DeVonta Smith’s character was forged from his mom’s values in a tiny Louisiana town

AMITE CITY, La. — Sometimes the phone would ring late at night at Christine Smith-Sylve’s house in this town in Southeastern Louisiana, the part of the state that rests directly under the jutting chin of Mississippi. DeVonta Smith did not like those nights.

Back when the Eagles’ first-round rookie wide receiver was very young and it was just DeVonta, his little brother, Christian, and his mom in the house, Smith-Sylve would have to summon a family member to come over and watch the boys while she went out, often to a place where trouble was waiting.

As a social worker with the Amite Department of Children and Family Services in the town of 4,500 or so people, where the 2010 census recorded that 54.5% of the population was Black and 27% lived below the poverty line, Smith-Sylve took children out of troubled situations.

Sometimes colleagues came along. Sometimes law enforcement accompanied her. Sometimes she went alone. It was tricky, figuring out the best approach. Seeing law officers at the door could escalate a conflict.

How often did DeVonta worry about his mom’s safety, and wish he could come along to protect her?

“All the time,” he said last week. “I always asked, ‘Is this a time I can come?’ … You go into families’ houses and take their children away from them. … It’s not always the easiest job. I’ve been there when I’ve heard things [said to her] and it wasn’t so safe.

“I’ve always wanted her to not be doing it, but I mean, that’s what she went to school for, that’s what she likes, that’s what she enjoys doing. I can’t blame her for that, but I always wish she was in a different situation.

“I think it made me a better son. Just because, knowing the things that go on in other people’s households, I would never want to put my mom in a situation like that. So I always try to do the right things, always try to be on the right path.”

Coaches and teammates talk of DeVonta’s maturity, his serious focus. Did it evolve, at least in part, through this experience?

“I think it did,” Smith-Sylve said. “I would always tell him, ‘We don’t have a lot. But what we do have, we value it, and some people are not fortunate [enough] to have what you have.’ We don’t live the luxury lifestyle, but what we did have, I worked hard for, and we took care of it, and we never went without.

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“But I tried to let him see — some of the children are not fortunate as you are. Some of them didn’t have the three meals a day, or didn’t know where their next meal was gonna come from. Or they were in abusive home settings. I tried to let him know the different things I saw … so he would know.”

Smith-Sylve grew up in Amite — pronounced “A-meet” by locals, usually without the “City” — where the Tangipahoa Parish School District is the largest employer, and oyster processing is a major industry. She played basketball at Amite High Magnet School, where DeVonta would choose football over hoops, two decades later, not because he liked football better, but because there are a lot more 6-foot-tall difference-makers in the NFL than in the NBA these days.

Smith-Sylve listened to a social worker speak at a high school career day and knew she had found something she wanted to do, helping families in crisis. Years later, after Smith-Sylve graduated from Southern University in Baton Rouge, that career-day speaker hired her.

Not everything in her life went so completely according to plan. By college graduation she was pregnant with DeVonta, who was born that Nov. 14, in 1998.

“It was a surprise. Nothing planned. But that happens,” she said. “It was hard work and determination to complete it and graduate.”

DeVonta grew up seeing his father, Kelvin Dickerson, mostly on weekends. Dickerson, a manager at a car-detailing business, also left an imprint.

“We have a great co-parenting relationship,” Smith-Sylve said. “His dad is quiet. DeVonta gets that from him. Kind of reserved. Don’t show a lot of emotion. His dad is a hard worker.”

“He’s a neat freak with everything he does,” DeVonta said. “With him, it’s just about, really, details in everything you do. … When people expect you to clean their cars, they want everything done right, and that’s how he is. When he tells you to do something, he wants you to do it and do it the right way.”

Zephaniah Powell, who became Amite High’s head football coach for DeVonta’s junior season, quickly got to know his star player’s parents, but not because they were overbearing or pushy.

“They were super-supportive,” Powell said. “Whether it was a local game or we were three or four hours away, we turn to the bleachers and they’re there.”

Smith-Sylve said her role at work is different now, she works with a program that focuses on keeping children with their families, connecting them with resources they need. This should ease DeVonta’s mind.

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Vincent Sanders, a friend of the family and a football mentor to DeVonta, said the family surrounding the receiver is “a bunch of old souls. His whole family dynamic is solid.”

In photos of DeVonta’s storied one-handed touchdown catch last December against LSU, in the front row of the stands, a tall figure in a No. 6 jersey is framed by DeVonta’s arms. That is his dad.

The Amite High Warriors football program also was a source of guidance. Powell said there are currently “about 433” students attending the school in grades 9-12, maybe 190 or so of them boys. Of those, more than 80 play football, either varsity or JV. The Warriors won the State AA title in 2018, and haven’t experienced a losing season since 2012.

