Defying The Odds

Bills WR Thompson Overcomes Challenges

- Chris Brown

For Deonte Thompson, it still elicits a big sigh from his lungs. Losing his nephew to murder in his hometown of Belle Glade, Florida three years ago was difficult. Not only because he was family, but because Darrel Roberts was more like a brother.

“He was my oldest brother’s son, so we were the same age,” said Thompson. “We grew up in the same house so he was really like my brother.”

Roberts was also the one who introduced Thompson to football.

“He was the athlete. Third grade he came home with some shoulder pads and that’s how we started playing football,” Thompson recalled. “He was first with it and then all of us were out there the next day playing. He played everything position-wise. He played basketball too. He was a great cornerback though. He was fast and strong.”

But like so many in Belle Glade, a town that at one time, along with nearby Clewiston, produced almost half of the country’s sugar from the cane fields in the fertile swamplands near Lake Okeechobee that were drained in the 1920s, Roberts succumbed to the temptations of the street life.

When one grows up surrounded by cane fields and little in the way of opportunity, someone flashing a wad of cash in front of you can prove to be an overpowering draw. Most who grow up in Belle Glade never see much else. So seemingly easy money in a place where most residents are scraping by to pay rent and put food on the table can be easily rationalized as a logical decision.

“He was one of the most talented guys,” Thompson laments of his nephew. “But he fell victim to the street life.”

Fifth Street University