Cold nights help KU's Traylor find true warmth

LAWRENCE — The Buick was parked at a car wash somewhere on Chicago’s South Side, abandoned and left to rust.

Jamari Traylor had been walking for hours in the dead of a Windy City winter. People say they know how it feels to be cold, but they don’t know this feeling. How your hands and feet throb like they’re about to explode. How your skin burns like it’s on fire.

The night started at a friend’s house, one of the places Traylor went when he needed somewhere to sleep. He’d been doing this since he moved out, crashing on floors and couches around his neighborhood, but goodwill doesn’t last forever. People have their own bills to pay.

This friend’s mother decided she’d had enough. You stay here too much, she told him. Traylor begged his friend to sneak him in, but when they got caught, Traylor knew he had to leave.

With nowhere else to go, Traylor started walking. He’d been living like this for a while, ever since he found out his dad was in prison. At first, no one knew what had happened to Jessie Traylor. Jamari remembers calling his phone every day for months, thinking this would be the time he heard his father’s voice on the other end. He started to fear the worst.

I know where he is, Traylor’s mother said one day. Jessie Traylor was in prison, arrested in connection with a drug trafficking ring. So began the spiral — the arguments, the bad grades, skipping school — that led Jamari to move out of his house and start living on the street. This is how a rusted-out Buick sitting outside a car wash became Traylor’s only refuge.

Traylor wedged his hand inside and forced the window down. He crawled inside, wondering what would happen if the Buick became his coffin.

“I just remember thinking, ‘If I die right now, if someone came and just killed me, would anybody even care? Would anybody know?’” Traylor said. “It felt like nobody cared about me at all and nobody would even know.

“That’s like the worst feeling, knowing you’re irrelevant to anybody.”

* * * * *

On nights when Kansas plays basketball, Allen Fieldhouse is one of the warmest places on Earth. Love, mixed with a hint of hero worship, radiates from the stands. Pretty coeds decorate signs for their favorite players — even the backups — and fans cheer every achievement with gusto.

Traylor marvels at this every time, this feeling of mattering to so many people.

“Here, so many people care about you, like the fans here and everything,” said Traylor, a redshirt freshman forward. “It’s just like complete change.”

Most people in the crowd don’t know where Traylor came from or what it took for him to get here. He wonders at some level if they should know, because he doesn’t want people to look at him differently. Lots of people have it rough. Thomas Robinson lost his mother and his grandmother in the span of a month, a hurt Traylor can’t even comprehend.

“I can’t say I had it like Thomas, because people dying is something different,” Traylor said.

Traylor discussed these feelings with coach Bill Self, one of the first people to hear the whole story. Traylor has always been tough — it’s one of the qualities that landed him at KU — but Self reminded him that toughness doesn’t mean keeping everything balled up inside.

“He said it would be good for me,” Traylor said. “He said it would be good to tell my story.”

So, here it is.

* * * * *

Traylor remembers his early years as stable and happy. He lived in a two-bedroom apartment at 27th and State Street with his mother and father, two loving parents who provided whatever he needed.

Traylor has fond memories of his father, an imposing man who was determined to keep his son out of trouble. It was almost like Jessie Traylor had a sixth sense, Jamari said, that told him when something bad was about to happen.

“He always made sure I stayed out of trouble, because where I’m from, I had a lot of friends that died, a lot of friends that are in and out of jail, have kids and don’t take care of them,” Jamari said. “He really wanted to make sure I had no part of that ever.”

Traylor remembers walking the 10 blocks with his father to watch the White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field. At Jamari’s peewee football games, Jessie was the loudest fan in the stands. If any of the neighborhood kids gave Jamari trouble, one look at Jessie Traylor was enough to send them scurrying.

At some level, Jamari knew there was another side to his father, that Jessie had his own demons to fight. Sometimes he would come home and find his father sitting alone in the dark, and Jamari knew it was his turn to offer comfort.

“I don’t know what’s going on with you,” Traylor would say, “but I’m here for you.”

Not long after Jamari started high school, his father disappeared. Months passed without any word, Traylor frantically calling Jessie’s phone in hopes that his father would answer.

Finally, Traylor’s mother learned the truth. Traylor remembers going to visit his father at a prison in Indiana, most likely the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, where Jessie Traylor currently is confined.

Jessie had been to jail before, and Jamari remembers thinking it would only be a matter of time before his father was back home. He sensed something was different when he saw his father behind the glass, his eyes burning red. Jamari pressed the prison phone to his ear.

“Man, when you getting out?” he remembers saying. “How long you gonna be here?”

Through the glass, Jessie looked his son in the eyes.

“I’m not,” he said. “I got life.”

Jamari doesn’t remember what he said next. He might not have said anything. He just remembers walking outside, his eyes stinging with tears, and making the trip back to Chicago in a daze.

“I just started bawling, crying,” Traylor said. “The person you look up to the most. He couldn’t see anything I was doing that was so much better. He couldn’t see anything I was doing.”

* * * * *

Public court records paint a detailed picture of the charges against Jessie Traylor.

Jessie Traylor, indicted along with three other men as part of a drug investigation, was charged with conspiracy to distribute five or more kilograms of cocaine, possession of cocaine with intent to distribute and two counts of using a telephone in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime.

According to court documents, one of Traylor’s co-defendants, Djuan Davis, would buy cocaine from suppliers in Chicago and transport it to another man, Dana Hawkins, for distribution in Decatur, Ill. Both Hawkins and Davis testified against Traylor, essentially identifying him as the middle man who transported cocaine and cash between Chicago and Decatur via Greyhound bus.

