Eisenhower's Jackson energized a basketball team — and a community

DECATUR – Jay-Z spits rhymes from the stereo of the decade-old Chevy Cavalier. Lewis Jackson nods to a thumping beat, almost in a state of hypnosis.

Lull him to sleep and he could still find his way home in this city. He knows these streets, crowded by more kids than cars as students exit Eisenhower High School, like the back of the left hand he rests atop the steering wheel.

"This city, sometimes, it's like a trap," he says. "A lot of guys will get out, do something, but then come back. They don't ever really leave.

"But I mean, it's a good town once you get through all the negative things. It's home, you know."

As Lewis slows to a stop sign, one block from the street where he lives, he is reminded of the negative things. He makes the sign of the cross across his torso, almost in a state of hypnosis.

This town was Brandon Read's home, too, you know. Right up until the moment he was shot and killed at 19.

"Right there," Lewis says, gesturing to the side of the road. "Just like that."

He pulls into a driveway. Jay-Z gives way to the beeping of an open car door.

Two of Lewis' three half-brothers, Antonio and Cody Carr, step from the vehicle and follow his lead. He's the first one through the front door.

"Let him get the dog before we go in," Antonio says.

"It's a pit bull," adds Cody.

Lewis proudly shows off his bedroom, knowing your eyes will lock on the massive Purdue blanket draped over the bed. Four Michael Jordan jerseys hang from one wall. Boxes and boxes and boxes of Air Jordan sneakers are piled high in one corner.

His mom, Zinda Chargois-Jackson, says with a laugh, "He buys me Jordans."

Perched next to the bed is the program from Brandon's funeral.

"In Loving Memory. July 16, 1988-April 1, 2007."

One year ago to the day, you point out. Lewis nods, but not to a beat.

"We all got together last night, a bunch of guys, reminisced about him. He was a close friend. I knew him since childhood. He was just an innocent bystander."

You ask his mom about the effect of Brandon's death on Lewis. You ask her about people saying Lewis is a bad student when his coach noted he was on the honor roll as a freshman and sophomore, his father's disappearing act, about Lewis being the first of his grandmother's 23 grandchildren to attend a four-year college, about Decatur's city council giving the Eisenhower basketball team a standing ovation.

"I am so proud of him he doesn't even know it," Zinda says.

She's not the only one.

"He's a role model for any kid," says Decatur mayor Paul Osborne. "Lewis is how you want your kid to be."

* * * * *

In a curious example of God's sense of humor, that Lewis Jackson is 5-foot-8 might be the, um, biggest reason the Eisenhower senior and Purdue recruit ultimately became the smallest player to be named News-Gazette All-State Player of the Year in the award's 27-year history.

"If you look at a lot of people of his stature, they are afflicted with little man's disease," says Eisenhower coach Jeremy Moore. "Lewis is definitely afflicted with little man's disease. It motivates him."

Even Lewis cracks short jokes: "Sometimes I sit back and watch tape of our games and say, 'Man, I'm really small.' "

Says Moore: "His size, that's where the attitude came from."

And why his transformation from diminutive scrapper to diminutive star pales next to his attitudinal transformation. Up to the seventh grade Lewis attended St. James, a private school in Decatur. His mom desperately wanted him to attend a private high school, in part to keep her son from trouble.

"If I had to work multiple jobs to get him into St. Teresa, I would've done it," she says. "He wasn't having it."

That untamed spirit extended into his early high school years. As a chippy freshman, Moore says, little Lewis got into a locker room scrum with football standout Brit Miller, who, at the time, was an Eisenhower senior on his way to a college football career at Illinois.

"I remember him as a 14-year-old kid," Miller says. "You can tell he's grown up a lot."

"Before, I don't think he understood what he was capable of," says Eisenhower principal April Hicklin. "Once he realized he had a special ability to make people follow him, he grasped onto that. He became a leader."

In Decatur, Lewis' Q rating equals a vertical leap – "Probably 45 inches," he says – that helped him dunk as a 5-foot-2 seventh grader. Last week, yet another Decatur school phoned the Eisenhower principal to ask if Lewis could speak at pep rally.

"Elementary (school) principals tease me about being his booking agent," Hicklin says.

Where Lewis once was the stone-faced youth listening to stay-in-school speeches, now he's giving them.

"Lewis would be the first one to tell you he needed to grow up," Moore says.

