A different look at Jones... becoming a personal favorite already
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Don't ever let somebody tell you you can't do something. Not even me. You've got a dream? You've got to protect it. People can't do something themselves, they want to tell you you can't do it. You want something? Go get it. Period.
- Chris Gardner (Will Smith), to his son Christopher, in "The Pursuit of Happyness"
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GREEN BAY - This is part of James Jones' life story. This part is called "Art Imitating Life."
Last December, James was sitting on his couch with his girlfriend, Tamika Greer, at their apartment just off the San Jose State campus. It was the couple's regular "Movie Night" date, and James had borrowed from a buddy a bootleg copy of the Will Smith movie "The Pursuit of Happyness," which had just hit theaters. He knew very little about the plot.
When it was over, he turned to Tamika, who had tears streaming down her face. Ever the tough guy, he asked her a question he already knew the answer to.
"I look over to her, and I'm like, 'What are you crying for?' " the Green Bay Packers 23-year-old rookie wide receiver remembers. "And she's like, 'That's your life. That's the stuff you've been through. You've worked so hard to get where you have to get.' "
Set in the early 1980's in San Francisco, less than an hour away from where James grew up, the film tells the inspired-by-a-true-story tale of Chris Gardner, a salesman determined to keep his struggling family afloat. When his girlfriend walks out on him, he's left to raise their 5-year-old son, Christopher, on his own, and when the money runs out, father and son are forced to sleep in homeless shelters and even behind the locked door of a subway station bathroom.
Throughout the film, director Gabriele Muccino uses Smith's "This part of my life is called ..." voice-overs to tell Gardner's remarkable rags-to-riches story. Although the movie met with mixed reviews, Smith received a best-actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal, and the film - now available legally on DVD - has made $162 million to date.
"It touched me, because the movie is about him working so hard to take care of his son," James says. "To see his drive and to see him work like that, that's how I was working to get to the point where I am now."
At the moment he learns that his girlfriend is leaving him, Smith's voice narrates, "It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence. And the part about our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking, how did he know to put the 'pursuit' part in there? That maybe happiness is only something we can only pursue. And maybe we can actually never have it, no matter what."
This is the story of James Jones' pursuit of happiness - a pursuit, he will tell you, that is far from finished.
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This part of James Jones' life is called "Dreams."
Janet Jones' son couldn't have been more than 3 years old the first time he picked up a football. And from that day on, it went everywhere with him.
"He never put it down," she recalls.
In Northern California in the '80s, the San Francisco 49ers were the only game in town. Quarterbacked by Joe Montana, they won four Super Bowl titles during the decade.
"James used to see Joe Montana on the TV, and he told me he was going to be just like him," Janet says. "I knew my baby was going to make it, because in his heart, that was his dream. I knew he was going to do it."
Says James, "I always had in my mind that one day I'd make it to the NFL. That was the drive I had. From playing Pop Warner football when I was a little kid, it was always my dream."
Of course, plenty of kids have that same dream. Very few realize it. Even fewer overcome what James did to do so.
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This part of James Jones' life is called "The Hard Way."
Janet and James' father, who's also named James, divorced when their son was 18 months old. Both of them got hooked on drugs, and by the time her little boy was 8, it'd cost Janet her job working for Hewlett Packard on the assembly line, which she'd done for more than a decade.
While she managed to get odd jobs here and there - and James tried to chip in by selling candy on the street, "bringing my mom every last penny I made" - it wasn't enough to make ends meet. Eventually, Janet and her three kids - James, his older sister Desiree, and Janet's sister's daughter, Alexis - wound up on the street.
"I felt bad. But I didn't have anywhere else to go," says Janet, who had taken Alexis in after her mother, Janet's sister, went to prison. "In the beginning, it was drugs. Then, I lost my job. Nobody wanted to help us, so that's how we had to live. I thank God for shelters, because they're really something that a person who don't have nowhere to go, they can call home. But it's not a place I wanted to be."
And she wasn't the person she wanted to be. She remembers James finding her one day, passed out after a binge. James remembers, too.
"I didn't know much as a little kid, but I knew drugs were bad," says James, who says he has never smoked a cigarette, never tried drugs and never drank alcohol because "I've seen what it does to lives."
"I never saw her do it with my own eyes, so I have no clue what she was doing - whether it was weed, whether it was crack, whether it was a needle - but you can totally tell when somebody's on drugs. That day, she woke up and I looked at her and I'm like, 'Mom, you need to stop. You need to stop.' At that point, at 8 years old, I wished I could've grew up in like two weeks. But I couldn't."
Janet says that day was her rock bottom. She vowed to get her life in order, but it took time. For the next four years or so, they were in and out of shelters - "They only give you three months to live in each shelter, and after that, you have to find somewhere else to go," she explains - as she struggled to turn things around. With every new shelter came a new school, so James attended "four or five elementary schools" before their lives stabilized enough that he could attend the same middle school.
"Even though life was rough for me, I knew life could be better for him," Janet says. "Even though I was doing it, he really knew that drugs were not the way to go, just (from) seeing what it did to a person. I mean, I hit rock bottom when I lost my job and my home and had no place to live. That was rock bottom. At that point, my goal was to get him through school, to make him a man, to raise him the right way."
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This part of James Jones' life is called "Change for the better."
Shortly before James was to start high school, his mother remarried, and his stepfather got a job in Sacramento, about two hours from San Jose. Rather than making him move, Janet let James stay with his paternal grandmother, Bernice Calhoun, so he could go to Gunderson High. (James has also reconciled with his father.)
