The house D.J. Fluker bought

Chargers tackle overcame adversity to provide family the ultimate gift






This is more than somewhere to live.

This is a place not to flee.





One disaster





The sons protested. They had seen the news.




San Diego Chargers D.J. Fluker, right, laughs with family at his mother's new home in Mobile, Ala., Saturday, June 20, 2013. Michael Spooneybarger


The Flukers aren't heard mourning the loss of property in New Orleans or the sudden relocation from Biloxi. They didn't have much, and they've always moved. They've been to 64 churches they can count. D.J. Fluker was never taught to read cursive; he missed the lesson somewhere between jumping from elementary school to elementary school. If a counselor inquired about clothing or living arrangements, they moved. If someone from child services approached the family about living conditions, they moved.

But what became of puppy Katrina does unsettle them.


The glossy eyes of D.J.'s sisters, Aeriel, 16, and Elizabeth, 13, tell the rest.


"Somebody in the neighborhood poisoned the dog," says Leon Fluker, 21, D.J.'s brother. "That's how it died."

McGill family

No one warned D.J. Fluker.

Steve Savarese is a bit of a hugger.

The Charger stands today at 6-foot-5 and 340 pounds, and that is without much help from high-school growth spurts. Still, in the fall of 2005, when Fluker's size-22 shoes first entered the football office at McGill-Toolen Catholic High in Mobile, in came Savarese for the squeeze.

The freshman flinched and backed away. Sure, he'd been touched before, from having an abusive father to getting jumped by an estimated 20 people in middle school, among other violent childhood events. But no man had ever hugged him, he would tell the varsity coach later.


"God sent us an angel that day," Savarese says.

People gravitate toward Fluker. Always have. The scientific community might one day invest millions to study the phenomenon.

Friends remember the first time they met him — tough to forget a handshake that covers a wrist. As big as he is, they swear it, the heart is larger. They admittedly grow impatient when in public with him; there isn't an autograph or picture he's refused. While at Alabama, he once missed the team bus from Bryant–Denny Stadium because, after the locker room cleared out and everybody's bags were loaded, he was still signing and posing with that wide smile of his.

If a high-school coach buys him fast food, he thinks of his younger siblings. If a friend treats him to a buffet, he gets to-go box for his family. Simply, Fluker is a provider.

San Diego Charger D.J. Fluker at his mothers new home in Mobile, Ala., Saturday, June 20, 2013. Michael Spooneybarger

In high school, he made $5 per hour cutting grass every weekend. He power-washed houses. He built cabinets. He built piers. He worked at Ace Hardware. He worked at Swatters, a batting cage facility. While paid to clean out trailers and their surrounding grass area, he lifted a shovel, stalked the rattling, and with a swing, guillotined a snake. Earnings helped support his family.

There is a genuineness in Fluker's interaction with people. Like a tennis serve, that quality returns to him.

Fluker would seek 1-on-1 tutoring or film review. For him, teachers and coaches found the time. Seeing he needed a meal, somewhere to sleep or a ride to school, several McGill families helped out — it was never just one. Around the holidays in 2006, the entire student body donated a present to a family in need. Fluker, thinking the recipients must really be struggling, spared $1 to the cause. Fluker got his dollar back: the family was his, and what a Christmas it was.

John and Julie Beall, parents at McGill, learned of Fluker's story his sophomore year.

"How can we help?" they asked Savarese, and to this day, they haven't stopped. If love unites, the Bealls and Flukers are one.

Before the Flukers moved to Biloxi in 2007, had their trailer burned down by kids toying with matches, and then moved to Foley, Ala. where Fluker played offensive tackle his senior year for the first time, Fluker grew close to Savarese.

Savarese and his wife have a daughter who was off to college, and Fluker occasionally slept in her old room. After Fluker was shown the bed for the first time, he walked downstairs and asked Savarese and his wife before bedtime if there was a toothbrush.

"Sure," Savarese said. "But what's the matter, D.J.?"

Fluker had tears in his eyes. He wasn't sad. He wasn't scared. That he was finally about to do something so simple, something most take for granted, had made him overwhelmed. After getting by for so long on the barest of necessities, it felt strange to look up and admit at age 15.

"I've never slept in a bed by myself before," Fluker said.

Sleeping giant

Fluker's cell phone is a hornet left for dead, buzzing and buried in his pocket, unanswered nine times out of 10. By now, friends know what they are in for — ring … ring … ring — when they try, knowing they're unlikely to reach Mr. Missed Call.

On April 27, 2011, John Beall tried.

A tornado warning was declared for Tuscaloosa. Beall wanted his loved ones to know, and three were students at the University of Alabama. He called and reached his son Bo, who said he was OK and somewhere safe. He called and reached Fluker's brother Leon, who said he was OK and somewhere safe. He called Fluker.

Ring ... ring ... ring ... Missed call. Beall tried again. No answer.

Fluker was asleep.

Leave the apartment, D.J.

Between Beall and his wife, Fluker had about a dozen missed calls that afternoon while napping off a spring football practice. After Beall finally reached him, Fluker groggily went back to bed before the phone rang again.

San Diego Charger D.J. Fluker with his family at his mother's new home in Mobile, Ala., Saturday, June 20, 2013. The family is from left, Annice Fluker, Aerial Fluker, L.J. Fluker, Leon Fluker and Elizabeth Fluker. Michael Spooneybarger

It was Chance Warmack, an Alabama teammate whom the Titans would draft No. 10 overall in 2013, one spot before the Chargers would pick Fluker.

