TYRONE L. McGRAW made me see the world differently.
While working on a feature story on McGraw, a two-sport athlete in track and football at Stanford, I described him as a rare success story out of San Francisco's tough Bayview-Hunters Point.
McGraw corrected me.
"How can you say that a single mother who raises three kids and works two jobs is not successful?" he said. "She puts food on the table. She keeps her children safe."
Don't condemn those whom you don't understand, was his point. And don't condemn those who commit crimes without understanding the dysfunctional foundation that creates that environment.
As a sportswriter who covered him in high school and later worked with him at Stanford, I had the privilege of knowing Tyrone for more than a decade, before he passed away on Sunday from cancer, at age 29.
There are those who do great things and deserve credit for things they accomplished. Tyrone, even at his young age, deserves such a tribute. But it was the things he had yet to accomplish that sadden me the most and make his story so unique.
McGraw came from nothing to graduate from Stanford and begin a career in public service. The journey was miraculous. McGraw redefined the type of life that could be possible from the difficult circumstances he was born into, and he redefined my vision of success. He made me realize the dangers of judging others without the context of the respect and dignity they deserve.
In 35 years in the sports world, first as a journalist and then in Stanford athletics, I never met anyone more inspiring than Tyrone McGraw.
I first met McGraw when he was a running back at Archbishop Riordan High – a gritty Catholic boys school in The City. I was looking to do a story on a kid who was putting up incredible numbers on a non-descript team. Riordan developed a few NFL players over the years – Derek Loville, Steve Sewell -- but the program always struggled in the West Catholic, Northern California's strongest league. Because there was limited space on campus, the football, baseball, and track teams all occupied the same field. The track actually had corners because there wasn't enough space for the rounded curves.
The Riordan football coach at the time, Frank Oross, was effusive about McGraw. Of course, coaches are complimentary about their athletes and even enthusiastic, but this was different. Great grades, great athlete. But there was more.
"He's humble as hell, he never talks about himself," Oross told Mitch Stephens of the San Francisco Chronicle. "He's always helping someone else. Tyrone just has this special air about him.
"You know what it is? Tyrone is the type of kid who could be president one day. I'm totally serious. There's something very magical inside of him."
McGraw was raised by Leona Banks, a nurses' assistant in the cardio pulmonary unit at Kaiser Permanente Hospital. She didn't want her son's role models to be drug dealers and gangbangers, so she scraped up the money to send him to a private grammar school in a better neighborhood. She placed him in after-school sports, and then brought him to work so he could be around doctors and other educated adults.
Leona did not have a car, so Tyrone took public transit to school, becoming a regular on the S.F. Muni's 25 Divisidero bus line. Sometimes he was picked on for the way he spoke. His manner of enunciating words did not fit the street persona. Though Tyrone never carried a weapon, his mother once advised him to carry a chain in his pocket, as a means to defend himself against bullying teens if danger arose.
From Riordan to Stanford, where he played two seasons of football – first under Walt Harris and then Jim Harbaugh – we became reacquainted when I came to Stanford in 2008.
Tyrone recalled that when he was 10, a man was shot in his doorway (Straight Outta Hunters Point: The Tyrone McGraw Story, GoStanford.com, May 21, 2010):
Leona turned toward the window.
"Oh, my god!" she shouted, and ran out the door.
This startled Tyrone, who viewed his mother as "so brave and so courageous."
"I see my mom, who is like the only person in the world to me, running outside," McGraw said. "And here I go. I follow her out the door thinking I'm going to protect her if anything bad happened. I couldn't believe the sight that I saw."
At the bottom of the front steps, a young man lay bleeding.
"She yelled at me to run inside and call 9-1-1," McGraw said. "I remember I did."
Tyrone assumes the man died. He never found out what happened, what became of him, or who he was. All that was left were bloodstains on their doorstep.
When Tyrone was 14, Banks died of cancer. Fortunately, only two blocks away were Tyrone's godparents, Brad and Cherell Hallet, who had provided another line of support throughout his life and offered their home when he needed one. Brad always had been a father figure to Tyrone, but four months after Banks' death, he too died, of a stroke.
McGraw somehow remained focused and graduated as valedictorian at Riordan, where he had gone on a national Bill Gates Millennium Scholarship. Though he came to Stanford with the idea of becoming a neurosurgeon, he eventually majored in American studies with a concentration of law and urban America.
His father, Tyrone Keith McGraw, had told me, "He wants to help people. His whole thing is not to forget where he came from."
