Men are what their mothers made them.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
When I look back on my life, I feel blessed in so many ways. One of those blessings is that I survived my childhood.
My mother brought me into the world on July 22, 1966, at Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same Dallas hospital where President Kennedy had been declared dead three years earlier. My parents named me Timothy Donell—Timothy after the Bible figure and Donell because my mother liked the name. The delivery was smooth enough, but it wasn’t long before I gave the rest of my family plenty to worry about.
I was six months old and crawling around the house when I pulled on an electrical cord that hung from our ironing board. My sister had left the iron out, and it was still hot. That iron fell on the right side of my head and then scalded my left arm.
The Brown family didn’t have much in the way of funds, so nobody took me to the doctor—at first. Then, when the burn on my arm became infected and my whole body swelled up like a balloon, I was rushed to the hospital. I was having trouble getting air. For a time, it didn’t look good. The doctors were a few hours away from surgically inserting a tube into my neck so I could breathe.
Anyone who knows Josephine Brown understands that she wouldn’t take news like that without doing something about it. My mom got her dad and brother down to the hospital, and they immediately set up a prayer vigil in the waiting room near my room. I don’t know what they said to God. All I know is that three or four hours later, the nurse came up to them and said, “We think Tim’s doing better.” I recovered just fine, though today I have an iron-shaped scar on my arm and don’t hear as well out of my right ear.
According to my mom, that day of the prayer vigil and my quick turnaround in the hospital was when she first knew I was going to be “special.”
I’m not so sure about special, but I do believe God must have a purpose for my life, because that wasn’t the last close call He got me through. When I was four, I found a matchbook. Naturally, I decided it would be a good idea to get some newspaper and start a fire. I lit it on our back porch, and soon the screen to our back door was in flames. Fortunately, a neighbor ran into the house and fetched my mom, who put it out. My dad whipped me pretty good for that one.
Then there was the day about a year later that I found a bullet in the yard across the street. I just happened to have a hammer in my hand. Why was I walking around the neighborhood with a hammer? Don’t ask me. But since I had it, I decided to use it. I slammed it down on the bullet, once . . . twice—
Crack!
The bullet exploded, hitting me in the forehead. I fell down. The neighbors came rushing out of their house, sure I’d just killed myself. But the only lasting effect was a scar on my head.
It’s near the one I later got from a scrape with a dog.
I seemed pretty determined to do bodily harm to myself in those days. But I wasn’t the only one. When she was seven and I was five, my sister Gwen got angry with me and decided to end my earthly existence. It may have had something to do with me smacking her.
Gwen’s plan was pretty elaborate for a seven-year-old. She wedged a knife into the ground in our front yard, the point sticking straight up. Then she got a brick and placed it in a strategic spot in front of the knife. She proceeded to chase me through the yard, right toward her trap. And her plan nearly worked. I did trip on the brick and fall on the knife. But the point stuck into my knee—painful, but not fatal. (In case you’re wondering, Gwen and I are much better friends today—it’s been years since she’s tried to kill me.)
Maybe all those early narrow escapes were the inspiration for my ability to dodge would-be tacklers on the football field. Too often, it seemed, I was eluding trouble just in time.
The neighborhood we lived in probably didn’t help. For the first seven years of my life, my family’s home was 4315 Copeland Street, a small, two-bedroom apartment in a rundown fourplex in South Dallas. “The Hood” was the kind of area where my dad made sure to let people know he had guns in the house, just in case anyone got ideas about robbing or hassling us.
My parents didn’t buy their children a lot of toys or the fancy gadgets so many kids take for granted these days. I didn’t have my own bedroom, so I either shared a bed or slept on the floor. But we always had what we needed. I never thought we were lower class or that we lived in a bad neighborhood. It was just life, and actually, it was pretty good.
The biggest reason I felt that way was my family. My dad was away most of the time, working as a construction foreman during the day and managing a nightclub in the evening. But I had my two uncles and their families living right next to us in the same fourplex. I had my sisters Joyce (nearly eleven years older), Ann (four years older), and Gwen. I had my brother, Wayne (eight years older).
And most of all, I had Mama.
Josephine Kelly grew up in Louisiana, the daughter of a Baptist preacher. She was the youngest of seven kids. Early on, she absorbed the idea from both her parents that family was terribly important.
