Solemn Promise allegiance to Haiti

Solemn Promise allegiance to Haiti

By Tom Pedulla, USA TODAY
INDIANAPOLIS — Wide receiver Pierre Garcon hopes his improbable rise to prominence with the Indianapolis Colts will provide solace to earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

"All I'm trying to do is have them not think about what they are going through," says Garcon, whose parents were Haitian.

Although no members of his immediate family died in the Jan. 12 earthquake, the former sixth-round draft choice feels a profound sense of loss even at a time of his greatest personal gain.

After telling family and friends he was dedicating his efforts to earthquake victims, he set an AFC Championship Game record for receptions, making 11 for 151 yards and a touchdown, as the Indianapolis Colts defeated the New York Jets 30-17 on Sunday and advanced to Super Bowl XLIV against the New Orleans Saints on Feb. 7.

"It gave me added motivation," Garcon says of images on the television screen that don't seem at all distant to him. "People down there don't deserve for this to happen. Nobody deserves anything like this."

He displayed the Haitian flag as a symbol of pride and a reminder of need during postgame ceremonies Sunday after his breakthrough performance. In four magical quarters, he dwarfed his 2008 production as an unpolished rookie from Division III Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio. He made four catches for 23 yards and did not score last season.

Quarterback Peyton Manning had said as early as training camp that Garcon was capable of playing a much larger role after record-setting wide receiver Marvin Harrison was not retained because of advancing age and declining skills. The need increased when Anthony Gonzalez, Harrison's projected replacement, soon suffered a knee injury.

Manning is delighted Garcon, a speedy 6-0, 210-pounder, is fulfilling his potential at a critical time. "He has had an emotional couple of weeks with everything going on in Haiti," Manning said after Sunday's game. "We are proud of him for stepping up and playing like he did."

So is Enol Gilles, Garcon's close friend and workout partner since they were teenagers growing up in South Florida, not far from where the Super Bowl will be played. They had spent hours after the earthquake attempting to reach out to members of their extended family on the island. They could not make a phone connection.

As they watched and read the increasingly disturbing news and discussed what they could do to raise funds, Garcon realized how he could best respond.

"The main thing he said was, 'I've got to use this to play. I'm going to play for the people in Haiti,' " Gilles said.

Viergina, one of Garcon's three older sisters, expected him to react that way. "He's always wanted to do something for Haiti," she says. "I guess God put him in a position now where he can do that."

All donations welcome

After finishing the 2009 regular season with 47 catches for 765 yards and four touchdowns, Garcon has emerged as the Colts' leading playoff receiver, with 16 catches and 185 yards in two games.

He knows he will receive heavy news media attention in Miami, which is near his home and where there is a strong Haitian presence. He says he plans to use those interviews to encourage donations for Haiti. He provides information for those wishing to contribute on the Colts official website and his personal website, PierreGarconLive.com.

"Everything helps," he says.

That includes the $11,185 that students at Mount Union (enrollment 2,200) raised last weekend in an ongoing effort they call "Hugs for Haiti."

"Pierre has been a great role model for all of us at Mount Union," says senior kicker and punter Jay Carpenter, a former teammate of Garcon's. "He shows no matter where you come from, you can do well."

"Hugs for Haiti" brought together 220 students who collected donations ranging from 50 cents to $250. They plan to visit local churches this weekend.

"You can't feel what people in Haiti are feeling, but talking to Pierre gave me a sense of urgency to do something to make a difference," Carpenter says. "One little thought turned into a plan that turned into a communitywide effort that raised $10,000 in a week."

Big dreams, small school

When Garcon was at John I. Leonard High School in Greenacres, Fla., he struggled academically and did not attract interest from top-level college football programs. He attended Norwich University, a private military college in Vermont, for one year before transferring to Mount Union.

"I always had big dreams. I dreamed about being in the Super Bowl and the NFL," he says. "But I had to work toward it, and whatever path was given to me, I took it."

Garcon's father, Jules, died when Garcon was 6. His work ethic stems from watching his mother, Marie. She toiled on farms during the day, helping harvest corn and other crops, before picking up additional income by working a night shift for the postal service.

Garcon saw football as a means to get away from hourly wages and overtime.

"Off the field, he's very quiet, very humble," says Cecil Shorts III, an understudy to Garcon at Mount Union. "On the field, he's a different person. He plays with attitude and swagger. I don't want to say anger, but anger, like he has something to prove.

"When he was here, he tried to prove he didn't belong in Division III, and every Saturday he proved that."

Coach Larry Kehres, who has won 10 NCAA Division III national championships in 24 seasons at Mount Union, says Garcon always had both eyes on being selected in the NFL draft despite his small-school background.

"He did have a goal, but to talk about it while you're playing at Mount Union might have seemed out of place," Kehres says. "It was his dream, and he didn't share it a lot."

All he did was produce. He set school records for receptions (202) and touchdowns (47) while helping the Purple Raiders win two national titles in his three years. Still, it was unclear whether Garcon had done enough to convince scouts he was worth a late-round gamble and could handle the leap to the NFL.

"It's harder (at Mount Union) than it is if you play for the Buckeyes," says Kehres, referring to Ohio's other, somewhat larger, traditional football power.