According to a sworn affidavit from a Drug Enforcement agent involved in the investigation, the DEA used wiretaps to determine when drug runs were being conducted. On June 5, 2008, agents confronted Jessie Traylor on a Greyhound bus in Champaign, Ill., and confiscated a black backpack that was found to contain approximately one kilogram of cocaine. Traylor testified that the backpack was already on the bus when he boarded.

A jury found Jessie Traylor guilty of all four counts in September 2009, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment on June 8, 2010. Traylor filed a Notice of Appeal arguing that the government presented insufficient evidence to sustain the conviction, but the appeal was denied.

Elisabeth Pollock, an attorney with the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Urbana, Ill., represented Jessie Traylor in his appeal and confirmed portions of the case that are public record. A legal avenue exists for Traylor to further appeal his sentence, she said, but she no longer represents Traylor in his case.

“He could still pursue that avenue,” Pollock said. “I don’t know if he has. I’m not in contact with him.”

* * * * *

Jamari Traylor’s downward spiral began shortly after he found out about his father’s imprisonment. Traylor’s grades started to slip, and arguments with his mother became more frequent. The cycle fed on itself, making life at home so untenable that one day Traylor told his mother he was moving out.

Attempts to reach Traylor’s mother, Tracey Golson, were unsuccessful, but Traylor said his father’s absence put a strain on the whole family.

“She just got tired of me,” Traylor said, “and I got tired of being there, too. It just turned cold, I guess.”

At first, Traylor avoided the streets by staying with friends and relatives. Hospitality eventually dried up, forcing Jamari to find shelter in increasingly desperate places: abandoned cars, burned-out buildings, anything that would cut the chill of the Chicago winter. Embarrassed to be seen by classmates, Traylor often went to school just for the food.

Traylor estimates he spent a year of his life on the street during his freshman and sophomore years of high school. Had he been there much longer, Traylor knows it could have become its own kind of life sentence.

“I could be who knows where, doing who knows what, because it’s only a matter of time before I probably would have turned to crime or something crazy,” he said.

* * * * *

At first, Traylor didn’t recognize his pathway out. Loren Jackson, a high school coach in Chicago, had heard about a kid who spent his days hanging around the gym. Traylor had no experience playing organized basketball, so when Jackson approached him for the first time, he saw a kid who needed help and not a future star, Traylor said.

Jackson invited Traylor to play ball at his gym, an invitation Traylor resisted at first.

“I was like, ‘Is this guy serious? I don’t care. I’ve got stuff to do, more important things,’” he said. “But I went there, and he liked me. He knew about my situation, but he didn’t fully know.”

As Jackson learned more, he became the source of structure Traylor needed. He offered a place to stay, a home-cooked meal, help with Traylor's homework. Basketball was barely an afterthought.

“I was like, ‘Why is he doing this? Why would he help me?’ ” Traylor said. “Nobody wanted to help me. He wanted to see somebody become something.”

Jackson coached basketball at Chicago’s Julian High, where Traylor transferred for his junior year. When he started playing, Traylor was amazed at how quickly his skills developed. Classmates started to recognize him in the halls, and Traylor noticed his name included with the top prospects in Chicago.

“I remember when I first got on (the list), it was one of the moments I knew, ‘Maybe I can get good at this,’ ” Traylor said. “I was like 40-something. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m up there.’ ”

As the season progressed, Traylor continued to climb, from the 30s to the 20s to the top five. Basketball also became an avenue for healing with his mother, who started showing up at games wearing Traylor’s jersey.

Life in Chicago finally seemed stable again, which created a difficult choice for Traylor when Jackson told him he’d accepted a job coaching at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla.

Traylor didn’t want to leave Chicago at first, but IMG offered the kind of national exposure he needed. His performance there attracted the attention of big-time college coaches, including Self at KU.

Traylor worked to make up for lost time in the classroom, until all he needed was a favorable ACT score to enroll in college.

“I got a 21,” Traylor said. “I was just aiming for a 17 or something.”

* * * * *

Disappointment was natural when, after so much work, Traylor was deemed ineligible to play last season at KU as a partial qualifier. Self contended that Traylor and fellow freshman Ben McLemore should have been eligible, but he also knew Traylor was equipped to handle a setback.

“He loves the fact that he’s in a situation where there’s structure,” Self said. “He loves the fact that he knows there’s people around him that care for him.

“I know that his mother has done an unbelievable job raising him under tough circumstances, and I think he sees there are some things out there for him that can really enhance and change his life.”

Traylor and his mother have reconciled, and Jamari said he’s looking forward to spending Christmas with his family in Chicago. He keeps in close contact with his father and hopes someday to have the money to hire a lawyer and pursue another appeal.

Jessie Traylor is able to watch some of KU’s games and recently bet 50 pushups on his son’s free throw shooting abilities. He didn’t mind the extra workout, either, when Traylor only made one of two.

“He’ll call me and say he saw me on the game,” Jamari said. “He’s the funniest guy.”

Someday, Traylor hopes to start an organization for homeless children in Chicago, because he knows how it feels to be cold. He can close his eyes and go back there, to the car wash and the abandoned Buick, and he can hear Self’s voice reminding him why the fire burns so hot inside his chest.

“Look at where you came from,” Traylor can hear Self saying. “You were sleeping in cars. In two years of playing basketball, you came so far. You can never have a bad day.”

“I definitely listened to him,” Traylor said. “That’s how I look at it now. I can never have a bad day, ever.”