Indeed, McGraw always wanted to serve, especially as a voice to those neglected by politicians and society. He considered being a judge or a politician.
As much as I admired him, I could not overcome a sense of fear for him. The pressure must have been immense. So few emerge from a place like Bayview-Hunters Point with a degree from one of the world's great universities. He couldn't just fade into a career somewhere, he had to do great things. He carried the strain of so many hopes.
McGraw understood that.
"There are many people as talented as I am athletically, and just as smart as I am, in my community," he said in 2010. "But they've never been given the same opportunities.
"It's a burden," he continued. "But it's one that I welcome. You do bear a sense of responsibility, but it's a balancing act. In the past, I was one of those people that always tried to meet so many people's expectations. Now, I'm a little more selfish. I understand that I have to live my life too."
His Stanford track accomplishments were many. He ran 6.80 in the 60 meters in 2010 for a school indoor record that still stands. Outdoors, he ran on the 4x100 relay team that advanced to the NCAA West Prelims. He ran on three of the 10 fastest 4x100 teams in Cardinal history.
But his life of service was what ultimately drove him.
Among his achievements:
- Interned at The White House under the Obama administration.
- Externed for Judge Thelton Henderson, who initially overturned Proposition 209 and sat on the three-judge panel declaring overcrowding in California prisons.
- Externed for Ronald M. George, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California.
- Studied abroad in Berlin and at the University of Oxford (Magdalen College).
- Active at Stanford's Haas Center for Public Service and the Willie L. Brown, Jr. Institute on Politics and Public Service.
- Worked as a Teaching Fellow at Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men on the South Side of Chicago, working with a group of 33 freshmen, who were known as the Pride of Relentlessness.
- Most recently, was a legislative aide in the Office of Assembly member Tony Thurmond (D-Richmond), with a main responsibility in the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Health and Human Services, supporting the poor and elderly.
The pattern always was serving the underserved. That was his calling.
Tyrone McGraw's 2016 commencement speech at Archbishop Riordan High.
In 2014, McGraw was diagnosed with cancer and he underwent surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy for a rare type of tumor that ran the entire length of his neck. With his cancer worsening, McGraw was invited to be the commencement speaker at Riordan's graduation last year. His speech was as emotionally heartfelt as Jim Valvano's 1993 ESPY speech, which he gave while fraught with terminal cancer.
In his speech, he described how he believed he would flunk out in his first quarter at Stanford.
"I would cry on my bed," he said. "I didn't want to get up. I felt the weight of everyone who had ever invested in me, and I felt like a failure. An utter and complete failure. But herein lies the first lesson of the day in overcoming adversity and obstacles: You have to get up. Even when every part of you tells you can't.
"And so I did."
He left the graduates with these words:
"For all of the adversity I've faced in my short lifetime, it would seem I've been preparing all my life for this kind of battle. I'm hoping that preparation has trained me well enough to see this trial through as well. In any case, I do have faith that everything will be OK. With God on my side, every day may be a struggle, but I ain't worried about nothing. And with God on my side, I am blest."
Over the past year, McGraw's condition worsened. A bad fall led to two months in the hospital and eventually McGraw lost the use of his limbs and became a quadriplegic.
McGraw's death was announced on his Facebook page on Tuesday:
Friends, loved ones, and colleagues of Tyrone-
It is with a heavy heart that I share with you our beloved Tyrone has passed. He passed on Sunday, June 18 after having a good day and was at peace. We would like to thank everyone for the tremendous support and love shown to Tyrone during his hard fought journey.
Upon hearing the news, my first thought was of a conversation we shared before the posting of the GoStanford.com story.
I had interviewed his father, and was confused about something he said. Tyrone always had described Banks as his mother, but that wasn't necessarily true in the biological sense.
When I asked Tyrone about it, he revealed the truth: He was a crack baby. His biological mother was unfit to raise him and his father was incarcerated. His aunt, Banks, raised him as her son. Tyrone was reluctant to have that in the story, so I didn't include it.
Later, however, Tyrone sent me a letter. It was the words of a motivational speech he gave to Oakland high school students. In it, he described the journey that began with the enormous odds on the day he was born. He said that if the situation came up again, I could share that story.
I thought of what the day of his birth must have been like and the uncertainty he faced merely to survive. Yet, for 29 years, Tyrone McGraw lived a life most people can only dream about.
I consider the words of Tyrone's high school football coach, of something "magical" within.
It was so true.- David Kiefer, Stanford Athletics