Editor's Note: Maurice Fleming on Tuesday announced he's leaving Iowa as a graduate transfer.
CHICAGO — Maurice Fleming lives — and plays football — for his best friends, one who was fatally shot this year and another who died on the football field next to him.
The Iowa junior defensive back and Curie graduate honors Vaughn King and Quaashi Chandler with a prayer before every game and before he falls asleep each night. King was slain on Chicago's lakefront on Aug. 3, a few hours after Fleming had declined to join him there. Chandler died from an asthma attack during a game at Bolingbrook in 2009, King standing by his side.
"I'm just blessed, most of all to still be breathing and still be alive," said Fleming, whose Hawkeyes (12-1) play Stanford (11-2) in the Rose Bowl on Friday.
"To lose a couple of my best friends, it's heartbreaking. I just pray to them and tell them to give me energy so I can feed off them like when they were alive."
Justin Breen says Fleming feels lucky to be alive:
Chandler, King and Fleming all had the same dream: to play college football with a chance at making the pros. Fleming said Chandler had dealt with asthma attacks since the two had known each other as pee-wee players. Curie had just scored a touchdown in its November 2009 game at Bolingbrook, when Chandler, the team's star running back, "just dropped," Fleming said.
"I was in shock, with what happened," said Fleming, who has played in all 13 games for Iowa this season, with 16 tackles. "When I looked at Quaashi in his casket, I was like, 'Wow, he was just alive.' We had had Subway before the game and were talking about his favorite song and how we were ready to play Bolingbrook."
Fleming said he couldn't bring himself to go to King's funeral, even though Iowa's coaches had given him permission. "I had already been through that," he said.
King and Fleming were home for the summer in early August, when King, a student and fullback at Lincoln (Mo.) University, called Fleming and invited him to hang out with friends on the South Side lakefront. Fleming declined; he had to make the four-hour drive back to Iowa City the next day for the start of practice.
"Maybe God was giving me a sign to stay back," Fleming said.
King was fatally shot after two gunmen walked up to him and his friends in the 4300 block of South Lake Shore Drive in Oakland, officials said.
Maurice Fleming (l.) and Vaughn King during their senior year at Curie. [Maurice Fleming]
Fleming didn't find out until the next day, after he had driven to Iowa and several friends started frantically calling him.
"As soon as they said he didn't make it, I couldn't believe it," Fleming said. "I couldn't cry; I was just in shock. This was my best friend. We had known each other since we were little."
Fleming said a week later, he had a dream about King, where the two were talking to each other in his family's living room.
"I was just asking about the whole situation, what had happened to him. It felt so real," Fleming said. "He was telling me that he was at the wrong place, wrong time. He told me to live my life and move on.
"I felt good as soon as that dream happened. I felt like it was a sign, and that made me focus on football and school even more. I know I'm not only playing for myself, but I'm playing for Quaashi, and I'm playing for Vaughn."
Fleming gives credit to a handful of people for keeping him centered on school and sports. That includes his mother, Rochelle Harper, and his football coach at Curie, Tyson LeBlanc.
Maurice Fleming with his mom, Rochelle Harper. [Maurice Fleming]
Harper, an Englewood native and probation officer for the last 18 years, always kept Fleming busy. Besides football, he dabbled in basketball, baseball, soccer and even hockey and tap-dancing growing up. When Fleming was misbehaving in elementary school, Harper took a few days off work and sat in the back of his classroom.
"I made up my mind very early on that he was going to stay active and involved in a bunch of different activities," Harper said.
Said Fleming of his mom: "She means the world to me. Even gang members who are my friends, they're telling me my mom is a special lady."
Harper said if Fleming wasn't at his house, he was at King's. She called King "my little teddy bear." She said her family still can't believe King is dead. "It's just a horrible thing," she said.
LeBlanc, who now coaches at suburban Oswego East High School, said King is the fifth player he coached at Curie who either has been killed or died. He said he talks to Fleming every other week and says Fleming is "glad to be away from the city."
"He's playing for something a little bit different than most players," LeBlanc said. "Of all my players I've coached in the past, he's the one I've talked to the most."
Fleming said he's beyond fortunate to attend Iowa. It's quiet in Iowa City, he said, with "no gunshots, and you don't have to look over your shoulder every five minutes."
"You don't have to be worried that you're going to cause any gang-related rivalries," Fleming said. "Just being here at the University of Iowa, it's making me a better man. ... I don't know where I'd be if I hadn't gotten this opportunity."
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