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Thursday, June 12, 2008

EHS Basketball Star Thanks Adoptive Parents for Start

By Harold Smith
Mountain View Telegraph
      It's all there in black and white, right there in front of you.
    “I wouldn't trade these two guys,” said R.J. Rice as he nodded in the direction of his mother and father, “for anybody, black or white.”
    Rice, a 19-year-old African-American, was Estancia High's 6-foot-3, 195-pound star boys basketball post before his recent graduation. He was taken in as an infant foster child and subsequently was adopted by his parents, Wayne G. and Barbara Rice, who are white.
    “I don't get a lot of the cultural stuff,” R.J. Rice said. “But I've seen what black families are like and what white families are like. It's no different for me as far as I'm concerned.”
    In these days and times, when, it seems — at least so far — that one can publicly support, or maybe even more amazingly, not support a black presidential candidate of a major party without some kind of backlash, Rice's familial situation might not appear to be a big deal. And that may be particularly true here in historically multicultural New Mexico.
    “It's been wonderful here (in the Estancia Valley),” said Rice's 55-year-old mother, who along with her husband and two of her children moved to the Moriarty area from New York in 1992 . “Wherever I go, people ask me, how's R.J. and Lloyd (R.J.'s younger biological brother, also adopted) doing? It was different in New York. Some people there felt threatened (by a mixed family). But love is color-blind.”
    A side note: I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Rice and I have a couple of things in common – not in athletic ability, mind you, because I'm 5-7 and never could run particularly fast or jump high even with Keds on, but with other, more basic things, things that made the both of us smile. For one, we have the same birthday, Sept. 27, and we share the same birth surname, Smith.
    For you see, Rice's original name was Ricardio Smith. Barbara renamed him Richard Jude Rice.
    “I had just wanted it to be R.J.,” said his 60-year-old father, who medically retired from his job as a Suffolk County (Long Island, N.Y.) police officer prior to he and his wife, who has suffered from multiple sclerosis for 42 years, taking in the two boys.
    That brings us to the extraordinary first chapter of Rice's life, including his survival of and escape from a difficult, to say the least, early childhood. With his new parents' love and support and the dedicated help of a physical therapist, he rebounded from the effects of his tough start in life in New York that left him without the ability to speak or walk.
    “We didn't go into it to adopt him,” Barbara said. “We went into it to be his foster parents. But when he came to our house (in Miller Place, L.I., N.Y.), I looked into his big, brown eyes, and he looked into mine, and from then on, he was my child.” But it wasn't a “Leave It To Beaver” existence, not in the beginning. The Rices also have a 37-year-old biological son, Wayne A. Rice, who lives in Moriarty.
    “When (R.J.) was 10 weeks old, he came to live with us,” Barbara said. “It took us 11 court appearances and three years to get him adopted.”
    Meanwhile, a therapist in New York worked with Rice. And worked with him some more.
    “I'd like to be a physical therapist or an eye doctor,” he said. “As a child, I had multiple handicaps, but I had a therapist (Debbie Johnson) who worked with me. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have walked, let alone run. I'd like to help people like she helped me. If she could do all of that with me, where I could become a good basketball player, I'd like to do that, too, to help other people.”
    From those humble beginnings, Rice, who said he finished high school with “around a 3.0” grade-point average, developed into a polite, articulate young man who, oh by the way, has a propensity for shot blocking. He and Lloyd, the latter a prep senior-to-be, also ran legs on the Bears' 1,600-meter medley relay team that placed fifth at the Class 2A state track meet and won the event at the District 8-2A championships this year.
    “That was the best thing in the world,” Barbara said. “To see your two sons win a medal in the same event, doing it together, was just great.”
    Rice's Phoenix-like rise is difficult to fathom for those of us who have watched him use a smooth turnaround jumper to kiss the ball off the glass. The gap from then to now is too great.
    But it's not a past that Rice shies away from. He and his parents continue to stay in contact with his 96-year-old biological great-grandmother, Oneda Dixon, who lives in East Hampton on Long Island.
    Now, Rice is on the brink of a new chapter in his life. He has hopes of being able to play collegiate hoops at Eastern New Mexico University.
    “It's a smaller school, and I'm from a small town,” he said. “And it's close, but not too close. And a couple of my friends, D.J. Draper and Daniel Ortiz, go there. We're setting up a meeting with the coach.”
    The College of the Southwest in Hobbs has also shown some interest in his athletic services. Regardless of where he ends up, Rice said he'll look back on his time as an EHS basketball player with fondness.
    “It was awesome,” he said. “It made me the man I am today. I had some really good coaches.”
    Harold Smith can be reached by phone at 823-7104 or by e-mail at hsmith@mvtelegraph.com.>   

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