Herring living father's dream
BY BARBARA CAYWOOD
FLORIDA TODAY
MELBOURNE - They'll come to "The Jungle" from all over on fall Friday nights to watch Ray Henry Herring make highlight-film tackles and touchdown catches.
They'll come from Notre Dame, home of Touchdown Jesus, The Four Horsemen and, Fighting Irish coaches hope. They'll come from Maryland and Mississippi and the dozens of other schools who'll send coaches to check out Holy Trinity's senior star, one of America's top 100 high school football players.
But Herring isn't playing for the scouts in the stands, the recruiting experts who'll track his every move or the army of awestruck admirers who'll flock to his football games.
He's playing for the proud, paralysis-stricken man in the wheelchair who gets a kick out of watching his namesake carry on the family football tradition from his sideline seat.
"I've got to finish what my daddy started," Ray Henry says. "I feel like God has put me on a path and I'm not going to let anything stop me."
Three decades ago, the cheers came for Ray Herring the father, a star safety and wide receiver for the Palm Bay Pirates who seemed destined for the same greatness his son is about to achieve.
The senior Herring was "an outstanding athlete," said Artie Ulmer, who coached the elder Herring at Palm Bay.
But on Sept. 24, the third game of the 1977 prep football season, tragedy befell the 16-year-old Herring. The Pirates were playing Cocoa in their home opener, a Saturday night game at Melbourne High Stadium. Ray was playing safety, a spot he'd manned since the Pirates fielded the first football team in school history the year before.
The play was an option run. Herring got in the first hit.
"As soon as I hit him, everybody rushed in to help," he said. "Someone hit me in the back of the neck with a helmet. I still don't know who it was. A funny feeling, just a tingling, went through my feet for about three or four seconds.
"I got up, ran back a punt about 65 yards on the next play and played the rest of the game."
Two days later, paralysis set in.
The son shines
Ray Henry Herring II has been on the Sunshine State high school radar ever since his freshman year at Holy Trinity, a new school with a first-year varsity program. That season, he made a name for himself by intercepting seven passes, tops on the Space Coast, and earning first-team Class 1A all-state honors in Class 1A.
He's been an all-stater all three years at Holy Trinity, and led the Space Coast in interceptions again last season with seven.
But early on, the 6-foot, 190-pound two-way star, who splits time at safety, wide receiver and running back, fretted that his talents wouldn't be noticed by college recruiters because he played for a private school in Florida's smallest classification.
"He worried all last year that he wouldn't get any recognition," said his mother, Valerie. "I told him if he was good, they would find him."
Sure enough, they have.
Herring's only worry these days is how to pare down his massive list of schools to the five allowed campus visits. He has firm offers from 16 major college programs, including his four current favorites - Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, Tennessee and Maryland. They're all enamored with his 4.5-second speed in the 40-yard dash, not to mention his 3.5 GPA.
Being noticed was part of the plan.
Herring is determined to follow the dream that was cut short for his father, who played in an era before Internet recruiting rankings, summer jamborees and college coaches jetting across the country to look at prospects before they play a down as seniors.
"He wants to carry on his dad's legacy," said Holy Trinity coach John Thomas, who's nicknamed his star "Ray Ray."
"That's one reason he has never gone by Ray Herring II, but just Ray Herring," Thomas said. "He kind of likes to put on his dad's shoes. It might sound like just the right thing to say, but he really means it."
A special child
Growing up, Ray Henry didn't give a second thought to his dad being in a wheelchair. He barely notices that the long, slender fingers that used to haul down passes are now gnarled and claw-like because of the paralysis.
"I always thought that was normal," Ray Henry said. "I've never seen him walk. I never got to race against him or play ball with him. I'll always wonder who's the better one, but I'll never get a chance to find out.
"He tells me it's him, anyhow."
The senior Herring never had a chance to prove it to Ray Henry in the back yard or the gym, but he did impart lessons the boy could learn nowhere else.
"I've always been straight with him, answered every question," said dad, who's always preached schoolwork before football. "He's gotten the kind of education most people don't get. I want him to get a good education, to go to college and get a degree. If football is part of his future, that's fine, but it can be taken away in an instant. He has the advantage because he knows whatever he is given he must cherish."
Young Ray was a special child from the beginning. He was born on Sept. 16, 1986, three years after his parents married in Las Vegas. Valerie had previous pregnancy complications, suffering a miscarriage and losing a premature baby girl after just one day.
Ray is the couple's only child.