Chris Gordon, now the defensive coordinator, was the wide receivers coach when DeVonta was a Warrior. Gordon’s office as dean of students — a converted classroom — is a trove of DeVonta memorabilia, including a large mural painted by a former student. It depicts then-Alabama freshman DeVonta’s double-overtime, game-winning catch in the January 2018 national championship game against Georgia.

Gordon was coaching middle school basketball for a rival school when he first met the player whose image would come to decorate his office. Gordon said he’d seen DeVonta play before the game against his team, and he knew what was coming.

“I was telling the kids, ‘We’re going to beat Amite,’ but I actually knew better,” he said.

The following summer, Gordon was coaching Amite Magnet High wide receivers, and in the first drill, there was “this skinny kid at the front of the line. … I was waiting for a senior, a junior, somebody that’d been playing to kind of move him. But he was in the front of the line, like, ‘I’m ready to go.’”

No one stepped forward to challenge the primacy of that skinny kid, whom Gordon recalls being “very tiny, with long feet.”

“Quickly, I began to see why he was at the front of the line. He was fearless. It’s kind of funny that he’s in Philly now, because it’s a comparison with Allen Iverson. He’s small, but he’s a problem.

“As a coach, I had to go home daily to try to figure out what to teach him next. We would do releases, and he would master those releases, and he’s like, ‘What’s next?’”

They worked a lot on releases — especially important for a receiver DeVonta’s size — and on the trait scouts and competitors praised in the buildup to the draft: DeVonta’s ability to make every route look the same, to not tip off what he was doing.

Gordon is a proponent of “bringing the route to [the defender], not letting him sit on anything that you do. Being extra-aggressive, attacking every ball.”

Gordon said he feels DeVonta gets his steely resolve from his parents, and from Amite. “The way we do things here. You have to earn everything.”

Smith generated a lot of predraft buzz when he weighed in at 166 pounds for his Alabama pro day. The Crimson Tide had listed him at 6-1, 175; as the draft approached he was nearly an inch shorter and a crucial 9 pounds lighter, in a sport where it’s better to be short than skinny. Before the Eagles took DeVonta 10th overall, TheRinger.com reported that of all the wide receivers drafted in the last 20 years who were at least 5-10 and weighed less than 180, the only first-rounder was Ted Ginn Jr., ninth overall by Miami in 2007.

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The counter to that is that Smith has endured a lot of hits, with only a broken collarbone early in his high school career entered into the injury ledger. While playing an integral role in the winning of two national championships at Alabama, he worked against a number of cornerbacks who went on to play in the NFL, including teammate Patrick Surtain Jr., drafted ninth overall to Denver just before the Eagles selected Smith.

“He’s a fighter,” Gordon said. “I actually talked the coach into letting him play some defensive back, his junior year. Just to watch how he would throw his body into guys, as aggressive as he was. It’s kind of funny when I hear people talking about his size. Just get in front of him. You’ll feel him.”

DeVonta’s development also might have benefited from Powell’s arrival; he installed a more modern, pass-oriented Warriors offense, which he said he would have done regardless, but having a weapon like DeVonta on hand made it a no-brainer.

“The main thing that I saw was he was just professional. Even as a high school kid, he always had a good head on his shoulders,” Powell said. “In the classroom, he was about his business. Never dipped below a 3.8 GPA. He took care of the academic side, he took care of the home side, he took care of everything we were doing football-wise, from the weight room to practice.”

DeVonta’s brother, Christian, will be a sophomore running back for the Warriors this fall. DeVonta said he isn’t worried about comparisons.

“He understands it himself. People call him my little brother, he don’t like it. He made it easier for me, because he already understood that he’s not ‘DeVonta’s little brother,’ he’s Christian.”

Sanders, who ran a barbershop in Amite when DeVonta was growing up, became a mentor for DeVonta and other Amite-area players, driving them to summer camps and ultimately starting a business, BEAST1 Athletics, built around his role as a middleman between colleges and players. In some cases, Sanders identifies players in out-of-the-way spots early in their high school careers and makes sure their film gets to college coaches, and that they get summer camp exposure.

Sanders drove five hours to Tuscaloosa, Ala., every two weeks to cut DeVonta’s hair during college. They plan to continue this arrangement in Philadelphia, with Sanders presumably traveling by plane. But although Sanders still owns the barbershop, he no longer works there; he moved to Tampa recently.

Thanks in part to DeVonta, Sanders became a controversial figure in Louisiana, where LSU fans decided he was the sinister force guiding some of the state’s best athletes to hated Alabama, and other out-of-state schools.