Fluker answered.

Warmack invited him to come over and hang out. He accepted, getting out of bed and getting dressed while dark afternoon clouds sailed over his apartment. He headed downstairs, ran to his truck and got inside. Rain pelted the windshield. He drove to a gas station and filled his tank, the visibility so poor he could barely make out the streets en route to Warmack's dorm building.

He arrived, and there was strangeness inside. Residents were crowded together, sitting on the floor near the entrance. They asked Fluker to join them. He declined. They insisted Fluker join them. Agitated, he declined. He met with Warmack upstairs. People were behaving oddly, they agreed. Warmack played some of his beats. They took turns rapping when a third voice came.

A tornado notice advised residents to take shelter immediately. Fluker, Warmack and some other teammates went downstairs, opened a door and looked outside.

They saw it all.

The devil's finger poked through the dark clouds of Tuscaloosa and lowered to the ground. The multiple-vortex fog raised hell, whistling while it worked, leveling a Krispy Kreme, a gas station, a bank, a shopping mall, neighborhoods — everything. The tornado was a giant gray thumb scraping against an ant farm, and it was directed straight for the apartment Fluker left less than an hour ago.

When the rampage ended, Fluker and a friend drove to a nearby town and bought dozens of burgers for people at the dorm building. They saw dead bodies on the side of the road, people hanging from trees, buildings smashed together.

The devastation was nuclear, Fluker thought.

The next day, Beall drove from Mobile and took a cell-phone photo of Fluker. He is standing atop his flattened second-story apartment room. A different shot shows a Ford Mustang that had flown into Fluker's bathroom, the place he would have hidden had he stayed.

Fluker saw that and knew.

"If (Chance) never called me, I wouldn't be here right now," Fluker says. "That one phone call saved my life."

The vault

On the football field, Fluker is a kid again.

He is a kid bothered his parents aren't in the stands at McGill when other parents are; the kid being told in New Orleans he is just a muscle-man who will never earn a degree; the kid lying awake at night, furious, wondering why they have to sleep in this damn car when there is so much room inside that house.

Before games, Fluker hops up and down and, to pump them up, yells at teammates, "Get your mind right!" For him, that means entering a vault of childhood memories, choosing one or two events, reliving the emotion of that moment, and then, the vault door swinging shut behind him, strapping his helmet to hit somebody and make it right.

Fluker often tells people the football field is the only place you can hit a person and not go to jail. They laugh. He does, too, but always adds, "I'm serious."

San Diego Charger D.J. Fluker Michael Spooneybarger

The vault contains many memories — too many — from which to choose, but the one most often selected, the one recalled most vividly, is a small, green Chrysler car.

Its roof was the only one the Flukers had for weeks during D.J.'s sophomore year at McGill. It belonged to his mother's sister, who lived in a large house her husband said was too small for her in-laws. Night after night after night, they could sleep in the Chrysler. They could not sleep in the house, but they could sleep in the car.

Fluker asked his mom, "Why? Why can't we sleep inside?"

That was the answer. The uncle said no.

Life is hard. Regardless of class, race, gender or era, life is hard. But it didn't have to be that hard, Fluker says. More family members should have been there. That is what families are supposed to do. He remembers the emotion, the sense of rejection.

Fluker couldn't sleep, too irate about being cramped together, stuffed inside a car like unwanted groceries. He loves his mom. He loves Leon. He loves Aeriel. He loves Elizabeth. None of them in that car should feel so displaced again.

Months later, at school, Fluker was told to write a goal on the back of a white T-shirt. He grabbed a black Sharpie marker and, knowing what it would mean to his family, didn't think twice. He pressed down on the Dri-FIT fabric. He felt the pressure of the words.

"I will be a first-round draft pick."


It was a conversation where neither side had heard enough, said enough or seen enough to press "End." He in Atlanta and they in Mobile, Fluker held a black iPhone in front of his face last month as the video streamed for 22 minutes on the other side.

He watched his mother, Aeriel and Elizabeth walk through the front door for the first time and see the house D.J. Fluker bought. It was for them.

Hands covered mouths. Tears flowed down cheeks. Eyes looked up and around. The girls laughed and screamed into the two-way video screen: "Thank you, D.J.! Thank you!"

The girls saw Fluker's reaction to theirs. So often he smiles, but they've never seen him this happy. He was an All-American at Alabama. He graduated from school in 3 1/2 years. He was a first-round draft pick. And now, finally, he did it.

Leon saw the house days later. He slept peacefully that night and awoke the next morning.

"I didn't get out of my bed because I thought I was in heaven," he says.

The Flukers used a video call for the unveiling because D.J. was in Atlanta, working out before Chargers training camp. A few days before reporting, he drove from Atlanta to Mobile and met his family at the house for the first time.

All five sat comfortably between two large couches.

Next spring, Leon is set to graduate from Alabama on scholarship with a degree in sports management. Aeriel and Elizabeth are both honor roll students and recently won leadership and algebra awards at school, respectively. D.J. is in the NFL, setting new goals that involve Super Bowls and the highest personal accolades. Annice achieved what meant most to her, keeping her children together and in school.

They reminisced. They teased. They laughed.

The Flukers, for the first time, were home.