Garcon was selected 205th overall in the 2008 draft, and he has become another example of Colts general manager Bill Polian's ability to spot talent others might have missed. NBC analyst Tony Dungy, who coached Garcon as a rookie, was impressed from the start.

"Pierre was a great young man, just a hard worker, and he really has blossomed as a player," Dungy says. "He was very, very quiet when I was there. He was a guy trying to do his job and learn his job."

Garcon credits four-time MVP Manning, among other veterans, for sharing knowledge of the game. They often worked together last offseason on a one-on-one basis to improve their chemistry.

Manning was impressed by Garcon's willingness to learn by watching in his first season.

"I feel like he got better in his rookie year even though he wasn't playing a lot," Manning says. "He didn't waste a year. When he was called upon in certain situations, he knew what to do."

It was the same when an earthquake shook the land of his parents to its core.

What's in 'Catcher in the Rye' author J.D. Salinger's safe?

ILLEL ITALIE AP National Writer

8:30 p.m. CST, January 28, 2010
The mystery grows: What's in 'Catcher in the Rye' author J.D. Salinger's safe?


NEW YORK (AP) — So what about the safe? The death this week of J.D. Salinger ends one of literature's most mysterious lives and intensifies one of its greatest mysteries: Was the author of "The Catcher in the Rye" keeping a stack of finished, unpublished manuscripts in a safe in his house in Cornish, N.H? Are they masterpieces, curiosities or random scribbles?
And if there are publishable works, will the author's estate release them?
The Salinger camp isn't talking.
No comment, says his literary representative, Phyllis Westberg, of Harold Ober Associates Inc.
No plans for any new Salinger books, reports his publisher, Little, Brown & Co.

Marcia B. Paul, an attorney for Salinger when the author sued last year to stop publication of a "Catcher" sequel, would not get on the phone Thursday.

His son, Matt Salinger, referred questions about the safe to Westberg.

Stories about a possible Salinger trove have been around for a long time. In 1999, New Hampshire neighbor Jerry Burt said the author had told him years earlier that he had written at least 15 unpublished books kept locked in a safe at his home. A year earlier, author and former Salinger girlfriend Joyce Maynard had written that Salinger used to write daily and had at least two novels stored away.
Salinger, who died Wednesday at age 91, began publishing short stories in the 1940s and became a sensation in the 1950s after the release of "Catcher," a novel that helped drive the already wary author into near-total seclusion. His last book, "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour," came out in 1963 and his last published work of any kind, the short story "Hapworth 16, 1924," appeared in The New Yorker in 1965.
Jay McInerney, a young star in the 1980s thanks to the novel "Bright Lights, Big City," is not a fan of Hapworth and skeptical about the contents of the safe.

"I think there's probably a lot in there, but I'm not sure if it's necessarily what we hope it is," McInerney said Thursday. "'Hapworth' was not a traditional or terribly satisfying work of fiction. It was an insane epistolary monologue, virtually shapeless and formless. I have a feeling that his later work is in that vein."Author-editor Gordon Lish, who in the 1970s wrote an anonymous story that convinced some readers it was a Salinger original, said he was "certain" that good work was locked up in Cornish. Novelist Curtis Sittenfeld, frequently compared to Salinger because of her novel "Prep," was simply enjoying the adventure.

"I can't wait to find out!" she said. "In our age of shameless self-promotion, it's
extraordinary, and kind of great, to think of someone really and truly writing for writing's sake."
Some of the great works of literature have been published after the author's death, and even against the author's will, including such Franz Kafka novels as "The Trial" and "The
Castle," which Kafka had requested be destroyed.
Because so little is known about what Salinger was doing, it's so easy to guess. McInernay said he has an old girlfriend who met Salinger and was told that the author was mostly writing about health and nutrition. Lish said Salinger told him back in the 1960s that he was still writing about the Glass family, featured in much of Salinger's work.
But the Salinger papers might exist only in our dreams, like the second volume of Nikolai
Gogol's "Dead Souls," which the Russian author burned near the end of his life. The Salinger safe also could turn into a version of Henry James' novella "The Aspern Papers," in which the narrator's pursuit of a late poet's letters ends with his being told that they were destroyed.
Margaret Salinger, the author's daughter, wrote in a memoir published in 2000 that J.D. Salinger had a precise filing system for his papers: A red mark meant the book could be released "as is," should the author die. A blue mark meant that the manuscript had to be edited.
"There is a marvelous peace in not publishing," J.D. Salinger told The New York Times in 1974. "Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure."

Metallica posted condolences

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Metallica has posted condolences on its website to the family and friends of Morgan Harrington, a fan whose remains were found three months after she disappeared while attending the band's concert in Virginia.

The remains of the 20-year-old Virginia Tech student were found this week in a farm field about 10 miles from the Charlottesville arena where the band played Oct. 17. The cause of her death has not been determined.

In a statement posted Wednesday on Metallica's website, the band said it was "profoundly saddened" by the discovery of Harrington's remains and said its thoughts are with her parents, Gil and Dan Harrington.

Metallica had previously used its website to publicize the search for Morgan and the band contributed $50,000 to a reward fund.

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