Among others, cornerback Shyheim Carter, from nearby Kentwood, La., joined the Crimson Tide, as did Amite defensive tackle Ishmael Sopsher, though Sopsher since has transferred to USC. On LSU message boards, Sanders is referred to as “The Barber,” and by other descriptions that can’t be printed here. One implication is that money changes hands.

“I don’t make a dime” connecting players with colleges, Sanders said. He contends that his income is derived mostly from real estate investments. “All I’m doing is connecting dots.”

DeVonta has known Sanders since he was 2 years old, when DeVonta’s grandfather would take him to the shop, then run by Sanders’ father, George.

“His father cut my hair. Once I got of age, where I understood I couldn’t be getting no old man haircut anymore, I started letting him cut my hair,” DeVonta said. “He’s been there since Day 1. He’s got me there, so why not keep him around?”

The decision to go to Alabama was not made because of Sanders, DeVonta said.

“I went there because I knew that was the type of place I wanted to be at — the place with the structure, the discipline,” he said. “Adjusting was really easy.”

Back home in Amite, adjusting to the fallout was not quite so easy. SEC folks take their football seriously. Amite is maybe an hour’s drive from Baton Rouge and the glassed-in habitat of Mike the Tiger. If the NFL had a system where, say, a kid from Bensalem could opt to play for the Eagles, and that kid decided he’d just as soon head for Dallas, well, you can imagine the reaction.

“Being that this is LSU country, it was hard. Some people embraced it. Some didn’t,” Smith-Sylve said. “But as far as our community, in itself, they embraced his decision.”

She said that to her face, people only made joking references: “Now, I’ve read different things in the media, where [fans have] said some ugly things about him not coming back to Louisiana, he’s not welcome here anymore, ‘traitor,’ things like that. But as a far as family, friends, and coworkers, it was more of a joking thing.”

In Amite, DeVonta had always been “Tae-Tae,” and then, “Smitty.” At Alabama, as he shone in the national spotlight, becoming the first wide receiver to win the Heisman since Desmond Howard in 1991, DeVonta became “The Slim Reaper.”

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DeVonta is not the first NFL draftee to come from Amite, but he is the most acclaimed. Smith-Sylve estimated that about 200 people attended the Heisman celebration at the Amite Community Center, including the town’s mayor, Walter Daniels.

The Baton Rouge Advocate quoted Daniels as saying: “I personally want DeVonta to know how proud we are and how honored we are for him to call Amite home.”

Daniels is Amite’s first Black mayor, elected last November after serving six months in an interim role. Amite is a flat, plain, unsubtle place, the main business district laid out along Oak Street/State Route 16, no curves or bends. Even in 2021, Blacks and Whites live separately. You turn one direction off Oak Street to get to Amite High. You turn the other direction to get to overwhelmingly white Oak Forest Academy, the town’s other, private high school.

The Amite High football coach before Powell was a man named Alden Foster — a Smith family cousin, Smith-Sylve said — who was the school’s first Black head coach when he got the job in 2008. He was appointed after he was passed over in favor of a white coach by the Tangipahoa Parish school board; a federal judge installed Foster, ruling the board violated a 1975 desegregation order.

“This is also Louisiana,” said Gordon, the defensive coordinator, who was wide receivers coach under Foster.

“At one time [Amite] was more integrated, but within the last couple of years it’s been kind of segregated more,” Smith-Sylve said.

Amite High now has only a few white players, and far fewer white students than when Gordon was growing up. He takes a pragmatic view of this.

“Kind of knowing that those who are here want to be here, that’s for the better,” he said.

That dwindling number includes Warriors kicker Liam Adamson, who wants a college scholarship, and, well, which school’s games are recruiters going to watch?

All this is relevant in that DeVonta knows how important his success is to the people watching back in Amite who grew up the way he did. He could have left Alabama for the draft a year early, but he stayed to finish his degree in education.

“Ultimately, being able to help kids get to where they want to be,” he said, when asked about his major. “I feel like kids just need that person to show them the way to go, that can lead them to doing the right thing. It’s important. And me having a younger brother, just leading for him, let him see all the right things to do, and the way to do things.”

Philadelphia is quite a bit bigger and more complicated than Amite, or even Tuscaloosa. Smith-Sylve said she has never been to Philly, but she isn’t worried.

“I think he’ll adjust. I think he’ll do well,” she said.

“You make your own destiny,” she said she told DeVonta, as he prepared to venture to the North. “I think he kind of bought into that. He’s always been a small child, but he has the work ethic, he has the heart and determination for it. He was a born leader. I’m very proud of the young man he has become.”