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Kiwanuka Reaches Into History
BC's Mathias Kiwanuka takes down BYU's Nathan Meikle. "My grandfather was a very revered man who changed a lot of people's lives," Kiwanuka says of Benedicto Kiwanuka.
(By Douglas C. Pizac -- Associated Press)
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"My grandfather was a very revered man who changed a lot of people's lives," Mathias Kiwanuka said. "He was a champion for education and women's rights. His death was something that's still hard for my parents to talk about."
Kiwanuka's father, Emmanuel Kiwanuka, fled Uganda shortly after his father was assassinated. His mother, Deodata, the daughter of poor school teachers, arrived in the United States around the same time. Kiwanuka's father was studying to be a priest; his mother was going to be a nun. Instead, they married and raised three children in Indianapolis.
Emmanuel and Deodata Kiwanuka divorced when Mathias was in sixth grade, and he has been estranged from his father since. After the divorce, his mother quit her job as a nurse and started a cleaning business.
After Kiwanuka's father left, the family briefly lived in a hotel before moving into an apartment and then a house. Deodata Kiwanuka often worked 20 hours per day to ensure her children could attend a private Catholic school in Indianapolis. Kiwanuka's sister, Mary, was a graduate student at George Washington and a law student at Catholic University.
Deodata Kiwanuka remarried three years ago and runs a commercial cleaning business with her husband.
"When I make it to the NFL, she's going to take a vacation," Kiwanuka said.
There is little doubt Kiwanuka will be playing in the NFL soon. He might have been a first-round selection in April's NFL draft, but decided to return to Boston College for his senior season. He was named the ACC preseason player of the year and has 3 1/2 sacks entering tomorrow's game against Virginia at Alumni Stadium. In last week's 38-0 victory over Ball State, Kiwanuka broke the school record with 31 1/2 career sacks.
"He's really quick off the edge and is a great pass rusher," Virginia Coach Al Groh said. "He's very tall. He's very rangy. He's a little lean and runs way beyond the norm for his position."
Wherever football takes him, Kiwanuka certainly won't forget where he and his family started. A red, yellow and black Ugandan flag has hung in his Boston College dormitory room since he and his sister found it in a store in the District four years ago. On July 4, 2004, Kiwanuka got a five-inch tattoo of the Ugandan presidential seal on his back as a tribute to the grandfather he never met.
"People back in Uganda would just come up and shake my hand, saying, 'I have a tremendous amount of respect for your grandfather,' " Kiwanuka said. "People appreciate honest, genuine individuals. From my standpoint, it motivated me not necessarily to aspire to be a big political figure, but if you can change one person's life that dramatically, so that a couple of decades later people want to shake your grandchild's hand, that's something that is unmatched."
