[CU Tiger]

I just got permission from a friend to post this.

Worth the read for everyone. Sorry if someone cuts onions while you read it


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**New** (Larry) A happy anniversary -- our interview with Shaq Lawson's mother


CLEMSON -– A few months ago, Shaq Lawson’s agent gave Rolitha Oglesby a list of important dates that would come during her son’s preparation for the NFL Draft.

She scanned the list and saw the draft itself would take place on the date her life and her body were torn apart in a car accident that killed Lawson’s father and almost killed her.

So while tonight in Chicago will be the biggest moment of Lawson’s life as he sits with his loved ones in the green room and waits for his name to be called, the significance and the weight of it is far heavier because of that date.

“I know Shaq will be emotional,” Oglesby said. “Because I know I will be. I told Shaq: Look how the Lord works. We didn’t understand when He took his father that day. But I said, ‘Look at it today. Five years later, he is showing you why everything is happening in our lives to get you ready for this day, to see if you’re going to be strong enough for this day before I put this all on you.’”

Oglesby, a 41-year-old mother of five, welcomed this reporter into her Central home three days ago. She was trying to stay calm amid a whirlwind of activity as she prepared to host a cookout staged by the NFL Network later in the day. She was also packing for Tuesday’s trip to Chicago to be with Lawson in the run-up to the draft.

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Shaq Lawson's mother, Rolitha Oglesby, is shown here at her Central home earlier this week during an interview with Tigerillustrated.com.

Until last week, Oglesby was bitter about what happened on that night in late April of 2011. Lawrence Lawson, the father of four of her children, was killed in a head-on collision when a driver swerved over the center line and struck his Chevy Blazer on a two-lane road outside of Central. Lawson died at the scene, and Oglesby spent months recovering from a collapsed lung and other injuries.

According to a collision report provided by the S.C. Highway Patrol, the driver of the truck was cited for driving too fast for conditions (64 in a 45). He was charged almost eight months after the accident and paid an $80 fine. Alcohol tests were not performed on the driver of the truck, who was a minor and a classmate of Shaq’s at Daniel High School.

Oglesby has believed all along that justice was not served after the accident, and it wasn’t until seeing her son discuss the loss of his father in a recent ESPN interview that she resolved to move past the anger and the questions. Just last week, she found the driver of the truck on Facebook and sent him a message telling him she forgives him.

Shaq basically had to become a father to his three younger siblings after Lawrence’s death. Their ages were 6, 5 and 3. Beyond that, his mother struggled performing basic functions and needed his help.

“I remember times I couldn’t sleep at night and he would lay in the bed with me, and when I would go to sleep he would go to his room,” Oglesby said. “Every night he would come back there to my room and lay with me until I went to sleep.

“I couldn’t walk by myself because of my lung. I had to walk bent-over for at least two months. He would help me stand up in the shower, and that’s embarrassing because you don’t want your child to see you like that.”

A year after the accident, Rolitha had to move from the house she shared with Lawrence because there were reminders of him everywhere. She was tortured by the guilt and the wondering why Lawrence was gone and she was still here.

It took a long time before she was able to re-enter society and “deal with people.” She was traumatized at the thought of riding in a car, and she made sure to be back home by dark on Fridays – the day of the accident.

“That house, it seemed like I could see Lawrence everywhere,” she said. “I could smell him. It was like he was right there.”

Oglesby said she received $50,000 in an insurance settlement and used it to buy the three-bedroom mobile home she and her family have lived in since, a few blocks from downtown Central.

A year after the accident, Shaq learned he was not academically eligible to attend Clemson. He reluctantly signed up for Hargrave Military Academy in Virginia, but his mother said he walked into Hargrave a boy and exited a man. He called her every time he received an A on a test. When he’d come home, he’d no longer rely on his mother to make his bed and keep his room neat.

“I thought I would lose him when he had to go to Hargrave, but I didn’t,” Oglesby said. “He maintained. His daddy told him: Always be better than me. Make sure you go to college. Get your education so you can be anything. He told him that the day he died.

“Shaquille’s life really began after he left Hargrave.”

Shaq and his mother never discuss the dark days that followed Lawrence’s death. She’s not sure why. She says certain dates are important to Shaq; on Father’s Day, he will play “Dance With My Father Again” by Luther Vandross.

Oglesby is fully aware that her life is about to change for the better. Her son is going to have millions of dollars in his bank account, and he has said the first thing he will do is build his mother a house.

Oglesby is set on leaving Central when that happens, perhaps moving to Powdersville or Simpsonville. She’s wary of hangers-on who will want a piece of her son’s earnings, and otherwise she’s just ready to experience something new after living here her entire life.

This is the first time she’s discussed the accident and its aftermath with such detail. She says the tragedy has been in the news so she might as well talk about it once and get it over with. In addition, she’s hoping this will provide her with some therapy that she still needs.

Her younger children, now ages 12, 10 and 8, weren’t able to process their father’s death at the time but now they ask questions. They want to see pictures of him. Daughter Leandra, age 10, looks exactly like him. Shaq is “like his twin,” Rolitha says.

“I tell them he’s dead, and he won’t come back here. But he’s with you in spirit.”

Before she squeezed through an opening in the wreckage that night five years ago, Rolitha heard Lawrence speak for the last time. He told her to take care of his kids, then he prayed for salvation.

Five years after their lives were torn apart, tonight their lives change for the better.

After all the pain and all the grief and all the struggles, finally this is a happy anniversary.

“It was a rough time, but we made it by the grace of God,” she says. “That’s all I can say. I can’t explain it, but we did it.”

Go get paid, young man. You have earned it.