"It was hard for me. I didn't want to leave him," Janet says. "But he wanted to stay, so I let him. Now, I'm glad I did."
James' grandma was tough ol' bird - "I wasn't afraid to hit him upside his head to do what was best for him," she says - and she forced him to keep up with his academics. In sports, James would go on to become a star at Gunderson, participating in basketball and track but excelling in football, where he was the league MVP as a senior while playing out of position at quarterback.
Although Janet and her husband moved back to San Jose before James' junior year, he continued to live with his grandmother. Then, just as James was going through the college recruiting process, doctors discovered a 15-pound fibroid tumor - a non-cancerous growth that was "the size of a football," in Janet's words - in her ******.
While James said he had drawn interest from "dang near every school on the West Coast," he stayed home at San Jose State to be close to his mom.
"That told me that my son really loves his momma," Janet said.
During his first four college seasons, including a redshirt year in 2002, James did little to impress. But after catching a combined 56 passes for 603 yards and two touchdowns, Jones had a breakout year as a senior last year, catching 70 passes for 893 yards and 10 touchdowns.
In the second game of the season, James' electrifying 42-yard touchdown run on a reverse gave the Spartans a 35-34 victory over Stanford and was No. 1 on SportsCenter's Top 10 plays that day. His NFL dream was starting to look more and more realistic.
"I've been in this business 26 years and coached for another 12 before that. That's a lot of years being around kids," said Jones' agent, Frank Bauer, who first spotted Jones while attending San Jose State's Sept. 23 game against Cal-Poly with former NFL coach Steve Mariucci. (Mariucci's son, Tyler, plays for Cal-Poly.) "You can see it in a kid's eyes the first time you meet him and you shake his hand. You know which kids are the good kids and which kids have their head up their (expletive).
"I lucked out. As a person, he's probably one of the nicest men you'll ever be around. Just a sweetheart of a man. There's a lot of kids that get caught up with 'The Street.' This kid had a vision that he was going to pull himself up - no matter what pulled him down, he was going to pull himself up. I was so excited when he got drafted. If anybody deserved it, it was this kid."
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This part of James Jones' life is called "Happiness."
Last weekend, James gathered with his family and friends in his apartment to watch the NFL draft. Projections had him going anywhere from the fourth round to undrafted, so when the Packers called midway through the third round, on the clock at No. 78 overall, well, you could say it was a bit of a surprise.
"When his name popped up on the screen, I was just screaming and yelling," Janet says. "I don't think it's hit me yet. I'm still numb."
Even more amazing? The Packers liked James so much that, rather than using the pick to trade for Oakland Raiders wide receiver Randy Moss, they kept it and drafted him. While they chose him based on what he did on the field, knowing how hard he'd worked to overcome obstacles off the field played a role, too.
"I've seen young men come into this league from very difficult, difficult circumstances," Packers general manager Ted Thompson says. "From a personal standpoint, those situations cause me to think about if I could have fared as well as some of these guys. Which I don't think I could have.
"There are lots of stories, unfortunately too many, like James'. But when they come out the other side, it has a lifelong effect on these young men, and in a positive way, because of the good they glean from it. James seems to be a very, very grounded person. He seems very mature, knows exactly what he wants. He's very grateful, even going through those experiences. He's a very impressive young man."
And in a matter of months, James will have more money than he could have ever imagined. Last year, the Packers picked guard Jason Spitz at roughly the same spot in the draft (No. 75), and Spitz wound up signing a four-year contract worth roughly $2.35 million, including an up-front signing bonus of $742,250.
James, though, says he's more focused on another life-changing day: May 26, when he receives his sociology degree.
"I'm the first one out of my family to graduate from college," he says proudly. As for what he'll buy his mother with his first big paycheck, he simply smiles. "Whatever she wants."
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This part of James Jones' life is called "Just the Beginning."
The Packers' three-day rookie orientation camp, which wraps up today, wasn't involved enough to make any real judgments about James' NFL potential. But at 6-foot-1 and 207 pounds, he definitely looks the part, and coach Mike McCarthy could see glimpses of how his difficult past drives him.
"I'll say this: He's a hungry individual," McCarthy says. "You watch the way he plays, he's extremely physical, the way he goes after the ball when he competes. If that's where that came from, he definitely has it."
Still, given his inexperience and the Packers' logjam at receiver, James may not contribute much this season.
"To sit here and say he's going to play right away, that may be a reach. To sit here and say he's two years away, that might not be accurate, either," offensive coordinator Joe Philbin said. "We've got to see how he matches up with our defensive backs and how he matches up with the other guys on the roster."
The smart money says not to bet against him, given what he's been through and his perspective on where life has taken him.
"To make it this far and to be here is definitely a dream. But now is just the start," James says. "I don't want to be just, 'James Jones, third-round draft pick who overcame these things.' I want to be a great player. For that to happen, I've got to work hard. All that stuff, it's in the past.
"Yeah, it was a rough childhood. But as I look back on my life story, I'm glad I went through it. I don't want no one else to go through it, but I'm glad I went through it.
"Nobody wants to do it, but I believed in my mom and I knew, believing in God, that everything would work out. Sometimes you go through the day and you don't eat, sometimes you go through the day and you can barely sleep. But those were the things that were happening at that time, and I had to handle them. My faith in God got me through it, and I just kept my focus on football, and now, I'm here.
"It drives me every day. I've always got that in the back of my mind, where I came from. Wherever they put me, I'm going to do my best. And wherever that takes me, it takes me."
