Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 3, 1994 TAG: 9407040138
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DOUG DOUGHTY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Long
"I've always felt I was on borrowed time," said Jefferson, the captain of the Virginia men's basketball team when it won the National Invitation Tournament in 1980. "I've always felt, `I've got to get things done now.' I've always put pressure on myself to get so many things done in a certain period of time. That's the extension to me of my [upbringing]."
In no way does Jefferson blame a religious philosophy for his addiction to cocaine, but no one can dispute the pressures that had surrounded him when he turned to drugs and committed the crimes that led to his recent incarceration on 11 felony counts.
"The man was under a boulder," said Frank Murray, the athletic director at E.C. Glass High School in Lynchburg, where Jefferson was boys' basketball coach for 2 1/2 seasons. "I can't tell you the kind of expectations he faced, especially as a young male with his capabilities.
"As an athletic director, I saw his potential as a coach. The social-studies chairman saw his potential as a teacher. The main office saw his potential as an administrator. The black community saw his potential as a role model. Everybody had his own agenda for Garland and was eager to put him on the fast track."
At the same time, Jefferson was trying to complete his master's degree at Virginia while commuting between Charlottesville and Lynchburg and trying to hold together a marriage. Finally, he snapped. And snapped again.
"It got to be too much," Jefferson said. "I didn't realize it at the time, but I ran myself into the ground. I should have taken a warning. Early in my first year, I took three days off because I was completely fatigued. When I went back, I hadn't completely rejuvenated myself."
\ Crime and punishment
When he was released Thursday from the Albemarle-Charlottesville Joint Security Complex, Jefferson was in the 25th day of a 10-year sentence he received after a May 20 conviction on five counts of forgery, five counts of uttering (passing a forged check) and one count of larceny.
All but 90 days of the sentence was suspended by Lynchburg Circuit Court Judge Mosby Perrow. Jefferson knew he could reduce that to 45 days with good behavior, and he earned credit for another 20 days by mopping floors and washing windows and performing other menial tasks.
Moreover, Perrow agreed to a work-release plan that required Jefferson sleep at the facility while working first at the Charlottesville law firm of Parker, McElwain and Jacobs and later at the camp of Virginia's basketball coach, Jeff Jones.
"It could have been a lot worse," said Jefferson, 35. "I could have been in a rougher part of the facility with a lot of chronic offenders [or] in an 8-by-8 room with three other guys. Our room had 16 beds, TV, air conditioning. Everybody was on work release, so you didn't have that pent-up anxiety and anger."
Jefferson had seen worse conditions during brief stays in the Lynchburg City Jail after arrests on May 15, 1993, on forgery and uttering and on Nov. 17, 1993, for robbery.
The forgeries took place during a five-day period after he had driven his wife's car from Charlottesville to Lynchburg, Jefferson testified. When he noticed a checkbook belonging to family friend Larry Douglas in the glove compartment, he wrote a check for gasoline and discovered that to be a convenient source of money.
By that time, Jefferson had resigned at E.C. Glass. He was living at his parents' Roanoke home and working for a custodial firm that cleans Valley View Mall before making one of his sporadic visits to Lynchburg, where he approached a stranger, Lisa Glass, and grabbed her purse outside a grocery story.
Jefferson later wrote Glass a letter of apology and reimbursed her $304, including $300 for a piece of jewelry he says he cannot remember seeing. The charge was reduced from robbery to larceny, a less serious offense, because there was a minimal amount of physical harm.
Glass could not be located for this story.
"To take something from somebody . . . that was bad," Jefferson said. "To physically harm somebody . . . no, I could never do that. I'd run away from a fight. What happened was the force of me taking the pocketbook twirled her around.
"I wanted to get something to eat. I hadn't eaten in a couple of days. I had come over [to Lynchburg] to take care of some of the warrants for forgery and uttering. But the papers were in Roanoke. I tried to turn myself in two times."
\ Learning his lesson
When he arrived for his sentencing, Jefferson was surprised to see more than 20 E.C. Glass students in the gallery. They were not there totally by accident; as part of an assignment, a political science class had spent the morning in court, but many had stayed when they heard Jefferson's case was on the docket.
At least one of the students had played basketball for Jefferson, and several had taken his World Civilization class in the 10th grade.
"All of the students loved him; all of the teachers loved him," Regina Edwards, one of the students at the courtroom, said.
Jefferson's first basketball team at Glass finished second in the Western District. The next season (1991-92), he kept four sophomores on the varsity and the Hilltoppers struggled. He felt it would take four or five years until feeder systems developed and there would be a turnaround.
"I had been fairly successful in high school [in Covington], I had been fairly successful in college and I couldn't understand, with all the work I was putting in, why we couldn't be successful at Glass," he said. "That starts to eat at you. Some people can flip stuff off, but I'm not that sort of person."
