensured he'll play college basketball.

'It Was a Sad Day'

In college basketball, this was about JamesOn Curry. Drug busts are a part of the routine, daily flow of the sports page, the items separated by ellipses, stuck in the corners of newspapers from Long Island to Los Angeles. That's what trickled out across the nation: North Carolina recruit charged with running drugs. Turn the page.

But in Graham, in Burlington, in Mebane and throughout the county, Curry was just part of it. Here were 50 sons and daughters -- 50! -- suddenly called to the principal's office, frisked, placed in handcuffs, and taken away in vans.