Juanita Brown ended every pregame prayer the same way, from the time her son made the varsity high school team as a freshman until the final game of his Hall of Fame NFL career.
Even that late in his football journey, Devin Hester called, often from NFL locker rooms: “Mom, it’s time for us to pray.”
Brown, who witnessed Hester’s fervent passion for the game from the time he was in elementary school, always closed out the calls.
I pray that your name be great among the nation and never fall to the ground.
“And it has been answered through every course of his life,” Brown said.
When Hester is enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame this weekend in Canton, Ohio, Brown, 59, will be by her son’s side. Hester chose her to introduce him at the ceremony. It’s a nod to the influence she has had on his life and career, something Hester spoke of several times during his journey to an NFL-record 20 return touchdowns in the regular season.
Brown, who holds a doctorate in philosophy, has been a pastor for 22 years and long before did missionary work in Africa and the Philippines. Two places dominated her family’s life outside of home and school: church and the football field.
She instilled Christian beliefs and morals in her children and preached the power of prayer, so much so that when they got a headache, they’d ask for her prayers before they’d ask for medicine.
That desire never went away for Hester, who credited Brown after breaking the NFL career record with his 11th punt-return touchdown in 2011 with the Chicago Bears. (He finished with 14.)
“Your mother’s prayers always come through,” Hester told reporters afterward. “So I give credit to my mom. She’s a praying woman, and without her I know I wouldn’t be here today.”
Mother and son will be together Friday and Saturday as Hester has his Hall of Fame bust unveiled and receives his gold jacket, moments that already give Brown chills to think about. She also made a video for Hester’s Canton introduction, reliving the stories of his career.
“Is this for real? Am I dreaming?” she asked herself during that process.
The enshrinement ceremony is not just a dream for Hester.
For the mother of the greatest return man of all time, the woman who raised him through good times and bad, from a fearless child to a breathtaking star, it’s also an answered prayer.
‘He was fearless’
Brown never had time to change her clothes.
She would leave her job as a postal worker and drive straight to the high school stadium. In her uniform, she’d settle into the stands before kickoff.
Even in high school, Hester’s returns were can’t-miss moments.
“Because I knew the opening kickoff, he would most likely make a touchdown,” she said.
Brown’s cousin was one of the first to clue her in to Hester’s extraordinary abilities, telling her, “Nita, he’s really, really good.” So she went outside to watch as 6-year-old Hester flew by boys four and five years older for touchdowns.
“He had so much confidence and he was fearless,” Brown said. “He wasn’t afraid of their size, how old they were. He just had that confidence within himself. And I was thinking then, ‘He’s going to be something else. He’s going to be great.’”
He also was driven. Hester idolized Deion Sanders, mimicking the high step of the Hall of Famer whose return touchdown record he would one day break. And Hester declared that he would be in the NFL too.
By the time Hester was 10, he worked out and ran on his own. He was always pushing his mom to get out the door so he wouldn’t be late for practice, always pleading for his dad to go outside and play catch.
“I’m like, ‘OK, that is a passion for him. He really loves it,’” Brown said. “Some kids, they just go out there and play and come home, and they’re playing with their toys. But not Devin.”
As Hester’s skills grew to the point he was a Parade All-American and a top-ranked player in Florida, she remembers being struck by a moment at one of his practices. Brown was watching her son when a fan brought his two little sons to the field and said, “He’s in high school now, but he’s going to be an NFL football player.”
It was “mind-blowing” for Brown to hear a stranger say it out loud: Her son was on track for the NFL.
Brown did all of the regular motherly things to help Hester get there. Driving to practices and games. Making sure he had healthy food to fuel his training. But she also guided him through some big challenges.
More Top Picks Best Ssds For Laptop Upgrade
‘Lord, please help us through this’
The car ride home from Coral Gables, Fla., was quiet.
After making a name for himself as a wide receiver, defensive back and return man at Suncoast High School in Riviera Beach, Fla., Hester committed to Miami. But in August 2002, he found out he couldn’t enroll there for his freshman football season. While he had a high enough SAT score for entrance, the NCAA questioned the result and ruled he had to retake the test, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported at the time.
Brown tried to be strong, to put a mother’s “good face forward” for her son, telling him it was going to be OK. But they were both heartbroken. Tears streamed down Hester’s face, and when they arrived home, he went to his room and shut the door.
Brown waited to cry until she shut her own door and was in the shower. She prayed.
“Lord, please help us through this.”
Hester and his family had been through incredibly trying times earlier in his life.
When Hester was 10, Brown was involved in a serious car accident that left her immobilized for weeks. Her husband, Derrick, whom she married after she divorced Hester’s biological father, told Hester and his brother Lenoris they needed to step up, so they fixed their own cereal and ironed their own clothes as she recovered.
“To see them say, ‘OK, Dad, we’re going to do it. We’re going to step up,’” Brown said. “To see them dedicated to taking care of themselves (helped).”
Two years later, Hester and his family grieved the death of his birth father, Lenoris Hester Sr., whom Hester said on “The Pivot” podcast “was the fastest thing on earth,” the genesis of his speed. Hester revealed on the podcast last year that his father died of AIDS, the death robbing Hester of the relationship they had grown in the final years of his life.
