Thomas’ mother, Katina Smith, was one of 46 mostly nonviolent drug offenders and prisoners who had their terms commuted. She was released Nov. 10, and although she’s restricted from traveling for 60 days and can’t be in the stands, Thomas is just happy she’s home.
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He’s happy because it’s been a long time since he’s been able to be with her with no restrictions. Smith was sent to prison when her son was just 11. The scene, as Thomas describes it for The Players’ Tribune, is haunting.
Thomas’ father was in the military and now his mom, stepfather and grandmother were locked up. As he writes, “From that day on, I was basically an orphan.” He had to think about his life and what he would do next.
I laid on the floor and they went into my mom and stepdad’s room. They brought them out in handcuffs.
As they were walking my mamma to the police car, she said, “Can I please just take my kids to the school bus one last time?”
So what did he do? He started “pulling corn and pickin’ peas and butterbeans.”
“Where I grew up, stupid situations were very easy to get into,” he writes. “I had a choice: the drug game, or the corn game. I kept thinking: just don’t screw up a chance to get to college. That was my light that I focused on.”
Without much parental guidance and family stability, Thomas became lonely.
“I had no idea what I would do with my life. Or where I would be in a few years,” he writes. “At a certain point, I used to cry every night.”
Thomas had to live life without the comfort of his mom’s support for 15 years. And those years were his growing years, when he went to high school and developed into a first-round receiver at Georgia Tech. His mom still supported him while she was in the system, even making No. 88 jerseys with a Sharpie on her gray prison uniform.
Now, she’ll be able to watch her son from the stands, but that’s not even the most important thing for Thomas anymore.
“What really matters is that I’m going to get to hug my mother again,” he writes. “I can call her any time I want now. I don’t have to wait for her call. It’s a small thing, but it means so much.”
