COLUMN: Bad reputation doesn’t fit good deeds of Devine

By Bob Hertzel

MORGANTOWN — Perhaps the best lesson you learn from a job such as the one that has consumed this adult life is that you learn to wait before passing judgment on people.

It is far too easy to take a quick glance from the outside, listen to someone else’s tales about them and to accept them as the gospel, see them make a mistake and write them off as just another bad actor who may make a name for himself through athletics but who more likely than not will take too many missteps to survive in the real world.

Case in point – Noel Devine.

His story was well known by the time he came to WVU. He was a poor kid from Fort Myers, Fla., whose parents both had died. He seemed to be a lost soul, fathering two children in high school, a talented athlete but certainly lacking in any stability.

He had been “adopted” by Deion Sanders, the Hall of Fame cornerback who grew up in the same town and went to the same high school. Flamboyant and personable, Sanders had proven over the years that he was a decent person and wanted to see that Devine followed down the right path.

Devine decided to come to WVU, where the scrutiny was tight. The school’s reputation had already been tarnished by star athletes like Jonathan Hargett and Pacman Jones, and when this off-season Devine was arrested — but never charged — for a fight outside a downtown bar the tendency was to think he could slip into another athlete out of control.

But Noel Devine is, er, maybe not divine but it could be that he’s close to it.

This past year his family grew by yet a third child, a girl who is now 8 months old to go with another 3-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son.

It is not an easy existence, having three children in Florida when you are in Morgantown. He talks to them on the phone on occasion, gets home every couple of months to see them, but mostly is an absentee dad.

Having so many children so quickly could be looked upon as irresponsible, true, although Devine’s football future seems bright enough that financially he should be able to eventually see to their needs.

And spiritually, Devine keeps proving that he is something more than just another egomaniacal jock.

Anyone who likes kids the way he does and who believes that he can make a difference in their lives, just as Sanders may have made a difference in his, can’t really be a bad person.

Take the idea he had this year, an idea that came to fruition a month ago back in Fort Myers when he and a few other athletes from the area put on the inaugural 239 Future All-Stars Football Camp for 53 kids, aged 7 to 14.

On a Thursday afternoon at the Puskar Center, before going through his off-season workout, Devine plopped down on a couch and explained the origins of the idea behind the camp.

“It came from my heart,” he said.

Devine and former North Fort Myers High teammate Quenton Washington, now playing at South Florida, joined a number of other college players from the area to put the kids through their paces at this free camp.

The only profit they would take out of it was a spiritual one.

“There are a lot of kids who look up to me and want to be like me. I wanted to go back and show them some love,” Devine said.

Devine has spent time at hospitals with critically ill children, kids who have this way of lifting the spirits of all those around them just by the way they accept their troubles.

“I’ve been so blessed, I wanted to work with kids,” he said.

As a youth, Devine didn’t have this kind of a camp, although he doesn’t regret it.

“Every day was like a camp to me,” he said, laughing at the thought. “Being the youngest brother, you get beat up. I thank them for that. It made me tough. I got to learn from their mistakes.”

In an era where athletes are more and more turning their backs of their responsibility as role models, Devine is willing to do his share.

“I know my kids look up to me. If they do, I know other kids do, too,” he said.

One such kid is Micah Kilhefner, 7, whose father, Scott, teaches world history at North Fort Myers High and was the football team’s running back coach.

The local Fort Myers newspaper noted that Micah’s favorite player was Devine “because he’s good.”

That was one reason behind Kilhefner bringing his son to the camp. But he offered another reason.

“I was having one of those self-pity moments,” he explained, referring to a week of depressing headlines that included budget cuts and violent crime in nearby east Fort Myers.

Devine and Co. helped draw him out of his funk.

“It reminds why I’m doing this — we do this for the kids,” Kilhefner was quoted as saying. “It makes me proud. I’ m proud of Noel and Quenton. From when Micah was 4 or 5, Noel always has been so good with Micah. Noel would always play with him. Noel made such an impression on him.”

The truth is, Devine has made quite an impression on all of us, now that we’ve gotten to know him a little better.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.