ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, November 25, 1996 TAG: 9611260014
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: ANGIE WATTS STAFF WRITER
When Shawn Scales was 12 and old enough to figure things out for himself, he took the step that would eventually lead him to a place on Virginia Tech's nationally ranked football team, to a future worth waiting for.
He reached out. He asked his coach for lunch money.
That was all he had to do. The coach did the rest.
Scales' father had left the family home in Prince William County when Shawn was 2 years old. Throughout his childhood, his mother was doing drugs. His brother began selling them.
When Shawn approached Richard Fry, his coach at Fred M. Lynn Middle School in Woodbridge, he was starting down a different path. Soon he was having dinner with the Frys, staying there on weekends. A year later, he moved in.
When so many children are sucked into the drug culture, Scales had what it takes to break away. And every time something went wrong, a different safety net was there to catch him. In the next five years, he lived with seven surrogate families.
"He was just a kid who needed support - not direction," Fry said. "He knew where he needed to go. We just helped him get there."
"Shawn is the definition of perseverance," said Will Robinson, his basketball coach at Woodbridge High. "When you think of Shawn you have to feel very proud that you know him. Here's a kid who dreamed big, chased his dreams and is now living them."
In 1988, when Scales was in eighth grade, dreams were about all he had.
"I saw where the people close to me were headed and I knew that it was a short-lived life and one that I didn't want to be a part of," Scales said. "So I just started doing what I could to survive - working my way through the community, befriending a lot of people who did what they could to help me survive."
The first of those people were Richard and Kelly Fry. Richard Fry coached Shawn in football, basketball and baseball during Scales' eighth-grade year at middle school, his first time playing organized sports.
"He'd come in asking for lunch money and he was embarrassed about it," Richard Fry said.
Fry's wife suggested they invite the boy over for dinner one Friday night. After dinner, Scales asked "Do you mind if I hang around?" and ended up staying the weekend.
"Shawn was always very quiet and still is," Richard Fry said. "Once we invited him and he got there, there wasn't much mention of him leaving."
Scales's visits with the Frys became increasingly frequent. Then, in January 1989, he called them one night. "He said he needed to get out," Fry said. When Fry arrived at Scales' home, Scales was waiting with a suitcase.
Scales lived with the Frys from the middle of his ninth-grade year through the end of his sophomore year at Woodbridge High. They were with him when the phone rang around 3:30 one October morning in 1989. His brother, Raymond, had been shot. It was the first of two incidents that sent Raymond to the hospital for gunshot wounds. The first resulted from a bar fight in Fauquier County; the second occurred just two months later - on New Year's Eve - in what Raymond Scales said was a dispute over drugs.
Richard Fry said he could do little more than shake his head at the call, knowing Scales had "been through so many things that people should never see."
The Frys took Shawn to visit Raymond in the hospital after the first shooting incident, but he did not visit the hospital the second time Raymond was shot.
"I wanted to go see him the second time too, but I couldn't," Scales said. "I didn't want to get blamed for something I didn't do, because at that time in his life he was heavily involved in drug activity."
Raymond is now serving a 61-month sentence on drug-related charges at a federal prison camp.
"Shawn is my hero," Raymond Scales said in a telephone interview, "because of the fact that he grew up by me and watched my every move - the direction I took - and although he never condemned me for it he took a different route than me, and he's being blessed for it now."
The summer before Scales' junior year of high school, the Frys moved to Manassas. Scales stayed with five families, each for a few weeks at a time, until he finally moved in with his stepfather for the year.
His mother, however, had moved out. "I regret that I had to break away to get myself together," Louise Scales said. "When I left I didn't want to, it was just the disease. But I couldn't help him if I couldn't help myself. I had a 25-year drug addiction."
For his senior year, Scales moved in with the family of his friend and teammate, Brion Dunlap. By this time, he had established himself at Woodbridge High as a top football player, rushing for more than 1,000 yards as a sophomore and playing quarterback as a junior. He also was a starter on the basketball team.
"I can't say enough about Brion's family," Scales said. "They did everything for me. Brion's mom treated me just like one of the kids. If I needed anything she was there to provide it for me. She was like my mom. We spent many times talking about what she wanted to see for both me and her kids."
And she wasn't the only one. Scales also was receiving support from several teachers and coaches at Woodbridge, all of whom had their own way of offering help.
Edwina Drake, Scales' high school English teacher his senior year, said she became involved when then-Woodbridge Athletic Director Don Brown began gathering money from faculty members to send Shawn to an optometrist. The faculty raised enough money for the appointment and the contact lenses he needed.
"It was then that I started worrying about him more and more because I didn't know if he had any walking around money," Drake said. "So I gave $25 to Coach Robinson to give Shawn every week and he was never supposed to know who the money came from. I just thought all 18-year-old boys needed money to go out on dates and do other stuff."
