MIAMIMIAMI—On a lot with a pair of tiny peach-colored houses, amid a sea of similar homes painted in pastels, with fenced yards and metal bars on the doors and windows, a family regularly meets en masse.
“We’re close,” said Lorene Liuget. “We have our ups and downs. But when it comes to that third Sunday of the month, we put aside our disagreements and fallouts and we’re together.”
On the third Sunday of May, there was the usual gathering with plenty of food and plenty of noise. All but four of Lillie Mae and Olden Sheriff’s 16 children and maybe half of their 100-plus grandchildren and great-grandchildren were present at the 32nd Avenue home the Sheriffs bought almost four decades ago.
Corey Liuget lived here for many of his formative years. He played football in the street, hid under a van out front during a shootout one day, and when he was 12 years old underwent a local rite of passage by having a friend tattoo the upper portion of one arm with the words “32 Ave.”
Before making him the 18th overall pick in last month’s NFL Draft, the Chargers had little personal interaction with Liuget. But they had seen him play and believed his relentless style could help their defensive line. And they had heard enough about his personality to believe he could infuse their team with an attitude, an ability that comes as much from who a man is as how he plays.
Not unlike most people, who Liuget is can be traced to where he came from.
That place is here, in balmy South Florida, where he awaits the end of the NFL lockout surrounded by the people who have surrounded him most of his life.
Liuget went far away for college, turning down the University of Miami and University of South Florida, his desire being to make a name for himself and be his own man at the University of Illinois. But he is clearly at home here, the smile rarely leaving his face as he interacts with relatives.
He has trouble explaining exactly what being part of this gigantic family means, since it’s simply always been this way. And, really, that’s the point.
“It ain’t ever going nowhere,” he said. “… Even though I didn’t communicate with most of them like I should have in college, when I came home it was always nothing but a good time.”
Family togetherness
Sitting down with Lillie Mae Sheriff is like being in the presence of royalty, and it seems part obligation and part honor to soak up her barely audible wisdom.
“When she speaks, nobody better respond, just listen,” said Lorene Liuget, Corey’s mother. “She’s the chief and we’re the Indians. She keeps the family in line.”
Sheriff is tiny; her movements slight and elegant. Her voice is soft, her words few. Still, she remains not just the matriarch but the magnet that binds this giant family.
It is an esteem built by a lifetime spent living her philosophy that “a family that prays together stays together.” She expanded that to the family that eats together, too, and generally just spends time together.
“I’m so glad,” she said, “that this is a family with love.”
And discipline.
“That little old lady — you knew she was gonna hit you with a wet rag,” Corey said, laughing as he pantomimed twirling up a rag in preparation for a strike. “You were afraid of that. And you grew up hearing all the stories, how she disciplined. They say she’d have you seeing stars.”
Asked the day after being drafted whether there was a lady in his life, Liuget didn’t hesitate before replying that he had two — his mother and his grandmother.
Corey’s father died when he was 4, and for the next six years before remarrying, Lorene raised her five children — with healthy doses of humor, humility and accountability.
Corey recalled being a high school football star, amassing press clippings and correspondence from the colleges wooing him.
“Let me save this pile of letters,” Lorene would say, “so if you don’t amount to anything, if you mess up, I can always say you had an opportunity.”
Said Corey: “It was like, ‘Oh man, I can’t let her down now. She’s telling me if I do fail she’s going to remind me.’ ”
Ernest Knight, an older gentleman who took Corey under his wing, making sure he had food and a haircut, recalled a teenage Liuget offering to clean Knight’s yard. Steve Smith, Corey’s high school coach, recounted two weeks of 15-hour days Corey spent helping renovate the school’s locker, equipment and weight rooms before his sophom*ore season.
It all speaks to a work ethic, again bred on the streets of a Miami housing project when Corey was barely out of kindergarten.
Lorene would boil peanuts, make candy apples, conch fritters and sweet potato pie and gather her brood after school on Fridays. The kids would take the fare and sell it, which included keeping track of inventory and making change.
“It showed them how to make an honest living,” Lorene said.
Corey sold the peanuts. Up to 100 bags at $1 apiece between Friday and Saturday.
“I hated it,” he said. “… But it was teaching discipline and work ethic.”
Beyond bloodlines
Alex Terry’s branch of Corey’s family tree is auxiliary. It seems to be reached through a cousin and a college roommate and maybe someone else.
Perhaps all we need to know is this:
“He’s family to me,” Terry said.
Their relationship began when Lorene Liuget was advised by someone she trusted to take her son, who had been acting out, to Hialeah High, where at least she would know that, in Terry’s words, someone could “keep an eye on him” and “slap him up a bit.”
Terry’s is one of the bonds that extends Liuget’s family beyond blood.
Hialeah assistant principal John Donohue recalls the day Lorene brought Corey, about to be a freshman, to the school’s office. Donohue had just made the move from Mason Middle School, where the pubescent Liuget wasn’t a serious troublemaker, just disruptive in class, occasionally engaging in fights and generally causing trouble.
“No, no, no, no,” Donohue recalls telling Lorene that day in the office. “We did three years. No more.”
When Donohue was ultimately persuaded, the relenting came with a warning to the transfer student: “I know where you live. You’re not supposed to be here. You will be kicked out in a heartbeat.”
Standing outside the Hialeah cafeteria last week, Donohue pointed to goose bumps on his arm.
“He was a new kid from that day,” Donohue said. “A new man.”
Liuget gives thanks to Knight, Smith and Terry for their guidance and says he simply decided in high school to “get serious.”
Terry, Hialeah’s head coach and then defensive coordinator when Liuget was there, tells story after story of Liuget’s athletic prowess. But those types of youth exploits are common among NFL players.
A few stories, though, illustrate what prompted the Chargers to make such an investment in Liuget.
Among those tales is one involving Liuget and his closest friend.
One day in practice when the team was running sprints, the friend kept messing up, causing everyone to have to run again and again. Finally, Liuget got angry and confronted the kid. They took the fight to the ground before getting up and completing the sprints correctly. Terry then drove the two boys home, recalling how they apologized to each other and moved on with no hard feelings.
“That’s leadership,” Terry said. “This is his friend, but he knows what the hell he needs to get done, and he’s gonna get it done.”
The Chargers never had a meeting of any length with Liuget before drafting him. But in their brief interaction and in what they heard, they saw that Smith and others get emotional about as they recount stories about Liuget.
Smith described how he would arrive in a silent locker room at 2:50 each afternoon with players gathered around and all eyes on him.
“I’m telling you,” Smith said. “You could hear a pin drop.”
At 2:45 each day, Liuget took it upon himself to make sure everyone was quiet and ready.
“He’s a leader,” Smith said. “He knew how I wanted things done. It runs so much smoother when you have one or two kids like that.”