Lewis cites his size disadvantage as a source of motivation. ("If you say I'm too small," he says, "Play me.") Another source, though he hesitates to admit as much, stems from the fact the University of Illinois, an hour down the road, did not wholeheartedly pursue a commitment.

"It wasn't like they were saying, 'We don't want you here.' It was more like, 'If you want to come here, you can,' " he says. "It was like when you see a girl. You're kind of afraid to ask her out.

"Honestly, I don't think people over there are really that heartbroken that I'm not going there. They probably don't think I'm going to do anything. I feel like I got a chip on my shoulder."

* * * * *

But at least part of his drive can be traced to the absence of a father, who left when Lewis was 10.

"If you find out where he is," Zinda says, "Let us know."

His father once showed up at an Eisenhower practice. Lewis turned into the old Lewis.

"Bad attitude, the whole thing. He just wasn't himself," Moore recalls. "After practice Lewis came up to me and said, 'Don't ever let him in here again.' "

As a single parent, Zinda says, "When Lewis was 10, I was like, 'How am I going to do this?' "

"My relationship with my mom, it's more than mother-son. It's like sister-brother," Lewis says. "She raised me, but we raised each other."

Considering those types of circumstances, it burns up his mom and coach and principal and friends when accusations sling in Lewis' direction. The scrutiny facing a city star like Chicago Simeon product Derrick Rose, the previous News-Gazette All-State Player of the Year, might be less burdensome than the pressures placed on a central Illinois standout.

Here, everyone in town knows who you are.

Moore's favorite rumor was when he was asked, "Is Lewis really driving an Escalade around town?" Not unless they meant a Hyundai Accent with a dent in the passenger's door, or his mom's Cavalier.

"Then there was a group of lawyers (from Decatur) that were having lunch and they were talking about how Lewis got a 5 on his ACT," Moore says. "Are you kidding me? My 6-year-old could get a 5."

Though schoolwork sometimes doesn't get as much attention from Lewis as basketball does, "He has always had pretty good grades," says Hicklin, the school's principal. His mom laments Internet reports that claimed academics would keep her son from playing at Purdue as a freshman.

"How can you talk about a child like that when you don't know him?" she says.

Not only does Lewis plan on playing at Purdue as a freshman, coach Matt Painter predicts a sizable impact.

"I think he can be a starter," says Painter, who returns five starters from a Purdue team that finished second in the Big Ten. "That's how highly I think of him. I think he has that ability.

"He's the Mr. Basketball in Illinois, I don't care what the voting says. And that's nothing against any of the other guys, but Lewis had the best season of all of them. I think he's a McDonald's (All-American) type. I really do."

Lewis leaves Eisenhower as the school's career scoring and assists leader. He started all but one game – Senior Night of his freshman year, when Moore started five seniors – in a four-year career.

"I think he's going to take this league by storm," Painter says.

As a senior, Lewis averaged 21.4 points, 7.5 assists, 3.9 rebounds and 2.7 steals. Even after Eisenhower (28-1) suffered its only loss to Champaign Central in a Class 3A sectional final, the Panthers had a grip on a community in a constant search for positives.

"We got a couple factories that will tingle your nose," Brit Miller says.

"Those boys on the basketball team were a pretty big deal around here," says Robert Taylor, owner of The Choice, a Decatur restaurant.

* * * * *

Taylor's eatery catered Eisenhower's basketball banquet last week, a feast fit for the city's kings: fried chicken, ham, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, the works.

"We had three cakes with the team pictures on it," Moore says. "In the past I would go to Wal-Mart and buy wholesale chicken and bottled water."

Another reminder of the team's impact on the community surfaced as Moore flipped through photos from this season.

"I just couldn't believe how many people came to our games. White folks sitting with black folk, rich folk sitting next to poor folk. This team, moreso than any team in the last decade or so, really did uplift this town."

The greatest example came during a city council meeting, when the players were awarded the Stephen Decatur medallion – "The symbol of our city," the mayor says – and a standing ovation by council members.

"Whether you live on the east side or west side or go to another school in Decatur, when you have a team that is so good in character, it inspires you and you forget your differences," Osborne says. "Maybe you forget them only for a time. But you forget them."

* * * * *

A beat-up Ford Probe revs its engine at a stop light. The driver shoots a glance toward Lewis' car. Antonio chuckles from the front seat.

"That's Decatur for you."

Lewis stares into the distance, not to be distracted. He has places to go.

"This is my home. I grew up here. And I don't want him to come back," his mom says. "I don't want him back here. There's too much out there for him to do."

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