He "Could Have been Somebody"-Crack Cocaine Took Care of That

Fighting back from cocaine addiction
Once a Kansas Basketball Star, now he's trying to rebound for good.

BY BOB LUTZ
The Wichita Eagle

WICHITA (AP) -- There might still be a happy ending to Greg Williams' story. There might not.

So many times he has made promises. And so many times he has slipped back into the despair that has made his life an insufferable combination of crack addiction and jail time.

He'll be 45 next month and he's tired. His once-strong legs, which helped carry him to basketball acclaim as an All-City and All-State player at Southeast High from 1978-80, are shot.

Literally.

Twice, in drug deals gone bad, he was shot in his left leg. Another time, he was run over in a parking lot. When the driver realized Williams was still alive, he ran over him again.

Williams is borrowing time.

There is another reason to get clean now, beyond the normal reasons of just living a productive life. It's Williams' biggest incentive yet.

It's a 3-month-old boy. Little Greg is in protective custody, fighting to overcome the crack cocaine that was in his body at the time of his birth. His mother, too, is an addict, lost on the streets.

Williams has been there. He's trying, yet again, to find his way back.


Williams' story started out well. He grew up in northeast Wichita, under a sturdy roof and with two loving parents.

His dad, Henry, worked at Cessna. His mother, Willia, worked for the Wichita school district.

Williams was a soft-spoken kid who could run faster than any of his friends and jump as if he had springs under his feet. He grew to love basketball, the sport he dreamed about. He just knew he would end up in the NBA one day, though he never developed a quality outside shot.

He was a 6-foot-5 center. It worked in high school. It worked for a year at Barton County Community College. But it stopped working at the Division I level, at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.

Williams found fleeting success in two Lamar seasons and left school before his senior year. He had just broken up with his childhood sweetheart.

Basketball hadn't worked out. His girl was gone.

In the mid-1980s he managed a Jiffy Lube store on East Kellogg but he didn't enjoy getting up in the morning like everybody else and going to a job he didn't much care for.

Nobody recognized him anymore, the way they did when he played basketball. He couldn't get his former girlfriend out of his mind.

''I think at that point I decided I was tired of being a nice guy,'' Williams said. ''I had the attitude that nice guys finish last.''

At first, it was innocent. A puff on a marijuana cigarette here. Another there.

He reintroduced himself to the wrong people, and they led him down a bad path.

Williams started selling marijuana, making some extra money. It was easy.

''Then the guy I was selling for suggested I might do better selling cocaine,'' Williams said.

He didn't have the strength to resist. He was driving the same car he had in high school, a 1973 Buick Regal with a tattered interior and chipped paint. He was embarrassed, especially since some of his old friends had become successful, had new cars and expensive jewelry.

Williams spent a couple of years just selling. He didn't dare use the stuff himself. It scared him.

Then he made the mistake of caring.

Two of his crack customers, a couple, had their electricity turned off at their home. They couldn't afford to feed their babies, or buy diapers. Everything they made went to cocaine.

''You never give a drug addict money, because they're not going to use it for anything other than drugs,'' Williams said. ''So I'd go downtown and pay for their light bill. I'd go to the store and buy the diapers or the food.''

Williams couldn't understand how these people became so dependent on crack. He told them it would never happen to him. And he proved it by using crack a few times.

For a while, he was OK. He could function.

''I'd go home,'' he said. ''I wouldn't touch the money in my bank accounts.''

Then, one day, Williams stopped functioning.

''It grabbed me by the throat and it hasn't let go for 20 years,'' Williams said.

Williams has been in and out of jail more times than he can remember -- more than a dozen times.

He was recently released from the Sedgwick County Jail and is serving four months at the county's residential and service center under conditions of his parole.

He was clean for a couple of years, from 2004 until last summer. But his addiction pulled him down again -- a probation violation landed him back in jail.

