Big Red
Well-known member
- Mar 16, 2019
- 1,355
- 0
Butler loved to vacation in Richmond when he was a boy, naturally gravitating to his older cousins, Andrew and Aaron, Jr. While he was grateful to land in a stable environment following Sherryl’s death, the beginning was still fraught with emotion.
“You’re grieving and you’re trying to get over a devastating loss, and you’ve still got to continue on with your life,” Butler said. “For me, that’s the reason I had to grow up and become the man that I am today. As a child, I had to accept it and come to terms with it, and then try to live a happy life that a child should live.”
To this day, the pain is evident when Butler talks about losing his mother, but with the help of a strong support system in Texas, the crippling grief abated. He was glad to be with Khalil again, and the friendship with Aaron and Andrew blossomed.
“They don’t operate like cousins,” Harrison, Sr. said. “They operate more like brothers do.”
The Harrison twins were high-profile basketball recruits when Butler moved in. They went on to play two years at the University of Kentucky and both made it to the NBA, which made for an interesting dynamic in high school.
“People treated them a lot differently than I treated them,” Butler said with a laugh. “I still don’t understand. They’re just regular people to me. We fight every day and we do everything like brothers do.”
The equality transferred to the home.
“The truth is, Khalil was the one who probably got the most favorable treatment,” Harrison, Sr. said amusedly. “He was the youngest. He was the best kid. He got in no trouble. He got the best grades.”
Even though his cousins were basketball stars, Butler was always drawn to football. He played it in the streets of Baltimore as a kid but rarely in an organized setting. In Richmond, he joined the Travis High School team, although the state’s governing body believed he moved to Texas for athletic reasons, which shortened his junior and senior seasons.
The reason for the move was “clearly not sports,” Harrison, Sr. said. “Eventually we got that straight. … He wasn’t a big football star. He just wanted to play. He loved football.”
Butler was unpolished in high school, and after all the moving around, his ability to qualify academically for college was in doubt. Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury was at Texas Tech at the time but didn’t offer a scholarship, and neither did the vast majority of power-conference schools.
But Iowa State liked the raw talent Butler possessed, and he worked hard enough to make it to campus after securing an offer.
Continue reading...