My mother was twelve when she met my dad, who was seventeen. He didn’t have a car back then—he visited her by riding a horse named Chester. Mama was just eighteen when she married Eugene Brown, my dad. They already had two kids together. They were awfully young to be raising a family, and both had strong opinions about how to do it. Mama says they used to go at it, shouting at each other when they disagreed about something. She even waved a pot and pan at him a time or two, though she never actually hit him.
But just a year or so after they got married, my mom gave her heart to the Lord, and everything changed. She decided that from that point on, she would live right by God. That’s exactly what she did. The crazy fights stopped. In fact, in all my life I never saw her argue with my dad. Just as important, she set out to give her children the best foundation she possibly could. All of us Brown kids knew that my dad was the voice of authority when he was around, but Mama was the one who held our family together and made sure things ran smoothly.
My earliest memories of my mother are of watching her get off the bus at the stop down the street. I was only three or four years old. She used to work as a seamstress for another family, and Gwen and I watched from our street corner when Mama was due to return home in the afternoon. I’d get so excited when I spotted that familiar hairdo with the part in the middle and little curl in the back. We’d both run to greet her, then walk with her back home.
Whether she was riding the bus or working at home, you never saw Mama in anything but a dress. It was always modest, not too tight and not too short. To this day, in fact, I’ve never seen her knees!
That was how she lived—modest. You never heard her boasting about anything, and she made sure her kids didn’t brag either. She wasn’t one for big speeches. She just quietly went about her day, cleaning and cooking for our family or sewing for another family to bring in some income.
Not that she was a pushover. No way. My dad was usually the disciplinarian when we kids got out of line, even if we had to wait for him to get home to find out what would happen to us. But Mama knew how to make her point when she needed to.
I still remember one time when I went too far with her. It was a hot summer day, and she stood at the sink in our tiny kitchen, preparing a meal. “Mama,” I whined repeatedly, “can you give me thirty cents to go swimming?”
“Boy, you know I don’t have thirty cents,” she said. “You just go on out of here.”
“Mama, c’mon,” I said. “Give me thirty cents.”
I don’t know how she did it—I don’t think she even looked at me—but her backhand was like a striking cobra. Before I knew it, the side of my face was stinging.
“Ow, Mama!” I said. “You didn’t have to do that!”
“I told you to get out of here,” she said, “and you’re going to mess with me?”
That was the end of that conversation. You didn’t mess with Mama. Not then, and not today.
I have so much respect for my mother. She did not have an easy life. Her marriage was not easy. Raising six children—the youngest, Kathy, was born sixteen years after me—was not easy. Working to provide enough dollars to pay for food and clothes while also running a household was not easy. Yet she never complained. She, along with my dad, did what was necessary to give her children the foundation they needed for a successful life.
Most important of all, she made sure we spent time with God.
For the Brown family, church was not something we did now and then when we felt the need for a little spiritual encouragement. It was a way of life. Mama insisted on it, and though Dad only showed up on Easter, he completely supported her program for the family. If there was any hesitation on my part, he was quick to tell me, “You are going to church, boy.”
Actually, I didn’t need much prodding. Unlike a lot of younger kids, I looked forward to church. I probably spent more time there than I did in my own home. During my first years, we attended Victory Chapel, a tiny church pastored by my uncle, Johnnie Grant. It served three extended families, and with only three rows of pews, sat thirty-five people tops.
What we lacked in numbers, we made up for in hours. We were there Wednesday nights, Friday nights, and all of Sunday—and I do mean all. I also remember youth “shut-in” services that started at 7:00 p.m. Friday and ran until 7:00 a.m. Saturday. Other times of the year, the church hosted revival services that ran all week.
Through rain, ice, snow, and sunshine, the Browns (minus Dad) were there for all of it. My mom got us involved in the church choir. When I was six, I also started playing the drum for the choir. Not “drums,” as in a drum set, but “the drum.” The rhythm section for our church’s musical efforts was a single snare drum. The first time I saw someone playing a full drum set, I was blown away. That guy can play five or six drums at once, I thought. He must be really talented.
