Fletcher's Stairway to Success

"He's just a natural leader," Vermeil said. "I think initially it's by example and then it's by presence. He has tremendous self-confidence. He can influence people in the locker room."

A year later, Fletcher was starting for a team that won the Super Bowl, prompting Vermeil to declare that whatever quarterback Kurt Warner meant to the St. Louis offense, Fletcher meant to the defense.

Or as Williams, who coached him in Buffalo, said: "He was the man of his house at 12 years of age. I've got a pretty good feeling that at 32 years old he can hold this defense together."

The world has changed since those days. Fletcher has built a strong relationship with his father whose name, Baker, he wore on the back of his uniform last year. But with his first NFL money he bought his mother and sisters a home in the suburbs. Yet even there her problems persisted. When he signed with Buffalo he moved her there and finally, after more than 15 years of addiction, she was clean.

Fletcher was changing, too. Even with his success he had felt an emptiness, a void that came clear when his girlfriend, Charne, left Cleveland and moved to Florida three years ago out of frustration that he seemed unwilling to make a commitment. On a Friday night in June 2005, he sat alone in his house, ignoring calls from his friends, empty, certain there was something he was missing. He sensed a voice he thinks was God and at that point he dedicated himself to religion.

Instantly, he said, he felt a peace like never before, though he waited until Thanksgiving to call Charne and tell her what had happened. After having barely talked for months, they spoke for six hours that night. Six months later they were married.

And yet just as it seemed his life had come together, there came one more phone call just a week before the wedding, this one from Buffalo. His mother had died of a massive heart attack. Fletcher was planning a wedding as well as a funeral.

"God could have chosen to take her at anytime," he said. "He chose to take her when she was clean and sober."

He shook his head at the unfairness of it all.

"She was so excited about our wedding, she had already picked out her dress. [Last year] was a very tough season for me. All the emotions of losing my mom. I still think about her constantly. Sometimes it hits me when I hear a song she might have liked and think 'I want to talk to my mother.' I don't know if I've had time to grieve or fully process it yet."

So much is going on. Charne is pregnant, due to deliver their first child any day. They have sold their homes in Cleveland and Buffalo and will buy a place in Charlotte, although Cleveland will continue to tug at Fletcher.

A few years ago, he started his own foundation and made Isaac the director. He wants it to give scholarships much the way Schwartz and Kramer provided money for his schooling. The foundation also has funded the distribution of bicycles and worked to fix up local parks. But there is one Fletcher wants cleaned more than all the others. It sits around the corner from Giddings and Duluth. Glass litters the basketball courts, the rims and baskets have long been pulled down. As a child he used to play here and, much like the Kovacic Center, it gave him a diversion, a place to escape. These kids today, he said looking around, have nothing.

But the city said no. The park is too dangerous, the administrators have told him. Too much drug activity. Someone was shot there one night. So the park sits, empty, strewn with litter.

Fletcher sighed. Then he pulled his car away, retracing his way back up the old streets until he turned onto a large road that turned into another large road and soon he was out of the city on the path he wishes he could make everyone else follow.