Jefferson remained a rising star in the school system. He was appointed assistant principal for summer school in 1992, but by August, he had started to experiment with cocaine.
"I was at a very weak point emotionally and psychologically," he said. "The reason people overindulge in drugs and alcohol is they're trying not to feel an emotion, whether it be pain or anger or maybe even love of some sort. That's what I was doing.
"What I was feeling was emptiness at having finished my master's. I was overwhelmed with teaching and coaching. I had turned down [cocaine] before, but it allowed me not to feel disappointment in myself. I was having some marital problems - still am - and it became something I was used to and dependent on.
"What I needed to do was go to the administration and say, `I've got this problem. Can you help me with it?' But I was still in a state of denial. My ego as a player and teacher and coach made me figure I could get myself out of it. I'd stop for weeks and tell myself, `Oh, I'm not an addict,' but then gravitate back to it."
Jefferson did not publicly acknowledge his addiction until the spring, although obviously something was wrong when he took a leave of absence from Glass on Jan. 31, 1993, citing personal reasons.
"I was a hypocrite," he said. "I couldn't deal with it, me doing wrong and coming to the classroom and telling these kids not to do wrong. I couldn't deal with kids looking at me and seeing a role model. The kids knew what was going wrong. I was lying to them every day, walking into the classroom and putting up a facade that everything was OK."
\ Hometown hero
It has been almost 18 years since Jefferson enrolled at Virginia and his family moved to Roanoke, but Bo Carper readily uses the term "folk hero" to describe Jefferson's impact in Covington.
"This used to be a [Virginia] Tech area," said Carper, then the Covington basketball coach and now athletic director and an assistant principal, "but as soon as Garland went up to Virginia, one of the local stations picked up the UVa games and Covington Tire has been sponsoring the broadcast ever since.
"He certainly put Covington on the map. Prior to Garland's arrival, [the Cougars] had had something like two winning seasons in 25 years. In the five years starting with his first season, we were 96-20. Since 1976, we've had one - maybe two - losing seasons."
Jefferson attained phenom status at an early age, dominating older players on the outdoor courts of Hightower Park, located across the street from his Marion Street home. Remarkably, he didn't play for the Covington varsity until his junior year, and he almost didn't play for the Cougars at all.
"My parents raised me as a Jehovah's Witness," he said, "and they felt my main goal in life should be to promote and live by the principles of the religion. That's where the initial conflict with basketball began. We had five meetings a week, and two of those meetings were on Friday night.
"I never rebelled. I dealt with it, even though I was a wreck inside with some of the conflicts. Value-wise, it has shaped my life, which is what has shocked so many people about what I've done. I've always been an honest person and always done what I could for somebody else."
When Carper first approached Harry and Maggie Jefferson about the possibility of their son playing for the Cougars, he got a flat rejection. He persisted, however, and finally struck a deal whereby he would drive Garland to road games.
"Initially, they taped the [church] meetings," Jefferson said. "Then they stopped doing it or I stopped listening or a combination of both. My parents never saw me play in high school in my home gym, even though we lived two blocks from the school."
In his first game in a Covington uniform, Jefferson set a school record with 44 points. He was the state's leading scorer in 1975 and was selected Timesland's player of the year in 1976 before heading to Virginia, where he had an up-and-down career but started in all five NIT victories as a senior.
Jefferson had first committed to Roanoke College, a Division II program that offered scholarships at the time. Carper, who did not know of the commitment before reading the newspaper, immediately called then-Virginia coach Terry Holland and a Cavaliers offer was forthcoming.
"We're not as close as we once were," said Carper, who was one of many Jefferson supporters who wrote letters to the court. "We've seen a side of him lately that people in Covington don't remember, which makes it a little harder to accept. But as one of our faculty members put it: We're standing by him like a parent would a son."
\ The prodigal son
Jefferson's parents eventually became more comfortable with their son's basketball pursuits and watched him play in the Virginia High School All-Star Game when it was in Salem. When Jefferson was coaching at Glass, they would watch the Hilltoppers when they played in Roanoke.
"When I was going through this drug thing, I wouldn't even contact them because of the shame and guilt," he said. "My mom knew something was wrong, because when I came to Roanoke to coach, she could see I had lost a lot of weight.
"When everything came down, they were devastated, especially my dad. Everybody was on pins and needles. When I told them I was facing anywhere from 16 to 40 years, they were probably close to passing out. Their faith allows them to push on, in spite of things like this. That's something I hope to gather - a faith or inner peace.
"From the time I left home in '76 until the last six months, I've been very distant from my parents. For 17 years, they really didn't know who I was. I didn't know who they were, but it's been pretty enjoyable to get to know them again. They're not looking for anything from me."
It's the Biblical story of the prodigal son, for those who want to interpret it that way.