Williams has lived on the streets. He's lived in dingy motel rooms. He's lived with friends who really didn't want him living with them.

And at other times he has had good-paying jobs, able to support himself while, at least temporarily, resisting the monster.

He has never been able to hold a job for long because when the appetite for crack surfaces, it cannot be satisfied.

He burglarized to sustain his habit. He deceived friends. He took advantage of people who were trying to help him.

Every time he was caught and thrown into jail, he promised to change. His words lost their worth.

You've heard about how addicts must reach rock bottom before they can start to lift themselves. The question becomes: How low is rock bottom?

Sometime in the early 1990s, Williams was shot as he struggled for the gun of the person to whom he was selling drugs.

He had never felt such pain. He thought he was going to die as the bullet passed through his lower leg and came out the other side.

That wasn't rock bottom, though. He didn't even consider changing his life because he didn't feel capable.

In 1999, Williams' father died. Henry Williams ran a disciplined household. He insisted that his sons go to church and live by what they learned.

At the time of Henry's death, Williams was in jail in Hutchinson. He received the news from the prison chaplain.

Williams was allowed to go to his father's funeral. Wearing shackles and looking, in his mind, like a mass murderer. Just the memory of that day made Williams' baritone voice waver and his feet to tap nervously.

''I was humiliated,'' he said.

But not even that was rock bottom. When Williams got out of jail, he went right back to drugs.

''I remember once a police officer in town stopped me and said he had heard that a gang I was having some problems with was out to kill me,'' Williams said. ''And I said, 'Man, don't worry. If they kill me they'll be doing me a favor.' It's a living hell out there. I hated every day that I woke up and had to live the way I had to live.''

So it's different now.

That's what Williams says, at least.

There is a baby involved. His baby.

In 2004, Williams did what people had told him he could never do. He got clean.

He found a good job, working in management for a modeling agency. The owner took a chance by hiring Williams, but it was working out.

He was responsible and focused. And he was back in church, a place he felt safe.

Williams had money in his pocket. He bought a nice car and a nicer truck. He rented his own place.

And he met a girl. A young woman who had done some modeling. They hung out, went to movies.

Williams thought he might have gotten past his addiction. But he was fooled.

When people noticed that his weight was again falling, they asked questions. He lied, even to his boss.

Williams began smoking marijuana last summer, soon after getting off of parole. His girlfriend, who would become his wife, smoked, too. But she was also into narcotics, he said. And she was eager to try crack, even though she was pregnant.

It wasn't long before the addiction was in full swing, for both.

Soon, he was consumed by crack again.

"I couldn't believe I went back to that," he said.

Williams was soon back in jail. And the only reason he is out now, living in the county's residential center in Wichita, is because if he violates probation again, he'll serve close to 10 years.

Without a chance for parole.

There will be custody issues involved with Gregory Jr.

Williams knows his criminal record will be a factor and those wanting to put the baby up for adoption will have lots of ammunition.

''On paper, I know I've been a horrible person,'' Williams said.

Williams was in the delivery room when his son was born. He has heard that his former wife -- who could not be reached for this story -- is still fighting her addiction and will not be involved with the baby.

But he wants to be.

''There has to be a reason I'm still alive,'' he said. ''Or that I'm not buried in the penitentiary system

"I'm going to show the court system, the SRS system, everyone, that I can be the best dad in the world. All I can do is hope and pray.''

Being a nice guy isn't so bad, Williams has learned.

He played basketball in the City League at a time when the stars included Ricky Ross, Antoine Carr, Aubrey Sherrod, Greg Dreiling, Karl Papke and others. It was the signature era of City League basketball and Williams was front and center.

He averaged 23.6 points and 12 rebounds as a senior after averaging 16.7 points and 10 rebounds as a junior. He was never in trouble.

All these years later, he still thinks he could have made something bigger of himself through sports.

But the bad decisions made all of Williams' should'ves and what-ifs irrelevant.

This might be his last chance.