Not all track writing is bad. BC-RUN--Sports Topic: Running Scared,1105 For release anytime College track is next for refugee from Liberian civil war AP Photo TXFOR105 Fort Worth Star-Telegram By KATHLEEN O'BRIEN ARLINGTON, Texas - She can hardly believe that her youngest son is going to college. During the seven-year civil war in their native Liberia, she wondered if he would even be alive at 17. Rebels killed his father, grandmother and three brothers, but James McClain managed to escape for the United States. James, who grew up in Philadelphia and Arlington, overcame the sorrows of his childhood by dedicating himself to school and running. A recent graduate of Arlington Bowie High School now headed to North Carolina A&T, James hid his traumatic past so well that not even his track coaches knew about it. "I've been encouraging him, telling him to try his best," said James' mother, Maggie, her voice trembling. "I say, 'My dear, try. Mommy suffer a lot, too much.'" In her 59 years, Maggie has endured several lifetimes of anguish. In 1990, months after civil war broke out in Liberia, she fled to Philadelphia, hoping to earn enough money to bring her husband and 17 children to the United States. Maggie and her daughter shared a one-room apartment, and used a comforter on the floor for a bed. Maggie put every penny she could spare from her wages as a nurse's assistant into her savings account. But less than a year later, her husband, mother and three of her sons had been killed in Liberia, caught in rebel crossfire. James, just 6, watched through the window as his father was shot. Rebels also burned the McClains' home to the ground. "We could be in the house and they could be shooting," James said. "It was war; it was crazy. They were just shooting everywhere. It was rebels; there were two separate rebel groups and they were shooting anything that moved. It was like Hitler, they were killing a certain group of people because they were a certain tribe." No place was immune to the violence. James' family had no affiliation to the warring factions, yet was still torn apart, and rebels did not shy away from storming into houses and murdering the occupants. By 1991, Maggie had stowed away enough money to send for James, her baby; and several of his brothers and sisters. The four siblings, the oldest of whom was just 19, carried their belongings on their backs and walked for days, all the while dodging bullets and praying they would safely pass through checkpoints. Finally, James recalls, they boarded a bus to Sierra Leone, where they caught a plane, eventually reaching their mother's arms in Philadelphia. Almost everyone in Liberia, where an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 died in the war and 3 million fled their homes, dreamed of coming to the United States, James said. Because he was actually lucky enough to reach the Land of Opportunity, he felt he needed to capitalize on his good fortune. "I've always been focused. I always want to make something of myself," James said. "Coming where I came from, I really didn't have that much opportunity. Ever since I came here, it seems like opportunity's been knocking on my door." James took up running at 8 when he saw some Philadelphia friends racing one another. He was a natural runner and joined his first track team in seventh grade, the first year the coach would allow him on the squad. After he moved with his sister, Zhee Carr, and her family to Arlington in 1999, he ran the 200- and 400-meter dashes for Bowie. James knew that a track scholarship would be his best chance at college, since much of his family's money goes to relatives in Liberia, where unemployment is 70 percent. With college on his mind, James refused to allow himself any excuse for failure - not the ankle injury that kept him out of all but Bowie's first and last meets in 2002 and definitely not the memories of gunshots that occasionally invade his thoughts. Even after Bowie's season ended in April, James ran laps alone in hopes of running his way to college. "I just try to make the best of what was a bad situation and make it good," James said. "I'm not going to say I came from a bad background so I'm not going to educate myself." Pioneer Track Club coach Nick Scott helped James find a school that was right for him. North Carolina A&T, a university with an emphasis on engineering and business, was interested in James for his disciplined approach and potential on the track. Assistant track and field coach James Daniels called McClain - whose best times are 21.4 seconds in the 200 and 47.5 in the 400 - "a perfect fit." "He is one fantastic kid," Scott said. "Basically, I called around to as many (college) coaches as I could. It's kind of hard on a kid because he has to get the information on college for himself. If anything is messed up, they just fall through the cracks, but he kept it all together, academically and athletically." James tries to keep his mind off the legacy of death in Liberia, but sometimes he thinks of those left behind, like his next-door neighbor and best friend, whose father was also killed in the war. They exchanged letters for a while, but James hasn't heard from him in years. Although Liberia's civil war officially ended in 1996, Maggie says that the violence has not subsided. Liberian President Charles Taylor, born in 1948 to a Liberian mother and American father, helped lead the revolt against former President Samuel Doe in 1989 and has been accused of numerous human rights abuses since his election in 1997, which many have called corrupt. "They took everything from me," Maggie said. "They took everything from me - they burnt my house down, they killed my husband, they killed my mother, they killed three of my boys. The war is not over; they say it is over. They go secretly into the homes and kill." Maggie, who now works as a housekeeper at a hospital, still worries about her eight children living in Ghana and Liberia, where life expectancy is just 51 and the infant mortality rate is more than 13 percent (fifth-highest in the world). After so much pain, James and his mother, Maggie, now have a reason to celebrate. They reunited July 31 in Philadelphia for the first time in more than a year, and Maggie accompanied James by bus to college orientation. While James began classes Aug. 19 in an almost fairy-tale ending, he and Maggie reserve a prayer for their relatives in Liberia, where there is no happily ever after. --- Distributed by The Associated Press