Scales says today he knew who the money was coming from, and appreciated not only the gesture, but also the person behind it.
"Mrs. Drake is wonderful," Scales said. "She's what teaching is all about - people who care about you as a person and who help mold and shape your life. Mrs. Drake epitomized that."
Said Drake: "Considering his background he could have easily become a drug dealer or addict or just a very angry young man. He could have gone in so many bad directions, but he never did. He was just determined to pull himself out of the situation he was born into. I just thought he was miraculous."
But Scales received more than monetary assistance. He also received encouragement and advice - especially from Robinson.
"Coach Rob was the one who set the tone for the direction that I was going to take," Scales said. "We talked [freshman year] and he saw that I had incredible athletic ability and he said, 'Son, if you set your grades right you can write your ticket to college.' He was the first person to tell me that."
Scales maintained an acceptable 2.3 grade-point average. And during his senior football season, when he was named a first-team all-state wide receiver and second-team all-state defensive back, he said he drew the attention of coaches at the University of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Penn State and Northwestern.
But he couldn't achieve a combined 800 out of a possible 1,600 on the Scholastic Assessment Test. Under National Collegiate Athletic Association rules, that meant he would be ineligible for an athletic scholarship, putting an end to his college hopes.
So Scales decided he would try to attend Fork Union Military Academy, a prep school in Virginia, for one year in order to improve his SAT score. But there was a problem - tuition. Roughly $12,000, including uniforms, allowance and travel.
Scales turned back to the Frys, the closest people he had to a family. Kelly and Richard Fry took out a $2,000 loan and petitioned others for help. A letter was distributed throughout the Woodbridge and Manassas communities to churches, the high schools and other organizations.
That brought in about $5,000. Scales received about $4,000 in scholarship money from Fork Union and earned the rest of the money he needed by working a construction job during the summer of 1992.
At Fork Union, Scales took five classes. He also played wide receiver, averaging a little less than 20 yards on 30 receptions and scoring six touchdowns. The school year wasn't without incident, though. His mother was arrested in Alexandria on Jan. 14, 1993, on cocaine possession charges and later pleaded guilty. She was sentenced to six months at the Alexandria Detention Center.
"That was the most detrimental time for me," Scales said.
During the spring, his college future finally came into focus. Scales was offered a football scholarship by Virginia Tech and visited the school. "I said, 'Wow, I'm in heaven here.''' Scales recalled. "I liked the atmosphere, the surroundings. I liked the mountains and loved the outlook from Tech. It's beautiful."
Coach Frank Beamer chose not to play Scales his first year, giving him a year to develop while preserving his four seasons of eligibility. Nagging injuries slowed his progress his second year, when he played in 10 of 11 regular-season games, primarily on special teams.
In 1995, his third year, Scales faced a new problem: He was placed on academic probation after receiving poor grades in two summer-school classes. Scales missed preseason practice in August 1995 and the opening two games of that season before returning to the team.
"I just started messing around, being young and foolish," Scales said. "At some point in time I said to myself, 'Does being in school and playing football really mean that much to me?' And obviously it did because I got my grades back up."
He did raise his grades, but what he didn't do was tell the Frys about his troubles.
"They're like parents to me and I knew they'd react like all parents do," Scales said. "I got yelled at by both of them. At first they were really upset with me, but then we talked and they got me back on track. We all realized the most important thing was I was still in school."
Scales not only got his academic life back on track, but his athletic life as well. And with his starting role in 1996 has come his long-awaited chace at football renown. Now 5 feet 11 and a muscular 180 pounds, he was the Hokies' leading receiver going into this past weekend with 25 receptions for 447 yards (17.9 yards per catch) and four touchdowns.
He may leave Virginia Tech this spring with a degree in human nutrition and foods. More likely, he will return to school and the team next fall as a graduate student or to pursue a second major and notice from pro football scouts.
But what Scales wants isn't really stardom - it's normalcy. The chance that his mother, who is continuing her recovery through her church, might join the Frys or the Robinsons in a trip to Blacksburg to see him play. A family of his own to go home to for Thanksgiving and Christmas - despite repeated invitations from the Frys, Scales has spent the past three years alone in Blacksburg for the holidays.
And a place to call home.
LENGTH: Long : 195 lines KEYWORDS: 2DA 1. MARK HARRIS. SHAWN SCALES TAKES A BREAK ON THE SIDELINESby CNBDURING TECH'S RECENT GAME AGAINST MIAMI. 2. GENE DALTON/STAFF.
VIRGINIA TECH'S SHAWN SCALES PUSHES AWAY A WOULD-BE TACKLER WHILE
CARRYING THE BALL AGAINST MIAMI. 3. VIRGINIA TECH RECEIVER SHAWN
SCALES PICKS UP YARDAGE AGAINST RUTGERS IN A SEPT. 21 GAME. COLOR.