"After the accident, his dad's life was always 50-50 - 50-50 whether he would ever walk, 50-50 whether he could have kids," Valerie said. "I have a strong faith. I felt it would work out."
'Me against the world'
Ray Herring has told his son how, the Sunday after taking the helmet hit in the Saturday night game, he felt really tired.
He has told him how he went to the emergency room at Brevard Hospital (now Holmes Regional Medical Center), where X-rays revealed nothing. He was told to go home, take two Tylenol, use moist heat on his neck and go to bed.
By Monday morning, paralysis had started gradually, first on the left side.
"My mom took me to her regular physician," Ray said. "He took one look and sent me to a neurologist, who put me in the hospital immediately.
"Nobody really didn't tell me nothing."
To this day, Herring has never been given a clear diagnosis of his injury, but he said an explanation he got from a doctor at Shands University Hospital in Gainesville about 10 years ago makes the most sense.
"He told me since my neck wasn't broken or anything like that, I probably broke a blood vessel and the blood leaked down onto the nerves in my spinal cord, causing the paralysis," he said.
When the Melbourne neurologist put Herring in the hospital that Monday morning, Ray was told he would be there a week.
"That week turned into a nightmare," he said.
Within days, Herring was totally paralyzed and contracted double pneumonia.
"The only thing I could move was my eyelids and I couldn't talk because I had a tracheotomy," he said. "At first, I kept my room dark. I was really depressed, but lying there and not being able to move, all you can do is think. Either you come out of it or you go crazy."
After 90 days, the feeling gradually returned to Herring's arms and he climbed closer to the top of the waiting list for rehabilitation at Miami Jackson Memorial Hospital.
Before he left, however, there was the moment that solidified the resolve that remains today.
"One day, the doctors came in the room and told my mom she should prepare to always take care of me or maybe put me in a nursing home. They weren't even talking to me and it (ticked) me off.
"I told them, 'Get out of here. You're not God. Leave now because I don't need this.' From then on, I knew it was me against the world."
Life goes on
During five months of rehab, Herring was told he was a Level C6 incomplete quadriplegic, meaning doctors didn't know how much movement he would regain. Since then, he has regained full strength in his arms and a slight, almost twitchy, movement in his left leg.
At Jackson, he learned to become as independent as a wheelchair-bound person can be.
"I learned everything I could about me and what I needed to do to take care of myself," he said. "I'm naturally right-handed, but since my left arm (feeling) came back first, I taught myself to write left-handed. Now, I'm ambidextrous."
He learned how to drive and got his driver's license. He was tutored three days a week for the high school classes he was missing.
When he returned to Melbourne in May 1978, the 17-year old took seven classes over the summer and got a car, making him feel even more independent. He was able to return to school for the start of his senior year and was even three credits ahead of his classmates.
"I had my own parking space right next to the principal," he said. "And my own elevator."
Herring graduated on time with Palm Bay's first senior class. Then it was off to Brevard Community College and the University of South Florida, where he majored in communications and minored in history.
Next on his horizon: a master's degree in rehabilitation.
"He was always a very positive person and he's been that way the whole time," Ulmer said. "He's one of those handicapped people who nothing holds them back. And he probably wouldn't appreciate being called handicapped, either."
Father knows best
Despite his dad's injury, Ray Henry never once thought about not playing football after taking up the sport at 10.
"I'm not afraid and I don't worry about it," he said. "In fact, the reason I like playing defense best is because I like to hit. I figure if something is going to happen, it will so I might as well go ahead, play and have fun."
Valerie wasn't about to get in the way of Ray Henry's dream. Not after a long chat about the subject with his father.
"It was up to Ray," she said. "He felt what happened to him was an accident so little Ray played. I really don't worry about it and no, I don't get nervous when he plays. Now, I'm used to it."
"Football didn't do anything to me, I believe that," the elder Herring said. "If I had to do it all over again, I would."
Today, the father is an advocate for the disabled and frequently travels to conventions around the country, where he learns new techniques and new information for the handicapped, which he brings back to the community. He and Valerie split after eight years together, but he carefully shepherds the blossoming career of his only child, showering him with advice about life and football.
"He tells me to always have a backup plan," the younger Herring said. "The best advice he has given me is to put education first because at any point in life, football can be taken away. We talk almost every day and I've never, ever seen him get down. He keeps me going. I look at him and he's never quit, so I have no reason to."
Quit is not a word in the lexicon of either Ray Herring.
"I'm still playing the game," the father said. "As long as I can get up and get in this wheelchair, I'm winning."
