Miami Heat's Wade visits families at SVdP dining room, shares struggles

By Andrew Junker | March 4, 2009 | The Catholic Sun

Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade is known to play the game with authority.

That’s how he’s managed to rack up a list of honors and awards that includes five All-Star appearances, an NBA championship and a gold medal from last year’s Olympics, among others.

But what fewer people know is the authority with which Wade can speak on homelessness and poverty.

While in town for this year’s All-Star game, Wade, his sister Tragil and his mother Jolinda shared their experiences Feb. 13 with a packed St. Vincent de Paul dining room in central Phoenix.

“Eight or nine years ago, we didn’t even know if [my mother] was going to be alive,” Wade told the diners. “She was homeless and would lay her head anywhere she could and would do whatever drugs she could get her hands on.”

Now, Wade’s mother is a pastor, and her story of redemption helped inspire the basketball star to begin his Wade’s World Foundation, which, according to its Web site, “provides support to community-based organizations that promote education, health and social skills for children in at-risk situations.”

“The person that we love most in the world, that’s our mother. That’s the reason we’re here today,” Wade said. “The road to the NBA wasn’t scripted for me. I grew up and I saw what I didn’t want to become.”

Wade credited his sister Tragil with raising him and keeping him on track during his youth. And for her part, Tragil encouraged the diners to remember that even if life is lonely, there are people who care.

“If you have family, please know that your family is praying for you,” she said. “Please know that you have loved ones.”

Tragil said that through all of Jolinda’s travails, she and her younger bother loved their mother, and never gave up hope that she would find help and get clean.

Jimmy Walker, a volunteer with St. Vincent de Paul who introduced the Wades, echoed Tragil’s sentiment. He told the diners — many of whom are homeless themselves — not to give into despair.

“It’s easy in life to get discouraged, defeated and depressed and you want to quit, you want to give up,” he said. “Well, [the Wades] are going to share some encouraging thoughts that I hope you’ll consider worthwhile.”

At one point, a dining room guest shouted out to Wade and asked for more background on his childhood.

“I come from a broken home,” he said simply. “We all have stories. Everybody has a story. It’s just what you do with those stories that is going to determine who you are.”

The crowd saved its largest reaction for Wade’s mother Jolinda, who arrived near the end of the event. Taking the makeshift stage, she launched into a powerful exhortation that elicited whoops and clapping from the diners.

“I was once helpless and homeless and hungry and all that stuff,” she spoke into the microphone. “But I knew that there was something in there that God could use. So I’m not here to put you down. I’m here to encourage you and build you up.”