"We see him more and he calls quite often," Maggie Jefferson said Friday. "His talks with me are much deeper. All he talked about, even before he served his time, was getting his life together. I truthfully believe he's changed."
Upon graduation from Virginia, Jefferson spent six years in real estate syndication in Manassas, then was a mortgage banker in Manassas for three years. His wife, Patty, is his high school sweetheart from Clifton Forge to whom he has been married for 14 years.
"I've disrupted her life so much," Jefferson said. "All I can do is get myself together and apologize to her, but it's [the marriage] not going to work. There's too many scars there, too much hurt. And it's my fault."
When he started at Glass, Jefferson lived part of the week in Lynchburg and spent the rest of his time commuting from Charlottesville, where his wife worked and continued to live. That may have been part of his problem.
"Women seemed to find Garland appealing even when he didn't pursue them," one source said, "but he never stopped caring about his wife and was in regular communication with her about car problems and things like that."
\ A second chance
Jefferson is clean-cut, articulate, intelligent, personable - traits that were of no small benefit when he stood before the court. His biggest advantage might have been his counsel, Vanessa Hicks of the Public Defender's Office.
Presumably, Jefferson could have used his UVa connections to get a high-profile private attorney, although money certainly was a consideration. And, Jefferson wasn't the easiest of clients, twice failing to appear for court dates.
"I am eternally indebted to Vanessa," Jefferson said. "A lot of times I'd have my chin down, facing 40 years. I'd try not to let her know it. She'd say, `Garland, we need to do this. We need to try this.' She presented me a lot of options. She had a lot of ideas. She didn't keep me hanging."
By the time he got to court, Jefferson had spent 28 days at Serenity House, a rehabilitation facility in Fredericksburg. When he left there, he began outpatient therapy at Region X, a substance-abuse clinic in Charlottesville. He also went either to a Narcotics Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous meeting four days a week.
"I'm happy that Garland has been able to right his course," said Jones, who testified on behalf of his former teammate at the sentencing. "On one hand, [I'm] confident that he will stay on that path. On the other hand, [I'm] hopeful because I know it won't be easy.
"It's [cocaine] scary as hell, and this type of situation is what scares me the most. If it can happen to Garland, it can happen to anybody. It's not just in the big cities. It's not in somebody else's neighborhood. It's out there."
Jefferson worked one week of Jones' camp while on work release and has three more weeks scheduled. He plans to go to Davidson College in early August to serve a $1,000-per-month, one-year internship under his old college coach, Holland, who is Davidson's athletic director.
"I wrote him when he asked about jobs down here and said the only thing we had was internships," Holland said. "He did write back and say, `I'll take it.' I don't know if that would be appropriate for someone in his [financial] position, but I would like to have Garland."
Holland talked to Jefferson once previously, in 1990, about a minority-recruitment position. About the same time, Jefferson was approached for the first time about the Glass job. Intent on finishing his master's degree, he turned down both jobs, then had a change of heart after a second overture from Glass.
"Lynchburg made it very easy for me to come back and finish my master's," Jefferson said, "but having turned down Coach Holland once, I'm not about to do it a second time. The toughest letter I had to write when I was in rehab was to Coach Holland. I knew I had let him down, and it was a tough pill to swallow."
Eventually, Jefferson says he would like to return to school to pursue a doctorate in secondary school administration, although he isn't sure how limiting his felony convictions will be. He says it is "frightening" to hear how many recovering addicts have setbacks, some after 15 or 20 years.
"If he makes the same mistake twice, it's his fault," Murray said, "but Garland has the total package. He just needs to work on this one area. We've all got our demons to face, but if he can clean his act up, he can still make a tremendous contribution to society."
\ GARLAND JEFFERSON\ GREAT EXPECTATIONS, GREATER DISAPPOINTMENT
1974: As a junior at Covington High School, sets a school scoring record with 44 points in his first varsity game.
1975: Leads the state in scoring.
1976: Selected Timesland player of the year. Signs with Virginia.
1980: Co-captain of first Virginia team to win National Invitation Tournament.
1989: After nine years in the real-estate business in Northern Virginia, returns to work and begins work on a master's degree in secondary school teaching.
1990: Hired as head basketball coach at E.C. Glass High School in Lynchburg, where he also teaches social studies.
August 1992: Experiments with cocaine for first time, according to later court testimony.
January 1993: Resigns after 2 1/2 seasons as Glass coach.
May 1993: Arrested on five counts of forgery and five counts of uttering.
November 1993: Arrested on charges of robbery after stealing the purse of Lynchburg resident Lisa Glass.
May 1994: Receives a 10-year sentence, all but 90 days of which is suspended.
June 1994: Released from the Charlottesville-Albemarle Security Complex after serving 25 days.
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB