Jeff Jackson

Tonight Luther Burden III went for 130 receiving yards and two touchdowns in a Chicago Bears win. Here is the man who got him there. His dad is Luther Burden Jr. He was a basketball star at Saint Louis University who once scored 36 in a game. In 1987 he was arrested for selling drugs and he served a year. Then he spent his son's entire childhood working two jobs. An overnight shift at Walmart, eleven at night to seven in the morning, and then five more hours as a caregiver at a hospital. Here is what the son says about that. "He made sure I didn't go down that path." "That's my best friend." His dad beat him at basketball until he cried. He has said so himself. "I used to make him cry playing basketball." Burden grew up in north St. Louis, the second youngest of ten children. Nine sisters. In fifth grade he dislocated his elbow and went on playing on it. Here is the part nobody writes. His dad went looking for a way to get him out early. "I kept my ear to the ground, and I wondered how these kids graduate early." So for his last year he moved him across the river to East St. Louis Senior High School in Illinois, because there he could finish in December instead of May. A man working two shifts found the loophole and bought his son six months. "I love St. Louis, but it's not the place for a young Black man. There's too much going on." By then Burden was the number one wide receiver recruit in the country. Alabama wanted him. So did Georgia and Oklahoma. He picked Missouri. "Go somewhere where you're needed instead of where you're wanted." "I wanted to be close to my family." Now the other man in this. Demetrious Johnson grew up in St. Louis, played at Missouri and then in the NFL, and became a friend of the family. He said he looked at Burden like he was his own son. Johnson passed away on Christmas Eve in 2022. He was 61. Burden has been giving football camps away for free ever since. At the Boys and Girls Club in St. Louis, and at East St. Louis Senior High School, the place his dad sent him. "He definitely inspired me to always give back to your community and where you came from." "I cherish him every second I can." His dad came out of a diabetic coma five years ago and stacks groceries at a distribution center now. But here is the last thing about the two men named Luther Burden. The son had never seen film of his dad playing until a television crew sat him down and showed it to him.