Two Marauder football players with relatives in Haiti can only with, hope.
Tevlin Petit-Frere had just stepped into a Haitian grocery store in Miami to get some bottled water for his mother and he said “everyone in the store was crying.”
That’s how the Central State football player — a day away from leaving his Miami home and returning to classes on the Wilberforce campus — first learned about the massive earthquake that leveled much of Port-Au-Prince, the capitol of Haiti, on Tuesday, Jan. 12, and may have killed more than 100,000 people authorities fear.
“I ran back home and when I got there my mom was crying, too,” the junior linebacker and defensive end — one of two Marauders who is Haitian-American — said by phone from Miami. “A lot of our family is there — right in the center of the area that was destroyed the worst — and we haven’t been able to reach them.”
Last week he said his parents, sister, aunt and grandmother — all live in Miami — were in Haiti to bury his grandfather. His parents and sister returned, but his grandma and aunt stayed down there.
“They’re staying just 20 minutes from the White House (presidential palace) and it was totally destroyed, so we’re all really worried right now. We can’t contact them ... Everyone here is just devastated.”
Back at CSU on Wednesday, the feeling was the same for senior quarterback Jude Diegue, who, like Petit-Frere, graduated from North Miami High, but has strong ties to Haiti.
“I walked into class today and a bunch of the guys came up and said, ‘Dude, are you okay?’ What could I tell them? The place I’m deeply rooted to, the place where a lot of my family still lives, is destroyed. I’ve been there several times and I love the country and now my heart is hurting.
“I called my mom — I could tell she was upset — but she didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want me thinking about it up here. But I saw it on the television and I get on the internet and read the stories and see the pictures of the rubble and the bodies lying on the ground and it’s all I can think about.”