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last minute, White entertained offers from a few small colleges around the country — surveying each through virtual tours and videos since the pandemic prevented in-person visits — and finally settled on nearby Central State, in part, because it is close enough for Delores and Matthew White, his adoptive parents from Jefferson Township, to come see his games.
Then 11 days ago, Central State announced it was canceling football and all other sports this fall.
For the second time in just over 11 weeks, COVID–19 had derailed his college football dream.
“If it’s a curse, I’d call it a good curse,” White said a couple of days ago. “I’ll have more time to get better and be back to 100 percent.”
Besides, he said, he’s been through worse.
For the story of those early days, listen to Delores, Joe’s 74-year-old adoptive mom:
“I knew his (biological) mother. She loved her babies, but she was young and had some problems. Her health was bad. She was struggling to make her way in this big world, but she didn’t have no family structure, no support.”
Joe said his biological father, who’s from a family known as good athletes in the area, took
no part in his life. Not even after he became a college football player:
“I have no type of relationship with him. I tried to reach out to him my freshman year in college, but the conversation was sweet and short. I thought I’d hear back from him, but he never got back to me. I tried to find him on Facebook, but I got blocked.”
Meanwhile, Joe’s mother did what she had to do, Delores said: “His momma knew of me through one of my friends at church and she came and said, ‘I heard you’re a good foster mother. Would you consider taking my three babies?’” Delores and Matthew — their own four children were older — talked it over and agreed to take the three little children into their Aldrich Road home.
“I told her I’d do the best I could,” Delores remembered.
The three children — Joe was close to 5, his older sister Joenae and younger sister Virgello — already had been in a few other foster homes before they joined the Whites.
“When you’ve been in foster homes, I don’t think it ever leaves your head,” Joe said. “The way it was for us, I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. You feel unwanted. You feel like you’re given away again and again.”
Joe said his mom died when she was 32: “I heard she had cancer. But I also heard she died from AIDS.”
The Whites adopted Joe, his two sisters and two other foster children who were brother and sister.
“I had a lot of anger issues as a child,” Joe said. “I was in fights and acted out, but the Whites were honest with me. They didn’t abuse me. They protected me and gave all of us a forever home.
“They really had a good impact on my life.”
‘Very proud of him’
Delores grew up in Marianna, Florida, in the state’s Panhandle.
“I was the oldest of 13 kids and I wasn’t able to go to school and get an education — I had to quit after third grade — because I was my momma’s hands and feet. I helped her raise all those children.”
She was 19 when she married Matthew White, who was from the same area and also came from a family of 13 kids.
When he was laid off from his job making furniture, she said he bought two one-way bus tickets to Dayton so they could join relatives here. He got a job with Montgomery County Water Services and kept it until he retired. Next month he and Delores will celebrate their 54th wedding anniversary.
Once their four children were in high school, Delores said she went to classes and became licensed for foster care in Montgomery County.
“All I know is how to show people love and work with kids,” she said. “I want to be a mother to
’em, a big sister, a protector of them all.”
Joe was a special challenge.
“He had a temper and a couple of times he got mad and punched a hole in the wall,” she said. “I had a lot of talks with Joseph and I’d put him on punishment for a while. I’d put him in the corner and make him do squats.
“One thing we always did though was have family meetings. Once a week we’d all get together and we’d sit and talk.
“I don’t have book knowledge, but I have common sense and I’d tell my kids: ‘There’s not a perfect child. There’s not a perfect mother or a perfect father either. But we all can learn how to respect each other. We can talk things through: How did you handle this problem this week? This is what you should have done. This is the way you handle that. We learn from our mistakes.’
“And then we’d all apologize to each other.”
Delores said Joe eventually learned the lessons: “I’m very proud of him.”
Joe explained his eventual transformation:
“I learned the past doesn’t have nothing to do with the future. It’s like a book. You see the cover and you think you know the story, but the ending can be all different.
“I banged my head some, but I learned there’s no reason for me to go ruin my life because of mistakes or situations someone else made when I was just born and had nothing to do with. I can’t control that I got forced into foster care. I could either blame that for all my troubles or I can show that I take care of my own business.”
He said the Whites wouldn’t let him use his past as an excuse: “I began to realize I was in a situation where I was loved and wanted. I learned my past could help me be stronger.” He found his perfect outlet when he got into sports in high school. He played basketball, ran track and was a three-year starter in football, where he played offense and defense because Jefferson had so few players.
Lately, Joe’s athletic prowess has been on display at the Orbit Fun Center, the Huber Heights skating rink, where he’s a regular at Sunday skates.
‘No excuses’
Joe had earned a scholarship at Urbana and hoped to start as a 6-foot, 185-pound redshirt junior defensive back this season.
“We had a great run last year,” he said. “We went 7-4, set a lot of school records and shocked a lot of teams. We shocked everybody in the conference, really.
“We had a lot of guys coming back and we were looking forward to another great season.
And they had high expectations for me. Then out of the blue we learn the school is shutting down. That was a real stinker.”
Drawing on the lessons his adoptive mom had hammered into him, he said: “I began to look at it as “a blessing in disguise. That maybe God had a better opportunity for me.” He heard from NAIA schools like Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas and Avila University in Kansas City.
“In Kansas City, that’s where you have all the barbecue and the music and it seemed pretty cool. It was an eye opener, especially coming from Urbana which is kind of in the middle of nowhere and the closest thing to entertainment there was watching deer and rabbits run all over the place.”
In the end he chose Central State because he said new coach Bobby Rome and his staff took such a personal interest in him.
Although CSU football has been sidelined until at least next spring and maybe next year, Joe did play in a 7-on-7 competition in Dayton on Wednesday night that drew teams from as far away as Detroit. His team included some of his new CSU teammates.
“I’m hoping to be part of a brotherhood like we had at Urbana,” he said. “I want us to have success like we did there.
“I refuse to be one of those guys who walks around my neighborhood saying, ‘Yeah, little boy. If I coulda’ just done this or if I coulda’ done that…’
“I’ve learned first-hand there’s no excuses.
“I’m going to be a walking testimony, a walking blessing. The kid who came from basically nothing and, thanks to some love and a lot of hard work, he found himself a home in college football.”
Two actually.