More important than all that was the Bible teaching we received at church. Before I was eight years old, I’d memorized all the books of the Bible, the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, and Psalm 23. I didn’t understand all of it, but I spent so much time on it that I couldn’t help absorbing a portion of spiritual wisdom. It probably helped that I was competitive. Our Sunday school teacher was my grandfather, Mama’s dad. He had us compete against each other to see who’d memorized their lesson the best. The winner got a six-pack of soda pop. Even then, I loved to win and taste that soda pop.
When I was twelve, we started attending Victory Temple Church of God in Christ in the Pleasant Grove area. That was a big change, since attendance probably averaged 350 people those first years. What didn’t change, though, was that we practically lived at church.
As kids, we did take breaks now and then. After services let out on Sunday afternoons, my friends and I walked either to the Shake, Rattle, and Roll to ride go-karts or to the nearby middle school, where we practiced our dunks on eight-foot rims. Then, tired and sweaty, it was back to church for a snack and evening services.
Did I ever think about skipping out on church so I could mess around on my own? No. I wanted to be there. That’s where my family was, literally and spiritually. These were the people who loved me and were looking out for me. And though I didn’t comprehend it all, I knew what I was learning there about God was important.
Most of all, especially during those early years, I knew us being in church was top priority for Mama. The last thing I wanted was to disappoint her.
Mama didn’t just get us to church and then sit back. She was active as a church missionary, which in our congregation meant that she might talk with people in the community as a representative of the church or visit people in need. Her commitment to living a godly life is another example of what made her, and still makes her, so amazing.
Every mother is special. I have great admiration for all moms. Each is a full-time doctor, psychologist, pastor, teacher, chef, taxi driver, and police officer, all rolled into one. Mothers love their children with a fierce devotion that no one else on the planet can match. And even though we sometimes pretend otherwise, we—their sons—need them.
Years ago, a Harvard University study found that 91 percent of men who didn’t have a close relationship in their early years with their mothers eventually developed coronary artery disease, hypertension, ulcers, and alcoholism. Only 45 percent of men who were close to their moms had similar illnesses.1 That tells me that mothers have a huge and lasting influence on the lives of their sons—not just on their health, but on every aspect of life.
I know that was the case for me. Mama was always there, steady as a compass pointing north. It’s not that we did a lot together—she hardly had time with everything else that had to be done. And she didn’t fill my head each day with wise sayings to guide me, which was probably a good thing. I know of parents who try too hard, always telling their kids what to do or attempting to teach them a lesson every minute. That can be too much, so that a son or daughter tunes the parent out as soon as mom or dad starts speaking.
Mama was more subtle than that. Once, for example, I was having trouble with a girlfriend. Mama could see that this girl had me twisted around, that I’d started to let her up-and-down emotions run my life. I couldn’t see it, but Mama knew.
Instead of lecturing me or telling me this girl was a bad influence, she just said, “Timmy, didn’t you tell me you met a nice young lady at your job?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, why don’t you go out to dinner with her?”
I thought for a second. “You know what?” I said. “That’s a good idea, Mama.”
My mother wasn’t trying to break me and my girlfriend up. She just wanted to change the way I viewed that relationship, to put us back on equal terms. That was Mama—a world of good advice wrapped in a few simple words.
It wasn’t Mama’s words, however, that spoke most to me while I was growing up. It was the way she lived her life. Even then I understood that she was a woman of integrity. I never saw her say one thing and then do another. What you saw was who she was—a woman devoted to her God, her church, and her family. For her, as long as she could keep going to church and keep praying and fasting, everything was going to be all right.
That was an example I desperately needed, especially in later years when the temptations of the NFL lifestyle began coming my way. Mama set the bar high for herself and her family, yet I never saw her stumble. Sometimes my siblings and I kid her: “C’mon, Mama, can’t you slip up once in a while?” But she hasn’t while I’ve been watching. If she can live with that kind of faith and integrity, I guess I should be able to find a way to do that too.
No mother is perfect, of course. They all make mistakes, saying or doing or not doing things they later regret. A few fail consistently. Yet I believe all mothers love their children. And in the case of their sons, I believe each leaves an individual legacy that can help guide them. For me, it was Mama’s commitment to faith and family, her steady presence, her wise counsel at just the right moments, and her example. For you, it might be something else. If you look for it, it’s there for you to discover, grow from, and grab hold of for the rest of your life.