“I was lucky that I had a stepfather, Derrick Brown, who treated us like one of his own,” Hester told the Tribune in 2006. “But I’m not going to lie. Losing my dad was rough.”
Hester told “The Pivot” that he drew strength from Brown and her faith in God in those situations. And he did it again after the delayed enrollment at Miami.
After the initial shock wore off, Brown let Hester grieve over the lost opportunity for a few days. And then she put an end to the moping and second-guessing about whether he eventually would play for the Hurricanes.
“I just went and pushed the door down and said, ‘You’ve got to get up out of here now. This is enough,’” Brown recalled. “I said, ‘You’re going to go to Miami. So now what you need to do is just get up and start practicing, get up and start running. Because you will be there.’”
Hester regained his determination, and he soon became an All-America kick returner at Miami — and a second-round draft pick by the Bears in 2006.
‘They’ve got to watch out for me’
The brash confidence, the unstoppable aura that Hester has said made him feel like he could tear off his helmet to return kicks when he heard the first few beats of “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” at Soldier Field — it was always there.
Brown remembered how Hester’s stepdad was driving him to a pro football camp and told Hester, “OK, Devin, this is another level. You’ve got to watch out for the guys.”
“He looked at his dad and he said, ‘No, they’ve got to watch out for me,’” Brown recalled.
Yet it still was always a little stunning when Brown saw the reaction from the Soldier Field crowd to “Crank That” from her perch in the stands at the 50-yard line.
“I stand up and say, ‘I’m not the only one standing before the ball is kicked.’ Everyone is literally standing before the ball is kicked,” Brown said. “Why? Because we know he’s got that nickname. Anytime.”
Brown’s two favorite moments of her son’s performance on the field also will resonate with Bears fans.
Oct. 16, 2006.
Brown was in the stands in Glendale, Ariz., thinking to herself, “I hope they kick it to him.”
The Bears had trailed the Arizona Cardinals 23-3 late in the third quarter but were within 23-17 with 3 minutes, 17 seconds to play. A protection breakdown on the Cardinals punt unit caused punter Scott Player to change his angle. Instead of Player kicking it to the right, the football carried down the middle, setting the stage for Hester’s 83-yard return touchdown to complete one of the greatest comebacks in Bears history.
“I was shocked. They did it! They kicked it to him!” Brown said. “To see him run the ball back, it was electrifying. So explosive and electrifying, and we were just jumping up and down. I felt like I was about to have a heart attack. I had to sit down because my heart was racing. I had to sit down for a minute and catch my breath.”
About a dozen family members were at Dolphin Stadium as the rain poured down on Super Bowl XLI. The vibration in the stands grew to a rumble, and the fans’ voices began to reach a fever pitch as Hester caught Adam Vinatieri’s opening kickoff and returned it 92 yards for a touchdown.
“And the closer he gets, it’s louder and louder,” Brown said. “We’re jumping up and down. He makes the touchdown. You talk about going crazy. Oh, my God.”
But when asked what she’s proudest of in Hester’s career, Brown didn’t point to one of his electrifying returns. It’s that he stayed the same person throughout his life. Honest. Confident. Outspoken. But “always Devin.”
“Some people get pumped up and get the big head. And with Devin, he stayed humble,” she said. “He changed the game. He never allowed the game to change him.”
As she thought of her son’s best moments, another came to Brown’s mind, off the field.
It’s a blur now whether it was with Miami or the Bears, but she was watching Hester sign autographs after a game. A little boy, holding a ticket, screamed again and again, “Devin Hester, sign my ticket!”
A group of men clutching helmets and footballs, wanting their own piece of Hester’s legacy, crowded the fence partition and swallowed up the boy. Hester stopped and called out, “Everybody move back,” summoning the boy from the back to sign his ticket and give him his gloves.
“And this little boy jumped so high, and he was screaming and waving the gloves and waving his ticket,” Brown said. “And everybody just had to start clapping.
“I’m standing by looking, and I say, ‘Now that’s the son I raised. That’s the son I raised.’”
‘The prayers that God has answered’
Brown has different games to get to now.
Her grandsons, Hester’s three sons, are all fast and talented like their dad. Hester coaches son Dray’s youth football team, the type of coach who hosts pizza parties at his house, Brown said.
“He’s not just a coach on the field but develops a relationship with the kids, and that’s what I love,” she said. “And they love him because he’s a person with a big heart.”
Though they don’t have their pregame ritual anymore, Brown and Hester still talk on the phone at least once a week, if not more. And this weekend, they’ll share an experience that only a few hundred people can claim as their own.
Brown said she was “honored” that Hester chose her to be with him, as she was for so much of his career. And as her son is enshrined among the greatest in pro football history, Brown will think back to their prayers all of those years.
“Oh, my God, Devin, your name will be great among the nation and never fall to the ground because now you’re a Hall of Famer,” Brown said. “Even children will be reading textbooks about you in school and doing projects and essays on you. … Your name is great among the nation. You’re the best there is, and I believe ever to come, as a return specialist.
“We just look back at the prayers that God has answered.”