Former NFL player speaks to student body

By MARY JEAN MILLER
Room 210 Staff Writer

All people knew was that a former NFL player was going to speak to the students in a morning assembly May 15. Nobody really knew what he was going to say or what his message was going to be. People soon found out.
“Hi, everybody!” was the energetic greeting given by Don McNeil. He wouldn’t be satisfied until people were screaming “Hello” back to him. McNeil was here to be serious, but he wanted to make sure the kids were listening and listening well.
McNeil started by telling a bit about his career and personal life. He’s played in two Super Bowls (Super Bowl 17 and Super Bowl 19). He received the Player of the Year award twice, and played college level football under the coaching of Coach Bear Bryant and played professional football under the coaching of Coach Don Shula. McNeil played for the Miami Dolphins and received many honors. McNeil has a daughter named Jessica, 10 siblings, and a father who had to raise the 11 kids when McNeil’s mother died of a massive brain hemorrhage when Don was about the age of 6. McNeil’s role models are his two coaches, his father (for teaching him to always make good decisions), and his 3rd grade teacher (for never giving up on him).
McNeil was very exuberant and audience interactive. He regularly asked kids questions. The main question was:
“What’s the number 1 drug you are facing today?”
Many students said things like marijuana, heroin, crystal meth, steroids, and tobacco. All of those were good guesses, but one student guessed right. Alcohol is the number one problem facing youth today.
McNeil didn’t bore the students with a lot of facts, but rather he told them moving true stories about real people. Some of them are as follows:
McNeil has a friend who is addicted to crack cocaine. He stressed that while his friend was crawling along the ground in some alley because he dropped his little baggie, the people who are really suffering are his wife and kids who are wondering if her husband will come home tonight and if their daddy will come home to tuck them into bed that night.

There was this girl who took a vacation to Jamaica for a week. While there, she met a guy. They started doing wrong things like smoking weed and having pre-marital sex. When the week was over and the woman had to return to the states, the man said he would pay for the ticket and everything. When the woman was about to board the plane, the man slipped her a note and asked her to promise not to read it until she was almost home. Well, the woman waited, and when she opened the note, it read:
"I hope you had as much fun as I did. I had a great time. In a couple of weeks, I’m coming to the States! I hope we can do some of the things we did in Jamaica. Can’t wait.
"P.S. Welcome to the world of AIDS."

McNeil has had many people tell him to always make good decisions because it’s very important. That message has become his own. He travels around telling kids his message and encourages them all to make great decisions because it could affect them for the rest of their lives. When asked how many kids he thought he had reached, he replied:
“I hope I’ve impacted thousands of kids' lives.”