Despite having moved forward with his life, T.J. Duckett doesn’t regret the 20-some years he spent playing football. He discusses being grateful for the time he got to play, and how he is moving forward with the next part of his life.
On his first day of fourth grade, Justin Caine bent over to tie his shoe. Leaning forward, a tumor in his head slid forward, slicing his brain. For the next four months, he was in the care of the Children’s Neurology Clinic in Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital.
Seventeen years later, Caine wanted to give back to the hospital that saved his life. But for more than a year, his idea for a celebrity football fundraiser stayed merely a plan.
Then he met T.J. Duckett, and with Duckett’s help Caine’s dream became a reality. The event raised $12,000.
Caine is one of the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people in the Lansing area Duckett has helped since moving back to his old college town more than a year ago.
Caine never missed a game when Duckett played football for MSU from 1999-2001. Back then, Caine considered him a football legend. Now, he sees him as something more: a friend.
“When you get to the NFL, you have all of that money and all of that fame,” Caine said, “When you’re done, coming back and still wanting to be involved as much as he is and doing so many thing for his community is just amazing.”
From a player on a team
Duckett sees his life occurring in seasons — a natural view for someone whose life revolved around football for 20 years. Duckett recorded the sixth-most touchdowns in MSU’s history and is fifth all-time leading rusher. In 2001, he caught a winning touchdown pass as time expired, sealing MSU’s victory and Michigan’s defeat. He started every game his senior year.
It wasn’t always that way.
“Growing up, I didn’t even understand football,” Duckett said. “It was boring.”
Football came to Duckett through his older brothers, Toney and Tico. He followed in their footsteps, playing in the backyard, working out, changing his diet.
But while the game was starting a new season in Duckett’s life, he was losing another part — his mother.
Jackie Duckett was a single parent and a special education teacher in Kalamazoo. In addition to her three sons, Jackie Duckett would shelter students at her home if she suspected they were being abused by their parents. Her life left an impression on all her children, Tico Duckett said.
“It just rubbed off on us that if you’re gonna do something in life, why not help the unfortunate?” Tico Duckett said. “Why not help someone who needs help?”
T.J. Duckett was in the process of looking at colleges. He was eating dinner with his mom one night when the phone rang. She picked it up, talked for five minutes, hung up, and began to cry.
That night, his mother told him what she had hidden for seven years — she had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, cancer of the lymphoid tissue. She thought it had gone away, but the phone call confirmed it was back.
“She didn’t want me to worry or be scared,” T.J. Duckett said. “She did everything she possibly could to hide it. … (If I knew) things would have been a lot smoother and simpler and I could have been a better 10-year-old. … It wasn’t about me anymore.”
T.J. Duckett’s mother died his freshman year at MSU.
Her favorite Bible verse is inscribed on a bracelet he wears on his wrist, Isaiah 53:5 — “by His scourging we are healed.”
“She plays a huge part in my life,” T.J. Duckett said. “Everyday my mother is with me.”
Another chapter in T.J. Duckett’s life had closed. But according to his childhood friend and former MSU running back Little John Flowers, another one began.
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“Ever since then it’s just been what can he do to give back,” Flowers said. “And he’s been giving back.”
… to a team player
Flowers remembered hearing about T.J. Duckett before they were both players at Loy Norrix High School in Kalamazoo.
“(My teammates) were always talking about this guy named T.J. Duckett,” Flowers said. “You get out there and see him and it’s like, ‘Damn, that’s a big kid!’”
“Huge” is a word both Flowers and Tico Duckett use to describe T.J. Duckett. Another description they both use — “teddy bear.”
“His big heart always wanted to help people,” Tico Duckett said. “He was never able to take advantage of it because he was always playing a sport.”
By the time he was at MSU, football had become T.J. Duckett’s life. After success in high school and college, he joined the NFL. A first-round draft pick, he spent seven years playing for four different teams across the country.
And then, it was done. In fall of 2009 he was released from the Seattle Seahawks. He no longer had a number, a job, a team. The season had ended.
“I didn’t have any self-worth,” T.J. Duckett said. “Everyone knew me as a football player and here I was without a team.”
T.J. Duckett lost contact with many of his fellow players. He returned to East Lansing. Depression set in.
In December 2009, Duckett went for a drive. On Michigan Avenue in Lansing, he stopped at a red light. He looked out the car window, and saw a red and white brick building with the words “City Rescue Mission of Lansing,” on a sign. He turned into the parking lot, went inside and said, “I’m here to volunteer.”
Russ Kinyon, the director of volunteering at the City Rescue Mission of Lansing, 607 E. Michigan Ave., had heard T.J. Duckett’s name before, but wasn’t exactly sure who he was.
“When he first came in you could tell he had a heavy heart,” Kinyon said. “There were a lot of things on his mind.”
Kinyon and T.J. Duckett began to sort food, labeling boxes and cans. They got to talking, discovering they both had lost a parent to cancer.
And then, in the basement of the mission, T.J. Duckett began to cry.
“Everything I’d done in my whole entire life felt minor to the joy I had at that time,” T.J. Duckett said. “From everything I had done, this was the most important at that time. It made the most difference to me.”
The next season had begun.
Here to volunteer
T.J. Duckett isn’t quite sure why he returned to East Lansing. It had something to do with the people, something to do with MSU, something to do with his family living an hour away. It had something to do with the recession, Michigan’s struggling economy.
“This city is ready for a revival that will never ever be matched,” T.J. Duckett said.
The “revival” can be summed up in T.J. Duckett’s attitude toward volunteering: Help as many people as you can as often as you can.
He still volunteers at the City Rescue Mission of Lansing, the Ronald McDonald House of Mid-Michigan and the Ingham County Family Center, to name a few. He’s done everything from buying Thanksgiving turkeys, to reading books, to honoring local entrepreneurs. Last week, he gave blood. Next week, he’ll shave his beard for cancer. The week after that, he’s “going to jail” to raise “bail” money for children with muscular dystrophy.
“There are many days I forget I played professional football,” T.J. Duckett said. “It would be interesting if people could forget about their lives a little bit and start trying to get involved in other’s lives.”
For Kinyon, T.J. Duckett is nothing short of “a blessing.”
“He (volunteers) with a humility,” Kinyon said. “(He’s) not expecting any attention or recognition. He just wants to be here.”
Football always will be a part of Duckett’s life. He treasures the moments he spent with a jersey on his back and turf under his feet. But volunteering has given him a new purpose.
“(Football) was a season,” T.J. Duckett said. “I was a professional player for seven years … That’s only going to be a piece of what the whole story is going to say.”
