SA Senate derecognizes Korean Student Association Students get together to raise awareness for sexual violence THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT PUBLICATION OF THE UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO, SINCE 1950
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Old, new faces shine in annual Blue-White game
monday, April 22, 2013
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Volume 62 No. 75
LEE, AND THEY WILL FOLLOW Fred Lee on football, fast food and finding himself
By Aaron Mansfield Editor in Chief DESIGN BY BRIAN KESCHINGER
F
red Lee knew The Feeling. He tightened his muscles, clamped his eyes and said a prayer. His car was spinning, and the UB wide receiver was curling up in the passenger’s seat to take what he thought would be his final hit. Football players know the heaviness of helplessness. They know the spine-tingling seconds spent anticipating a collision so forceful and fleeting everything is black before you can begin to comprehend what just happened. A linebacker is charging at you like a bull and you’re the red flag, and you know you are seconds from his 250-pound frame hammering you, smashing your internal equilibrium and sucking the wind from your lungs. This time, though, Lee’s opponent was not a linebacker. It was a pick-up truck. It was the day after Lee’s 22nd birthday – Sept. 14, 2012. Lee’s roommate, defensive back Dwellie Striggles, was driving Lee’s brand new 2012 Toyota Corolla because Lee had a broken hand. And as the duo headed down Millersport Highway near UB’s North Campus, a 16-year-old driver was paying more attention to her phone than the road and T-boned the football players. As the Corolla spun from the collision, a pick-up truck sped toward it. Lee visualized his death. He prayed. He thought about his future. It felt like everything was moving in slow motion as The Feeling fired questions at his mind. Why had he felt such a strong calling to come to Buffalo if he was going to die here? Why had he pushed so hard to make the football team in high
school if his college career would end as a huge disappointment? What had he really accomplished in life? Had he made Mother Dear proud? As he had so many times on the field, Lee prepared for the blackness. The truck swerved at the last second and clipped Lee’s already-smashed car. He opened his eyes, astonished to be alive. He tottered out of the car – intact, but altered far beyond the literal impact of a separated shoulder. Those few near-death seconds had remade him. His insurance paid the $13,000 to fix the car, but the shift in his soul couldn’t be undone. “God used it as a wake-up call,” Lee said. “It was a glimpse of how fast my life could be gone. It showed me that God has a plan for me. He is not through with me yet. If he was, that truck would have hit us and it all would have been over.” *** To spend a day with Lee is to comprehend exhaustion. Keeping up with him is like trying to block Ray Lewis on fourth-and-1. Lee, a soon-to-be senior, spends six hours every day playing, watching and studying football, and he’s also majoring in early childhood education and taking 14 credits this semester. He doesn’t stop there, though. Having once been overlooked and deemed an irrelevant non-athlete, Lee is hungry to overachieve. He spends 40 hours a week working as the training manager at the Taco Bell on Maple and Sweet Home Roads. But he has taken on the role he considers most important since the accident. SEE FRED LEE, PAGE 6
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The good athletes, they despised me being an athlete. They thought I wouldn’t make it and told me I wasn’t good enough. I was too little. I was weak. At times, I wanted to quit. I wanted to say it wasn’t worth it. I decided to not listen to that voice and just work hard.